Rowland White (Irish writer)

Rowland White (died 1572) was a sixteenth-century Irish writer, and a political and religious reformer.
He was the second son of Patrick White, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). His mother was probably Patrick's second wife Alison St. Lawrence, daughter of Nicholas St Lawrence, 4th Baron Howth and Alison Fitzsimon, and widow of John Netterville of Dowth. He was probably born at Flemington, near Navan, County Meath, where his father 
had his main residence, although the Whites had a long-standing claim, which Rowland revived, to the barony of Dufferin in County Down. Little is known of his early life. By the 1540s he was a flourishing merchant with his main business in Dublin.
He married Catherne Rawson, natural daughter of John Rawson, 1st Viscount Clontarf, former Prior of Kilmainham and a close 
political associate of his father. The marriage is said to have brought him considerable wealth, with assets at home and in Flanders, Spain and Germany. On a business trip to Flanders he met the leading financier Sir Thomas Gresham, who sponsored him for membership of the London Mercers Company. However, in his own words, "fortune brought me down by the seas and otherways": Rowland suffered heavy financial losses, and he was imprisoned for debt in Ludgate prison for 3 years. On his release he returned to Ireland and renewed the family claim to Dufferin, and was living there by 1570, after the heirs of his elder brother Nicholas, who died in 1566, ceded their claims to him (his father had died in 1561). Dufferin is centred on the town of Killyleagh.
He had a keen interest in political reform, and in the 1560s wrote three treatises on the governance of Ireland, now lost, which aroused the favourable interest of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, chief minister to Elizabeth I, who invited him to England to discuss them. Rowland was unable to travel, but was prompted to write two further works between 1569 and 1571, "A Discors Touching Ireland" and "The Disorders of the Irishry". He was invited to England to meet Cecil again: apparently he did not do so, but renewed his acquaintance 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 made an unsuccessful attempt to settle the Ards peninsula. Rowland died of bubonic plague in England in September 1572. He had several 
children by Catherine Rawson, including John, the eldest son, who was placed in Sir Thomas Smith's guardianship. John retained possession of Dufferin, but sold it to the Hamilton family of Clandeboye in 1606.
Rowland was a convert to the Protestant faith, and a sincere if not entirely orthodox religious reformer, who was in disfavour with the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I as a result. His treatises are written entirely from the point of view of the English
colonist. He regards Gaelic civilisation as barbarous, leaving its people 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 program 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 despised the "cess," the tax imposed on the towns for the upkeep of military garrisons, and drew the wider lesson that Ireland could not flourish so long as it was under military rule. His complaints about undue exactions and excessive interference by local officials reflects his personal quarrel with William Piers, the Constable of Carrickfergus.
Rowland has been dismissed in modern times as an unscrupulous adventurer, but his writings had considerable influence in his own time.
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