for nearly nine years, and when the Lively was paid off in June 1728 he went on half-pay, and so remained for many years. In September 1739 he was appointed to the Ripon, but wrote from Dublin to say that he had a lawsuit pending, which involved the possible loss of 22,000l., and begged therefore to be allowed to stay on shore.
Early in 1741 he was appointed to the Barfleur, in which he joined the fleet under Rear-admiral Nicholas Haddock [q. v.] in the Mediterranean, remaining there under Admiral Thomas Mathews, and hoisting his flag in the Barfleur on his promotion, on 7 Dec. 1743, to be rear-admiral of the white. In that capacity, as junior flag-officer, he commanded the van in the notorious engagement off Toulon on 11 Feb. 1743–4 [see Mathews, Thomas; Lestock, Richard], and was one of the few concerned whose conduct was not called in question. On 19 June 1744 he was advanced to be vice-admiral of the blue, and in the following August succeeded to the chief command of the fleet. The enemy had no force remaining in those seas, and the work to be done was principally in concert with the allied army; but in July 1745 he was summarily ordered by the secretary of state, the Duke of Newcastle, to return to England. This order was due to a resolution of the House of Commons (30 April 1745) censuring the proceedings of the court-martial on Captain Richard Norris, over which Rowley presided, as ‘arbitrary, partial, and illegal’ (Parl. Hist. vol. xiii. col. 1300). The lords of the admiralty wrote that Rowley, owing to his behaviour as president of this court-martial, was not a proper person to enforce the discipline of a great fleet (Lords of the Admiralty to the Lords Justices, 29 May 1745, in Home Office Records, Admiralty, vol. cvii.).
Rowley had no further employment at sea; but, considering the circumstances of his recall from the Mediterranean, it seems extraordinary that not only was he promoted to be admiral of the blue on 15 July 1747, on 12 May 1748 to be admiral of the white, and on 11 July 1747 to be rear-admiral of Great Britain, but on 22 June 1751 was appointed one of the lords of the admiralty, and in 1753 was nominated a K.B. He remained at the admiralty till November 1756, was again appointed to it in April 1757, but finally quitted it in the following July. On the death of Anson, who, though his junior as a flag officer, had been preferred before him, he was promoted on 17 Dec. 1762 to be admiral of the fleet and commander-in-chief. He died on 1 Jan. 1768. He married Arabella, daughter and heir of Captain George Dawson of co. Derry, by whom he had issue three sons, of whom Joshua [q. v.], like his grandson Josias [q. v.], is separately noticed. Horace Walpole has a story (Correspondence, ed. Cunningham, v. 79) of his having left the bulk of his property, 6,000l. a year, to his great-grandson, in the intention of forming a vast accumulation; but, at the time of Rowley's death, his eldest grandson was only seven years old.
A portrait of Rowley painted in 1743, by Arnulphy, was engraved by Faber in 1745; another was engraved by J. Brooks.
[Charnock's Biogr. Nav. iv. 63; Naval Chronicle, with a portrait after Arnulphy, xxii. 441; Official Letters, &c., in the Public Record Office. The minutes of the court-martial on Richard Norris have been printed.]
ROWLEY, WILLIAM (1742–1806), man-midwife, son of William Rowley of St. Luke's, Middlesex, was born in London on 18 Nov. 1742. After apprenticeship at St. Thomas's Hospital he became a surgeon, and served in that capacity in the army from 1760 to 1765, and was at the capture of the Havannah in August 1762. In 1766 he began general practice in London, and on 23 April 1774 was created M.D. at St. Andrews University. He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London 25 June 1784. He matriculated from St. Alban Hall, Oxford, on 28 Nov. 1780, aged 38, and there graduated B.A. 9 June 1784, M.A. 24 May 1787, M.B. 17 July 1788, but was refused the degree of M.D. His practice in London was considerable. He describes himself on his title-pages as a man-midwife, and was on the staff of the Queen's Lying-in Hospital, but he also practised ophthalmic surgery and general surgery. In London he first lived in St. James's Street, then in Castle Street, Leicester Fields, then at 66 Harley Street, and finally in Savile Row, where he died of typhus fever on 17 March 1806. He used to give there three courses of lectures in the year, beginning January, April, and September. He wrote on dropsy in 1770, ophthalmia 1771, gonorrhœa 1771, diseases of the breasts 1772, midwifery 1773, sore throat 1778, gout 1780, nervous diseases 1789, scarlet fever 1793, hydrocephalus 1790, mental diseases 1790. In some controversial pamphlets he attacked Dr. William Hunter (1718–1783) [q. v.] for speaking severely of some cure for cancer practised by Rowley, and he wrote against vaccination. He also published a ‘Rational and Improved Practice of Physic in four Volumes,’ and in Latin (2 vols. 4to), ‘Schola Medicinæ Universalis
