only woman he ever loved, and she married the brother of his biographer, Sprat.
Soon after his return to England he was seized in mistake for another person, and only obtained his liberty on a bail of £1000. In 1658 he revised and altered his play of The Guardian, and prepared it for the press under the title of The Cutter of Coleman Street, but it did not appear until 1663. Late in 1658 Oliver Cromwell died, and Cowley took advantage of the confusion of affairs to escape to Paris, where he remained until the Restoration brought him back in Charles’s train. He published in 1663 Verses upon several occasions, in which The Complaint is included.
Wearied with the broils and fatigues of a political life, Cowley obtained permission to retire into the country; through his friend, Lord St Albans, he obtained a property near Chertsey, and here, devoting himself to the study of botany, and buried in his books, he lived in comparative solitude until his death. He took a great and practical interest in experimental science, and he was one of those who were most prominent in advocating the foundation of an academy for the protection of scientific enterprise. Cowley’s pamphlet on The Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, 1661, led directly to the foundation of the Royal Society, to which body Cowley, in March 1667, at the suggestion of Evelyn, addressed an ode which is the latest and one of the strongest of his poems. He died in the Porch House, in Chertsey, on the 28th of July 1667, in consequence of having caught a cold while superintending his farm-labourers in the meadows late on a summer evening. On the 3rd of August Cowley was buried in Westminster Abbey beside the ashes of Chaucer and Spenser, where in 1675 the duke of Buckingham erected a monument to his memory. His Poëmata Latina, including six books “Plantarum,” were printed in 1668.
Throughout their parallel lives the fame of Cowley completely eclipsed that of Milton, but posterity instantly and finally reversed the judgment of their contemporaries. The poetry of Cowley rapidly fell into a neglect as unjust as the earlier popularity had been. As a prose writer, especially as an essayist, he holds, and will not lose, a high position in literature; as a poet it is hardly possible that he can enjoy more than a very partial revival. The want of nature, the obvious and awkward art, the defective melody of his poems, destroy the interest that their ingenuity and occasional majesty would otherwise excite. He had lofty views of the mission of a poet and an insatiable ambition, but his chief claim to poetic life is the dowry of sonorous lyric style which he passed down to Dryden and his successors of the 18th century.
The works of Cowley were collected in 1668, when Thomas Sprat, afterwards bishop of Rochester, brought out a splendid edition in folio, to which he prefixed a graceful and elegant life of the poet. There were many reprints of this collection, which formed the standard edition till 1881, when it was superseded by A. B. Grosart’s privately printed edition in two volumes, for the Chertsey Worthies library. The Essays have frequently been revived with approval. (E. G.)
COWLEY, HANNAH (1743–1809), English dramatist and poet,
daughter of Philip Parkhouse, a bookseller at Tiverton, Devonshire,
was born in 1743. When about twenty-five years old she
married Mr Cowley, of the East India Company’s service, who
died in 1797. Some years after her marriage, being at the theatre
with her husband, she expressed the opinion that she could
write as good a piece as the one being performed, and within a
fortnight she had written her first play, The Runaway. She sent
it to Garrick, who produced it at Drury Lane in 1776. Between
then and 1795 she wrote twelve more plays, all of which (with one
exception) were produced at Drury Lane or Covent Garden; and
The Belle’s Stratagem (1782), with one or two others, still survives
in the list of acting plays. Among other, pieces were Albina,
Countess Raimond, A Bold Stroke for a Husband, More Ways
than One, and A School for Greybeards, or The Mourning Bride.
Mrs Cowley was the author of a number of indifferent poems,
mainly historical, and under the name of “Anna Matilda,”
which has since become proverbial, she carried on a sentimental
correspondence in the World with Robert Merry. She died at
Tiverton on the 11th of March 1809.
COWLEY, HENRY RICHARD CHARLES WELLESLEY, 1st Earl
(1804–1884), British diplomatist, was the eldest son of Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley (1773–1847), and Charlotte, daughter of Charles, 1st Earl Cadogan, and was consequently a nephew of the duke of Wellington and of the marquess Wellesley. Born on the 17th of June 1804, he entered the diplomatic service in 1824, receiving his first important appointment in 1848, when
he became minister plenipotentiary to the Swiss cantons; and in the same year he was sent to Frankfort to watch the proceedings of the German parliament. This was followed by his appointment as envoy extraordinary to the new Germanic confederation, a position which he only held for a short time, as he was chosen in 1852 to succeed the 1st marquess of Normanby as the British ambassador in Paris. Baron Cowley, as Wellesley
had been since his father’s death in 1847, held this important post for fifteen years, and the story of his diplomatic life in Paris cannot be separated from the general history of England and France. As minister during the greater part of the reign of
Napoleon III., he conducted the delicate negotiations between
the two countries during the time of those eastern complications
which preceded and followed the Crimean War, and also during
the excitement and unrest produced by the attempt made in
1858 by Felice Orsini to assassinate the emperor of the French;
while his diplomatic skill was no less in evidence during the war
between France and Austria and the subsequent course of events
in Italy. In 1857 he had been created Earl Cowley and Viscount
Dangan; in 1866 he was made a knight of the Garter; and
having assisted Richard Cobden to conclude the commercial
treaty between Great Britain and France in 1860, he retired in
1867 from a position which he had filled with distinction to
himself and with benefit to his country. In 1863 Cowley had
inherited the estate of Draycot in Wiltshire from his kinsman
the 5th earl of Mornington, and he lived in retirement until his
death on the 15th of July 1884. He had married in 1833 Olivia
Cecilia (d. 1885), daughter of Charlotte, baroness de Ros and
Lord Henry Fitzgerald, by whom he had three sons and two
daughters, and was succeeded in his titles by his eldest son,
William Henry, 2nd Earl Cowley (1834–1895), father of Henry
Arthur Mornington, 3rd earl (b. 1866).
COWLEY FATHERS, the name commonly given to the members of the Society of Mission Priests of St John the Evangelist, an
Anglican religious community, the headquarters of which are
in England, at Cowley St John, close to Oxford. The society
was founded in 1865 by the Rev. R. M. Benson “for the cultivation
of a life dedicated to God according to the principles of
poverty, chastity and obedience.” The society, which is occupied
both with educational and missionary work, has a house in
London and branch houses at Bombay and Poona in India, at
Cape Town and at St Cuthbert’s, Kaffraria, in South Africa; and
at Boston in the United States of America. The costume of the
Cowley Fathers consists of a black frock or cassock confined by
a black cord and a long black cloak.
COWPENS, a town of Spartanburg county, South Carolina,
U.S.A., in the N. part of the state. Pop. (1900) 692; (1910) 1101.
It is served by the Southern railway. In colonial days cattle
were rounded up and branded here—whence the name. Seven
miles N. of the town is the field of the battle of Cowpens, fought
on the 17th of January 1781, during the War of American
Independence, between the Americans under Gen. Daniel
Morgan and the British under Gen. Banastre Tarleton, the
British being defeated. A monument was erected on the battlefield
in 1859, but was much defaced during the Civil War. The
town of Cowpens was founded in 1876, and was incorporated
in 1880.
COWPER, WILLIAM COWPER, 1st Earl (c. 1665–1723), lord chancellor of England, was the son of Sir William Cowper, Bart., of Ratling Court, Kent, a Whig member of parliament of some mark in the two last Stuart reigns. Educated at St Albans school, Cowper was called to the bar in 1688; having promptly given his allegiance to the prince of Orange on his landing in England, he was made recorder of Colchester in 1694, and in 1695 entered parliament as member for Hertford. He
