Richard Rowlands

Richard Verstegen (or Verstegan; c. 1550–1640), also known as Richard Rowlands, was an Anglo-Dutch antiquary, publisher, humorist and translator.

Verstegan was born in East London, the son of a cooper. His grandfather, Theodore Roland Verstegen, was a refugee from Guelders in the Spanish Netherlands who arrived in England around the year 1500. A convert to the Catholic Church, Rowlands produced an English translation of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the translation and primer prayer book that contained it remained among the most popular English Catholic devotionals for two centuries.

Under the patronym Rowlaunde, Richard came up to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1564, where he may have studied early English history and the Anglo-Saxon language. Having become a Catholic, he left the university without a degree to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy. Thereafter he was indentured to a goldsmith, and in 1574 became a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. In 1576 he published a guidebook to Western Europe, translated from German, entitled The Post of the World.