biography text
Walter Gower’s place in the Worcestershire family of that name has not been discovered but he owned land and salt pans in Droitwich which could have come to him from Francis Gower, bailiff of Droitwich in 1516. He sued out a pardon in 1559 as ‘of Lions Inn, Middlesex’ and was thus probably a lawyer. When Gower made his will in 1579 he was living in Clerkenwell, the suburb to which John Bell had retired after resigning the bishopric of Worcester in 1543. Gower was buried in St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 3 Sept. 1583.2Worcs. RO, bulk accession 1006, no. 353; Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xxvii), 59-61; Habington’s Worcs. (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1899), ii. 307; CPR, 1558-60, p. 184; Reg. St. James Clerkenwell (Harl. Soc. Reg. xvii), 31.