BOWYER, Sir William (1588-1641), of Knypersley, Biddulph, Staffs.

Bowyer’s family had been established at Knypersley, about seven miles north of Newcastle-under-Lyme, since the thirteenth century.26Vis. Staffs. ed. Grazebrook, 47. One of his ancestors had represented Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1411, and his father, John Bowyer†, had sat for the borough in 1597 and 1604.27‘William Bowyer’, HP Commons, 1386-1421; HP Commons, 1558-1603. It is not clear whether it was Bowyer or a namesake who matriculated from Pembroke College, Cambridge about 1601. However, the future MP was almost certainly the William Bowyer of Staple Inn who was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1604, for this was precisely the career path that Bowyer’s father had taken.28‘Sir William Bowyer II’, HP Commons, 1604-29. Bowyer was still a minor when his father died, and his wardship was purchased by his maternal grandfather Sir Christopher Yelverton† and his maternal uncle Henry Yelverton†. Both Yelvertons were prominent puritans, and this may well explain why their ward, too, would be counted among the ‘true professors of religion’.29WARD9/159, f. 202v; J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (1984), 12; ‘Sir Christopher Yelverton’, ‘Sir Henry Yelverton’, Oxford DNB. In 1618, a Staffordshire puritan minister dedicated his abridgement of a well-known sabbatarian tract to ten local magistrates – among them Bowyer – whom he considered his allies in the struggle against ‘the enemies of religion and religious people’.30E. Rudyerd, The Thunderbolt of Gods Wrath (1618), epistle dedicatory.

Bowyer was returned for Staffordshire to all but two Parliaments between 1621 and his death twenty years later. The basis of his evident acceptability to the county’s electoral managers and voters is not immediately apparent. He was not among the wealthiest of the county’s gentry – indeed, his annual income by inheritance has been estimated at about £500 a year. And although he did much to increase the family estate, it was valued at a relatively modest (for a knight of the shire) £900 a year in the 1660s.31C142/702/36; BRL, Ms 917/1254, 1325-6, 1669; HP Commons, 1604-29; ‘Final concords’ ed. Boyd, 204; Fawkes, ‘Gentry of Staffs. 1662-3’, 60 However, he does seem to have enjoyed a strong interest in northern Staffordshire – particularly among the ‘moorlanders’ – where the bulk of the family’s estate was located. He made little appreciable impact upon the 1620s Parliaments, in which he received only a handful of appointments and made no recorded speeches. There is no evidence that he was active as a Forced Loan commissioner in 1627.32HP Commons, 1604-29. In 1629 he was appointed a deputy lieutenant for Staffordshire by the county’s lord lieutenant, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex; and in 1636, the earl named Bowyer, Sir Hervey Bagot* and Thomas Crompton* as trustees to secure his wife’s jointure.33SP16/149/81i, f. 113; HMC Bath, iv. 350. Active in county affairs during the personal rule of Charles I, particularly as a deputy lieutenant, Bowyer was involved in the collection of fines for knighthood in 1630 and attended his place on the Staffordshire bench regularly throughout the 1630s.34SP16/149/81i, f. 113; SP16/233/49, f. 72; SP16/275/13, f. 22; SP16/296/10, f. 21; SP16/412/9, f. 17; E178/7154/289, 290, 291; Staffs. RO, Q/SO 4, ff. 1-283v; H.S. Grazebrook, ‘Obligatory knighthood temp. Charles I’ (Collns. Hist. Staffs. ser. 1, ii. pt. 2), 18-20.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Bowyer was returned for Staffordshire, taking the junior place. He received just one appointment in this Parliament – to the committee of privileges (16 Apr.) – and made no recorded contribution to debate.35CJ ii. 4a. Re-elected for Staffordshire to the Long Parliament that autumn, Bowyer was again a largely peripheral figure at Westminster. In the first five months of the Long Parliament he was named to only five committees and made no recorded utterance on the floor of the House.36CJ ii. 29a, 31b, 39b, 43a, 84b. He was apparently freer with his money than with his words, standing bond for £1,000 in November 1640 towards securing a City loan for the supply of the English and Scottish armies in the north.37Procs. LP i. 229. Moreover, several of his committee appointments suggest at least some interest on his part with reforming the perceived abuses of the personal rule. Thus he was named to committees on the prosecution of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†); to consider the complaints of several London merchants who had fallen foul of the Caroline authorities for opposing the continued levy of tonnage and poundage without parliamentary approval; and on a bill for abolishing superstition and idolatry and advancing true worship.38CJ ii. 39b, 43a, 84b.

Bowyer’s parliamentary career, such as it was, was cut short by his death on 8 March 1641. He was buried the next day in the parish church of Biddulph.39C142/702/36; Biddulph Par. Reg. ed. Tildesley, 47. In his will, he commended his ‘sinful soul’ to God and his body to a ‘decent and Christian’ burial. Evidently keen to promote a preaching ministry in his home parish, he bequeathed £5 a year to the vicar of Biddulph and his successors on condition that they ‘preach God’s word once every Lord’s day at the least ... having no lawful nor just reason of their neglect in that behalf’. Bowyer’s legatees included his cousins John Bowyer (vicar of Biddulph) and Francis Bowyer (vicar of Leek) – both of whom would align with the Presbyterians in the 1640s – his kinsman Sir Christopher Yelverton*, Sir Anthony St John†, Sir John Skeffington† and the fathers of Thomas Crompton*, Ralph Sneyde* and Samuel Terricke*.40Staffs. RO, B/C/11, will of Sir William Bowyer, 1641; Calamy Revised, 557. Bowyer’s son John Bowyer* fought for Parliament in the civil war and was returned for Staffordshire in 1646 and for Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1656 and 1660.