descended in a direct line received the arms borne by his
descendants for his bravery in the Holy War. His father, John Rowe,
who was the first that quitted his paternal acres to practise any
part of profit, professed the law, and published Benlow's and
Dallison's Reports in the reign of James the Second, when, in
opposition to the notions then diligently propagated of dispensing
power, he ventured to remark how low his authors rated the
prerogative. He was made a serjeant, and died April 30, 1692. He
was buried in the Temple church.

Nicholas was first sent to a private school at Highgate; and, being
afterwards removed to Westminster, was at twelve years chosen one of
the King's Scholars. His master was Busby, who suffered none of his
scholars to let their powers lie useless; and his exercises in
several languages are said to have been written with uncommon
degrees of excellence, and yet to have cost him very little labour.
At sixteen he had, in his father's opinion, made advances in
learning sufficient to qualify him for the study of law, and was
entered a student of the Middle Temple, where for some time he read
statutes and reports with proficiency proportionate to the force of
his mind, which was already such that he endeavoured to comprehend
law, not as a series of precedents, or collection of positive
precepts, but as a system of rational government and impartial
justice. When he was nineteen, he was, by the death of his father,
left more to his own direction, and probably from that time suffered
law gradually to give way to poetry. At twenty-five he produced the
Ambitious Step-Mother, which was received with so much favour that
he devoted himself from that time wholly to elegant literature.

His next tragedy (1702) was Tamerlane, in which, under the name of