Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/94

 that year he issued from the press two supplementary papers on the catholic hierarchy, one of them entitled 'The Roman Documents relating to the New Hierarchy, with an Argument,' and the other (8vo, pp. 44), 'Observations on the Arguments of Dr. Twiss respecting the new Roman Catholic Hierarchy.' In the July of 1852 Bowyer entered parliament for the first time as M.P. for Dundalk, which borough he continued to represent in the House of Commons for sixteen years, down to December 1868. In 1854 he published, in twenty-eight chapters, 8vo, pp. xi, 387, his 'Commentaries on Universal Public Law,' and in 1856 two pamphlets 4 Rome and Sardinia,' and 'The Differences between the Holy See and the Spanish Government' in vindication of the holy see, reprinted from the 'Dublin Review,' September 1855, and March 1856. On 1 July 1860 Bowyer succeeded his father as baronet. In 1864 appeared, in quarto, 'Friends of Ireland in Council,' the interlocutors in which were Bowyer, William Henry Wilberforce, and John Pope Hennessy. In 1868 Bowyer, in the form of a letter to the Earl of Stanhope, published, 8vo, pp. 19, 'The Private History of the Creation of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England.' In 1873 he brought out a reprint from the 'Times' of 'Four Letters on the Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords and the New Court of Appeal.' Bowyer was defeated in his candidature at Dundalk in December 1868, but in December 1874 was returned in the home-rule interest for the county of Wexford, and retained that seat until March 1880. He published, in 1874, 8vo, pp. 72, his 'Introduction to the Study and Use of the Civil Law, and to Commentaries on the Modern Civil Law,' a work inscribed to Earl Cairns. During the last five years of his career in parliament he estranged himself from the liberal party, and was at last expelled, on 23 June 1876, from the Reform Club. Bowyer was conspicuous as a representative catholic. His numerous letters to the 'Times' mainly bore reference to questions of religious or constitutional law. He was a prominent member of the committee convened to farther the agitation against the abolition of the legal duties of the House of Lords. Bowyer was found dead in his bed at his chambers in the Temple, 13 King's Bench Walk, on the morning of 7 June 1883. The funeral service was performed in his own church of St. John of Jerusalem, in Great Ormond Street, Bloomsbury, which had been entirely built by him. Bowyer was a knight of Malta and honorary president of the Maltese nobility. He was knight commander of the order of Pius IX, as well as a chamberlain to that pontiff, knight grand cross of the order of St. Gregory the Great, and grand collar of the Constantinian order of St. George of Naples. He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of Berkshire.

 BOWYER, ROBERT (1758–1834), miniature painter, seems to have been at an early date known to Smart, the miniature painter, and is supposed by Redgrave to have been Smart's pupil. He exhibited miniatures and paintings at the Royal Academy occasionally between 1783 and 1828; was appointed painter in water-colours to the king, and miniature painter to the queen; and received much fashionable patronage. In 1792 he issued a prospectus giving details of a plan for an edition of Hume's 'History of England,' with continuation to date, to be 'superbly embellished.' West, Smirke, Loutherbourg, and other leading artists of the day furnished historical pictures specially to be engraved for this work, which contains besides a number of engravings of portraits, medals, and antiquities. It was issued in parts, and by 1806 five unwieldy folios were published, reaching to the year 1688; the continuation was never issued, as a loss of 30,000l. is asserted to have been already incurred. Bowyer also published 'An Impartial Narrative of Events from 1816 to 1823,' London, 1823. He died at his house at Byfleet, Surrey, 4 June 1834.

 BOWYER, WILLIAM, the elder (1663–1737), printer, son of John Bowyer, citizen and grocer of London, by Mary, daughter of William King, citizen and vintner of London, was born in 1663, apprenticed to Miles Flesher, printer, in 1679, and admitted to the freedom of the Company of Stationers 1686. By his first wife, who died early, he had no issue. By his second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Dawks (a printer who had been employed on Bishop Walton's Polyglot Bible) and widow of Benjamin Allport, bookseller, he was father of the younger, 'the learned printer' [q. v.], and a daughter Dorothy married to Peter Wallis, a London jeweller. In 1699, a few