HEYLIN (HEILYN or HEYLYN), ROWLAND (1562? - 1631), publisher of Welsh books

Name: Rowland Heylin
Date of birth: 1562?
Date of death: 1631
Gender: Male
Occupation: publisher of Welsh books
Area of activity: Literature and Writing; Printing and Publishing
Author: Arthur Herbert Dodd

he was descended from the ancient Powys family of Heylin of Pentreheylin (on the Vyrnwy), who had held the estate since the middle ages, claiming descent, through Rhys Sais (died 1070), from Tudur Trevor, and the hereditary office of heilyn (cupbearer) to the princes of Powys. One of his ancestors (Grono ab Heilyn) was envoy from Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (1254 - 1282) to Edward I in 1277. Rowland Heylin was apprenticed (26 April 1567) to Thomas Wade, a London merchant, was made free of the Ironmongers' Company (of which he twice became master) in 1584, became treasurer to the Muscovy Co. in 1623, and was elected alderman and sheriff in 1624. He made a considerable fortune, and used it in co-operation with Sir Thomas Myddelton (1550 - 1631), to finance the publication of Welsh books, which issued from the London press in large numbers, 1630-32. They included the Welsh - Latin dictionary of John Davies (1570? - 1644) of Mallwyd, the translation by Rowland Vaughan of the Practice of Piety, of bishop Lewis Bayly, and the Welsh quarto Bible 'of 1630, bound up with the Welsh Prayer Book and the psalter of Edmund Prys. He died, childless, in 1631. He impressed contemporaries as 'a man of singular goodness.' His portrait hangs in Ironmongers' Hall. With him ended the direct line of Heylin of Pentreheylin, the estate passing through the marriage of his daughter to the Niccols and the Congreves. His nephew Henry Heylin became the father of PETER HEYLIN (1599 - 1662), a theologian, who is noticed in D.N.B.

Author

Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, (1891 - 1975)

Sources

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1623-5, 56
Cambrian Register (1795–1818), 1795
History of the Princes, the Lords Marcher, and the Ancient Nobility of Powys Fadog, i, 301 ff, ii, 88
The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1897-8, 17-19
J. Ballinger, The Bible in Wales (London 1906), 1906, 26-9
The Gentleman's Magazine, 1804, ii, 723
J. C. Morrice, Wales in the Seventeenth Century its literature and men of letters and action (Bangor 1918), 79, 108-9

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/

Corrections

HEYLIN, ROWLAND.

Rowland Heylin was a member of the Heylin family of Pentreheilyn, Llanymynech, who claimed descent from Brochwel Ysgithrog. There was no relationship between this family and the Heylin family of Pentreheilyn, Ellesmere, who descended from Rhys Sais. See George Vernon, ' Life of Peter Heylin ' in The Historical and Miscellaneous Tracts of … Peter Heylin (1681). The reference to Rhys Sais (and Powys Fadog in the bibliography) should be deleted. Henry Heylin was, apparently, a cousin, not a nephew, of Rowland Heylin, and it is questionable whether Grono ab Heilyn was an ancestor of the family. See also the corrections to EDWARDS (Cilhendre), and DAVID HOLBACHE.

Author

Peter Clement Bartrum

Published date: 1997

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/