In 1723 he erected to the memory of his grandfather Nicholas Monck, Bishop of Hereford, a pyramidical monument in black and white marble in St. Edmund's Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
He devoted himself to Anglo-Saxon studies and in 1698 published (with assistance from Edward Thwaites), the Saxon text of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, from a transcript at Oxford made by Francis Junius.
Rawlinson had made valuable collections for the history of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, all of which have probably perished.
He died unmarried and intestate on 8 January 1733 in Holborn Row, London and was buried in the abbey church of St Albans, Hertfordshire.
His portrait, engraved by Joseph Nutting, with those of other members of his family, is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.