tioned the council for liberty to preach; on 16 Dec. Dr. John Owen [q.v.], vice-chancellor of Oxford, and Joseph Caryl certified his fitness, and referred his case to the committee for the approbation of public preachers, and he was approved on 30 Dec. In the same year he was made a minister of North Cray in Kent, and he resigned Eltham in 1658. At the Restoration he retained North Cray, and by act of parliament was allowed to choose which of his former livings should be restored to him. He chose St. Swithin. He was created D.D. of Oxford on 1 Aug. 1660, and received the prebend of Reculverland at St. Paul's on 16 Aug. He died in January 1682-3, and was buried at Eltham on 27 Jan. He never wavered in his orthodoxy or his loyalty.
He had a numerous family. Nine sons and three daughters were buried in Eltham Church, and are commemorated on a marble monument erected by Owen in 1679. His first wife, Anne, the mother of ten of his children, died in March 1652-3; and on 6 Jan. 1654-5 he married Amy Kidwell, by whom he had at least two sons. She lived till March 1694. An amusing letter from her to John Evelyn in 1680, on the subjet of her 'trading for tulips,' is printed, with Evelyn's answer, in the 'Diary and Correspondence,' 1859 (i. 41-2). Edward Owen (1651-1678), the fourth son, was chosen fellow of Magdalen College, Oford, in 1674.
Owen is held by some to be responsible for the free transation and amplification in Latin of the 'Royal Apologie' (1648) by George Bate [q.v.], entitled 'Elenchus Motuum nuperorum in Anglia aimul ac juris regii ac parliamentarii brevis narratio,' London, 1650. By others the 'Royal Apologie' and he 'Elenchus' are both assigned to Bate himself. Owen is also stated to have translated into English many, if not all, of Juvenal's satires. but none seems to have been published. He published 'Paulus, Multiformis concio ad clerum,' London, 1666, a Latin sermon delivered at St. Alphege, London, on 8 May of the same year.
[Thomas's Diocese of St. Asaph, p. 757; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714; Shadwell's Reg. Orielense, pp. 173-4, 319; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), iv. cols. 84-5; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), i. cols. 414, 455, 502, ii. col. 240; Hasted's Hist. of Kent, i. 64, 159; Drake's Hundred pf Blackheath, pp. 202, 203, 209, 211, 212; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 205, 543; Evelyn's Diary, 1859, i. 258, 289, 297, 299, 300, 321-2, 346, iv. 41-3; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1656-7 pp. 158, 199, 1660-1 p. 405; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), ii. 431; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, pt. ii. pp. 53, 173; Bluxam's reg. of Magdalen coll. v. 285; Will in Somerset House P.C.C. 24 Drax; Welch's Alumni Westmon.' Llanfechain Parish Register per the Rev. David Jones.]
OWEN, Sir RICHARD (1804–1892), naturalist, born at Lancaster in a house at the corner of Brock and Thurnham Streets on 20 July 1804, was younger son of Richard Owen (1754–1809), a West India merchant, formerly of Fulmer Place, Buckinghamshire. His grandfather, William Owen, owner of Fulmer Place, and high sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1741, had married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Eskrigge. Owen's mother, Catherine (1760–1838), was the widow of James Longworth of Ormskirk, Lancashire, and was a daughter of Robert Parrin (1720–1757), organist of the parish church of Lancaster. The Parrins were of Huguenot origin. By Richard Owen, her second husband (whom she married on 8 Nov. 1792), she had six children, of whom the eldest, James Hawkins, born in 1798, died in Demerara in 1827.
At the age of six Richard, the future naturalist, was sent to the grammar school at Lancaster, where one of his schoolfellows was William Whewell, a native of the town, afterwards master of Trinity. Owen and Whewell remained close friends through life. At school he showed few signs of promise, and heraldry was his only hobby. In August 1820 he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary of Lancaster named Dickson, on whose death in 1822 he was transferred to Joseph Seed, and from Seed, who became a naval surgeon, he was transferred in 1823 to James Stockdale Harrison. Harrison's pupils had access to the county gaol, and conducted post-mortem examinations there. Owen was soon deeply interested in the study of anatomy.
In October 1824, before the full term of his apprenticeship expired, he matriculated at the university of Edinburgh, and had the good fortune to attend the anatomical course of Dr. John Barclay (1758–1826) [q. v.], then approaching the close of a successful career as an extra-academical lecturer. Barclay's teaching was of a very superior order to that of the third Alexander Monro [q. v.], who, by virtue of hereditary influences, was the university professor of anatomy. In his work ‘On the Nature of Limbs,’ Owen refers to ‘the extensive knowledge of comparative anatomy possessed by my revered preceptor in anatomy, Dr. Barclay,’ and always spoke of him with affectionate regard. At the same time he attended the academical courses of James Home in the practice of medicine, of John Mackintosh on midwifery, of Andrew Duncan on materia medica, besides the lectures of Robert Jameson and W. R. Alison.
