Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/89

 tised in London, residing in Little Britain, and was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians 12 Nov. 1680. In 1684 he married Sarah, daughter of Sir Vincent Corbet, bart., at Shrewsbury. She died 6 Dec. 1686. He retired to his paternal estate in Shropshire, and there died at Little Worley Hall 21 Jan. 1710. He was buried in the neighbouring church of Brewood, and his death is recorded on his wife's monument in St. Chad's Church, Shrewsbury. He was learned in theology as well as in medicine, and was an admirer of Dr. Seth Ward, bishop of Sarum, whose views on passive obedience he warmly supported. In some manuscript notes on a sermon of Ward's, on the text ‘And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation,’ Fowke expresses his contempt of the conduct of the university of Oxford in 1688, saying, ‘These great pretenders to loyalty invited ye Prince of Orange. They had no patience when King James bore upon their priviledges in Oxford, but exclamed bitterly against ye king and joyned with the wiggs and dissenters to bring in ye Prince of Orange.’ Among the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum there is a private letter of Fowkes.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 417; Original Lists Coll. of Phys. of London; Seven Sermons, by Seth Ward, Bishop of Sarum, 1674, annotated in manuscript by Ph. Fowke, M.D., C.R.C.S.] 

FOWLER, ABRAHAM (fl. 1577), poet, was a queen's scholar at Westminster, whence he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1568. His name does not appear on the university register. He contributed a poem in alternate rhymes to ‘A Philosophicall discussion entituled The Anatomie of the Minde newlie made and set forth by T[homas] R[ogers],’ London, 1576. Rogers [q. v.] was a student of Christ Church. Fowler's verse is followed by a poem by Camden.

[Welch's Alumni Westmonast. p. 47; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 163; Brydges's Censura Literaria, vi. 33.] 

FOWLER, CHRISTOPHER (1610?–1678), ejected minister, son of John Fowler, was born at Marlborough, Wiltshire, about 1610. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, as a servitor in 1627, and graduated B.A. on 9 Feb. 1632. Removing to St. Edmund Hall, he graduated M.A. on 29 Oct. 1634. To John Prideaux, regius professor of divinity, he owed his strong attachment to the Calvinistic theology. He took holy orders, and was a puritan preacher in and about Oxford till he obtained a settlement at West Woodhay, Berkshire, before 1641. On the surrender of Reading (26 April 1643), Thomas Bunbury, vicar of St. Mary's, joined the king at Oxford; his living was sequestered and given to Fowler. He took the covenant (1643), and distinguished himself by his zeal for the presbyterian cause. Thinking himself unsafe in the neighbourhood of the royalist troops at the manor-house of Donnington, Berkshire, garrisoned for the king at the time of the second battle of Newbury (27 Oct. 1644), Fowler went up to London. Here his fanatical preaching attracted a crowd of hearers. Wood suggests that he was at this time preacher at St. Margaret's, Lothbury; it seems, however, that he obtained an appointment at Albourn, Sussex (Funeral Sermon); the engagement at St. Margaret's belongs to a later date; his name first occurs in the registers in 1652. In 1649 Fowler refused to take the ‘engagement’ to be faithful to the Commonwealth without king or House of Lords. Notwithstanding this disqualification, he was subsequently made fellow of Eton College.

Fowler was an assistant to the commissioners for Berkshire, appointed under the ordinance of 28 Aug. 1654, for ejecting scandalous ministers. In this capacity he was mixed up with the proceedings against a noted mystic and astrologer, John Pordage [q. v.], formerly of St. Lawrence's, Reading, whom the commissioners ejected (by order 8 Dec. 1654, to take effect 2 Feb. 1655) from the rectory of Bradfield, Berkshire. Fowler wrote an account and defence of this business, in which he and John Tickel, presbyterian minister at Abingdon, Berkshire, had taken a leading part. Somewhat later he entered the lists against the quakers. In conjunction with Simon Ford [q. v.], vicar of St. Lawrence's, Reading, he published (1656) an answer to the ‘quaking doctrines’ of Thomas Speed of Bristol, and he engaged in a controversy (1659) with Edward Burrough [q. v.]

On the restoration of the monarchy Fowler lost his fellowship at Eton, but retained the Reading vicarage till he was ejected by the Uniformity Act of 1662. He then moved to London, had his abode successively at Kennington and Southwark, and exercised his ministry in private. He had a turn for the explication of prophecy, wherein he displayed ‘a singular gift in chronology.’ According to Wood, he was ‘esteemed a little better than crazed or distracted for some time before his death.’ It is possible that his powers failed, but of his general ability a high estimate is given by William Cooper [q. v.], no mean judge. A warrant was out for his apprehension as a conventicle preacher at the time of his death. He died in Southwark on [15?] January 1678, and was buried within the