Rowland White (Irish writer)

Rowland White (died 1572) was a sixteenth-century Irish writer and political and religious reformer, whose writings had considerable influence in his own lifetime.

On a business trip to Flanders, he met the leading financier Sir Thomas Gresham, who sponsored him for membership of the London Mercers Company.

His treatises aroused the favourable interest of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, chief minister to Elizabeth I, who invited him to England to discuss them.

[4] Rowland was unable to travel, but was encouraged to write two further works between 1569 and 1571, A Discors (discourse) Touching Ireland and The Disorders of the Irishry.

He believed that the Protestant faith was not a recent import to Ireland, but on the contrary that it represented Christianity in its pure and original state before it became corrupted by Catholic doctrine.

[4] His complaints about undue exactions and excessive interference by local officials reflect his personal quarrel with William Piers, the Governor and Constable of Carrickfergus.