He apparently lost part of his family's wealth to swindlers, with his father's 1779 will providing him only with a small set allowance to avoid "his submitting again to be gulled, preyed upon, and exhausted by those Monsters in imposture, cruelty, and wickedness who have already drained him of a handsome ffortune and regardless of the Misery and ruin they bring upon him are ready to assail him entising with diabolic artifice and to bubble him out of any bequest I might bestow.
He was a leading committee member and pamphleteer of John Reeves's Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers.
[5][6] He resided at Dulwich in Surrey, where he was a justice of the peace, quorum, and commissioner of bankrupts and the sale of Dutch prizes.
[2] As well as Reeves and the Association, Bowles was connected to High Church groups, including the emergent Hackney Phalanx.
[9] His 1792 "Protest against Thomas Paine's Rights of Man" received great popularity when its publication and cheap disseminination was subsidized by a likeminded society that met at the Crown and Anchor Tavern.