He must have given general satisfaction, for even before Parker's death two persons so different as Burghley and Dean Nowell independently recommended Grindal's appointment as his successor, and Spenser speaks warmly of him in the Shepherd's Calendar as the "gentle shepherd Algrind."
In 1638 allotments of land between the Mystic Pond and the present Woburn were made to various Charlestown settlers, including John Harvard and Increase Nowell (1590-1655), secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1644-1649, and the new settlement was called Waterfield.
At the age of sixteen he is said to have entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil of John Harding or Hawarden, and had for room-mate Alexander Nowell, afterwards dean of St.
Nowell sing we now all and some, For Rex Pacificus is come, O lux beata trinitas.
Nowell is believed to have composed the Catechism inserted before the Order of Confirmation in the Prayer Book of 1549, which was supplemented in 1604 and is still in use; but the evidence is not conclusive.