Lawrence (or Laurence) Nowell (c.1520-1576) was a scholar of Old English and a churchman. He led the sixteenth-century revival of the study of Old English language and literature.
Nowell was born at Read Hall, Whalley, Lancashire. He received his B.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1540 and an M.A. in 1544. Along with his brother, Alexander Nowell, he fled the country in the face of Queen Mary's persecution of Protestants. The brothers remained in exile in Frankfurt until 1558, when Elizabeth took the throne. Nowell became Archdeacon of Derby in 1558 and Dean of Lichfield in 1560.
Nowell collected Anglo-Saxon legal and literary materials, rescuing material scattered as a result of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. He wrote the first dictionary of Old English, though that work remained in manuscript. He taught Old English to William Camden, to whom he left his library after his death.
Nowell owned, for a time, the only extant manuscript of Beowulf. On the first page of the manuscript Nowell inscribed his name and a date of 1563. The manuscript is bound in what continues to be known as the Nowell Codex (Cotton Vitellius A.xv).
