Rowland White

Rowland White (died 1572) was a sixteenth-century Irish writer and political and religious reformer, whose writings had considerable influence in his own lifetime.

Family

He was the second son of Patrick White, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). His mother was Patrick's second wife Alison St. Lawrence, daughter of Nicholas St Lawrence, 4th Baron Howth and his third wife Alison Fitzsimon, and widow of John Netterville of Dowth. Little is known of his early life. By the 1540s he was a flourishing merchant with his main centre of business in Dublin.

Merchant

He married Catherine Rawson, natural daughter of John Rawson, 1st Viscount Clontarf, former Prior of Kilmainham and a close political associate of his father, by an unknown mother (Rawson, though he was in holy orders, evidently did not take his vow of celibacy seriously and had several children out of wedlock). On his release he returned to Ireland and successfully renewed the family claim to Dufferin. He was living there by 1570, after the heirs of his elder brother Nicholas, who died in 1566, ceded their claims to him Rowland was unable to travel, but was encouraged to write two further works between 1569 and 1571, A Discors (discourse) Touching Ireland and The Disorders of the Irishry. He was invited to England to meet Cecil again: apparently he did not do so, but he renewed his friendship with Gresham and made the acquaintance of Sir Thomas Smith, the Secretary of State, who had a keen interest in the colonisation of Ireland, and had recently made an unsuccessful attempt to settle the Ards peninsula.

Death and legacy

Rowland died of bubonic plague in England in September 1572. He had several children by his wife Catherine Rawson, including John, the eldest son, who was placed under Sir Thomas Smith's guardianship. John retained possession of Dufferin until he sold it to the Hamilton family of Clandeboye in about 1606. The Hamiltons subsequently built Killyleagh Castle in its present form.

Writings

Rowland, son of a Catholic father, was a convert to the Protestant faith, and a sincere if unorthodox religious reformer, who was in disfavour with the ardently Roman Catholic Queen Mary I as a result. He believed that the Protestant faith was not a recent import to Ireland, but on the contrary that it represented Christianity in its pure and original state before it became corrupted by Catholic doctrine. Such views were not shared even by most Irish Protestants and were anathema to the devoutly Catholic Queen.

His political treatises are written from the point of view of the English colonist. He regarded Gaelic civilisation as barbarous, and the people living in a state of wretched poverty, "with nothing left to cherish or care for", although he thought the Irish people would become good citizens if they were governed properly. Good government was the key to his programme of reform, including the introduction of the common law to the whole of Ireland: hitherto, he wrote rather obscurely, the Irish, having lacked the benefits of a proper system of law could not "live lawfully". Like nearly all the Anglo-Irish gentry, he objected strongly to the cess, the tax imposed on the towns for the upkeep of military garrisons, and drew the wider lesson that Ireland could not flourish under military rule. He also believed that the cooperation of his own class was essential to any programme of reform. His complaints about undue exactions and excessive interference by local officials reflect his personal quarrel with William Piers, the Governor and Constable of Carrickfergus.

Rowland has been dismissed in modern times as an unscrupulous adventurer, but his writings had considerable influence in his own time.