Rowland Taylor - english, college, wrote and board

TAYLOR, ROWLAND (d. 1555), English Protestant martyr, was born at Rothbury, Northumberland ; he took minor orders at Norwich in 1528 and graduated LL.B. at Cambridge in 153o and LL.D. in 1534. Adopting reformed views he was made chaplain by Cranmer in 154o and presented to the living of Had leigh, Suffolk, in 1544. He was further preferred to a canonry of Rochester and the archdeaconry of Exeter (1552). Ap parently he advocated the cause of Lady Jane Grey, for on the 25th of July 1553, only six days after Mary's proclamation as queen, he was committed to the custody of the sheriff of Essex. He was released not long afterwards, and with the support of his parishioners offered strenuous resistance to the restoration of the Mass. He was consequently imprisoned in the King's Bench prison on March 26, 1554. He was sentenced on Jan. 22, 1555, and burnt on the 9th at Aldham Common near Hadleigh.

See Thomas Quinton Stow's Memoirs of Rowland Taylor (1833) Dict. of Nat. Biogr. lv. 463-4, and authorities here cited.

TAYLOR, TOM

(1817-188o), English dramatist and editor of Punch, was born at Bishop Wearmouth, on Oct. 19, 1817. He was a fellow (1837) _of Trinity college, Cambridge, and for two years professor of English literature at University college, Lon don. He was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in Nov. 1846,

and went on the northern circuit until, in 1850, he became assist ant secretary of the Board of Health. On the reconstruction of the board in 1854 he was made secretary, and on its abolition his services were transferred to a department of the Home Office. He retired on a pension in 1876. Four burlesques of Tom Taylor's were produced at the Lyceum in 1844. He made his first hit with To Parents and Guardians (Lyceum, 1845). He also wrote some burlesques in conjunction with Albert Smith and Charles Kenny, and collaborated with Charles Reade in Masks and Faces (1852). Before the close of his life his dramatic pieces numbered over 100, amongst the best known of which are Our American Cousin (1858), produced by Laura Keene in New York, in which Sothern created the part of Lord Dundreary; Still Waters Run Deep (1855); Victims (1857); and the Ticket of Leave Man (1863).

Taylor wrote leaders for the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News. He was on the staff of Punch until 1874, when he suc ceeded Shirley Brooks as editor. He was a good amateur actor, an artist, and an art critic of The Times. He died at Lavender Sweep, Wandsworth, on July 12, 1880.