BOWDEN, William, of Montacute, Som.

The only certain reference to Bowden is the return attesting the election of him and his fellow MP, William Styrope*, to the Parliament of February 1449. Styrope owed his modest career to the patronage of Walter, Lord Hungerford†, who for much of Henry VI’s reign exercised considerable influence over the parliamentary representation of Chippenham, The Commons 1386-1421, i. 692. but it is not known whether Bowden was another follower of that lord. William ‘Bowedon’ was one of the kinsmen and heirs of the Som. landowner William Burlestone the younger (son of William Burlestone† of Devon) in the early 1420s. Two decades later, William Bowdon of Grafton, Northants. served Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers, as a retainer at home and in France; he was also a feoffee of the settlement made when Wydeville’s daughter Elizabeth (later Edw. IV’s queen) married her first husband Sir John Grey in 1455. Later in the century, a London goldsmith of the same name possessed a short term interest in the Wilts. manor of Newton Tony. For want of evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed that all of these men were namesakes of the Chippenham MP, although the possibility that one of them was in fact the MP cannot be entirely discounted: Hungerford Cart. ii (Wilts. Rec. Soc. lx), no. 1373; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 429-30; E101/53/33; Archives Nationale, Paris, K67/12/80; fr. 25776/1602; CFR, xviii. 153, 159; xix. 183; C1/27/268-71; 85/45; 86/15; 107/36; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 98; CAD, iii. A5833.