Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pownall, Robert
POWNALL, ROBERT (1520–1571), protestant divine, born at Barwick in Somerset in 1520, fled from England during Queen Mary's reign. He wrote, in 1554, ‘A most Fruitful Prayer for the disputed Church of Christ, very necessary to be used of the Godly in the Daies of Affliction, compiled by R. P.,’ which was printed in John Bradford's ‘Godly Meditations,’ 1559. In July 1555 he translated (through a French version by Vallerain Pullain) Wolfgangus Muscullus's ‘Temporysour (that is to saye, the Observer of Tyme, or he that chaungeth with the Tyme).’ (see Schickler, Eglises du Refuge, iii. 12–18), to which he appended a rendering (also through the French) of Celius Secundus Curio's ‘Excellent Admonicion and Resolucion.’ In 1556 two other translations from the French by Pownall appeared, viz. ‘A most pithye and excellent Epistol to animate all trew Christians into the Crosse of Christe,’ and Peter Duval's ‘Litell Dialogue of the Consolator comfortynge the Churche in hyr Afflictions, taken out of the 129 Psalme’ (14 July) (cf. ib. i. 73, iii. 40; Bulletin de la Société pour l'Histoire du Prot. Franç. vols. xix, xx). He is doubtless the R. P. who published on 12 April 1557 ‘Admonition to the Towne of Callays.’ Later in the year he was at Wesel, and when the congregation of English exiles there dispersed, he accompanied Thomas Lever [q. v.] and three other English protestant ministers on a visit to their co-religionists at Geneva, and finally settled with Lever and his friends at Aarau in Switzerland in the autumn of 1557 (Troubles at Frankfort, p. 185). On 5 Oct. 1557 Pownall and seven of his companions wrote to Bullinger, thanking him for dedicating to them a volume of his discourses (Original Letters, Parker Soc. i. 167). After the death of Mary, Pownall, with others, addressed a letter to the English church at Geneva accepting that church's proposal that all English exiles should adopt a uniform attitude on points of disputed ceremonies (16 Jan. 1558–9).
Returning to England, Pownall was ordained priest by Grindal on 1 May 1560, being then described as ‘aged 40 and more’ (Strype, Grindal, p. 59). He subscribed the articles of 1562 on 31 Jan. 1561–2 (Strype, Annals, i. 491). In 1570 he was one of the six preachers of the cathedral church of Canterbury (Strype, Parker, ii. 25), and from 1562 until his death in 1571 he was rector of Harbledown in the Hundred of Westgate.
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Fuller's Church Hist. iv. 106; Troubles at Frankfort, pp. 175, 180; Strype's Annals, i. 154, 491, Parker, ii. 25; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Hasted's Kent, iii. 583.]