Richard Verstegen
Anglo-Dutch antiquary, publisher, humorist and translator (1550–1640)
Richard Verstegen (or Verstegan; c. 1550–1640), also known as Richard Rowlands, was an Anglo-Dutch antiquary, publisher, humorist and translator.
Life and career
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.
At the end of 1581 he secretly printed an account of the execution of Edmund Campion but was discovered and 'being apprehended, brake out of England'.
“Richard Verstegen” enters the record as anglo-Dutch antiquary, publisher, humorist and translator (1550–1640). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richard, Verstegen and Anglo-Dutch can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q656317. VIAF identifies the subject as 22257544. The Library of Congress control number is n85112190. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1550, 1640, 1500 and 1564.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Verstegen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.