BOWYER, John

Bowyer’s name was a common one, and the identification of the man who represented Bletchingley in the Parliament of 1427 consequently presents some problems, but it is possible that like many of Bletchingley’s MPs in the first quarter of the fifteenth century he was a minor local landowner. Bowyer’s provenance has not been discovered, but by the end of Henry IV’s reign he had acquired holdings in Charlwood (on the Sussex border to the south-west of Bletchingley) through his marriage to one of the daughters of John Odworth. In 1415, however, the Bowyers leased Alice’s share of the Odworth inheritance to her sister Joan and the latter’s husband, Thomas Saunders (d.1442).2 Ibid. SAS-EG/36-37, 59.

It is possible that Bowyer was related to the family of this name, believed to originate from Staffordshire, that established itself at Petworth in west Sussex in the early fifteenth century, but no conclusive evidence to this effect has come to light.3 Suss. Arch. Collns. xlii. 19.