Martin Bowes
Sir Martin Bowes (1496/97 – 1566) was a very prominent and active civic dignitary of Tudor London whose career continued through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.
[1] Born into the citizenry of York, Bowes was apprenticed in London and made his career at the Royal Mint, as a master-worker and under-treasurer, and personally implemented the debasement of English currency which became a fiscal imperative in the later reign of Henry.
A survivor through the changes of national religious policy (and attendant persecutions), in the term of his mayoralty fell the second interrogation and condemnation of the Protestant Anne Askew, who was burnt at the stake for heresy in 1546.
[3][7] By his own account Martin Bowes, who was born in the parish of St Cuthbert's, was brought up by his parents in York until the age of 14, when (in 1511) he was sent up to London as a youth of limited means,[8] and was apprenticed to the citizen and Goldsmith, Robert Amadas (died 1532).
[11] The official allowances paid to the master-workers were considerably lower than they had formerly been, during the Yorkist period, and the managers made up for this by "seizing every opportunity to make the Mint pay".
His status as alderman gave him a special importance within the Company of Goldsmiths, and he served his first term as Prime Warden (a role which he resumed under Edward, Mary and Elizabeth) in 1537–38.
Investigations leading to reorganization of the Mint in 1544 showed that Bowes and Ralph Rowlett (died 1543)[37] were responsible for systematic unauthorized debasement of silver supplied by the Crown.
[41] Knight died in February 1548, and Vaughan then became active until his own death in 1549 (the Exchequer receiving the balance of his moneying profits from his executor John Gwynneth[42]) when he was replaced by Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.
[47] His production overheads, at 1/26 of net profits, were higher than those of Thomas Knight (Tower II), because Bowes bore the costs of management, engravers and potmakers for both facilities.
Fires were lit in the street, banquets held, and hogsheads of wine and beer with spicebread were set out before the Lord Mayor's gate for passers-by to enjoy.
[28] The Goldsmiths were put to some expense during the mayoralty as it was necessary for Bowes to be accompanied by his sheriffs and other officers at corporate events, such that in 1547 they stipulated that these additional payments should not be taken as a precedent except when a member of the company should be Mayor.
[55] On 18 June 1546 the Protestant gentlewoman Anne Askew was brought once more to the Guildhall of London to be arraigned for heresy, before a daunting board of ecclesiastical and secular justices led by Sir Martin Bowes.
[64] A Chantry Certificate for St Mary Woolnoth for 1 January 1547/48 declares a rent charge of £13.13s.04d (for the maintenance of a priest) going out of "a capital messuage in Lumbard Street wherein Sir Marten Bowes, Knight, inhabiteth."
)[66] His term as under-treasurer of the Tower I Mint concluded at the king's request in January 1550/51, when he was persuaded to pay £10,000 to balance his account, but was also granted a continuance of his fee of £200 per annum as a life pension.
[70] John Stow, having mentioned how 400 poor fatherless children were admitted to Christ Church Hospital in November 1552, then listed more than two pages of despoiled monuments at the Greyfriars, starting with the foundress Lady Margaret (1317/18), wife of Edward I, and concluding: "All these and five times so many more have bin buried there, whose Monuments are wholly defaced: for there were 9 Tombes of Alablaster and Marble, invironed with Strikes of Iron in the Quire, and one Tombe in the body of the Church, also coped with iron, all pulled downe, besides seven-score gravestones of Marble, all sold for 50 pounds, or thereaboutes, by sir Martin Bowes, Goldsmith and Alderman of London..."[71] At the time of the succession crisis in 1553, Bowes warned the assembly of the Goldsmiths not to talk or meddle with the Queen's affairs.
[72] Late in 1553, when the succession had been decided in favour of Queen Mary, and Sir George Barne's mayoralty was drawing to a close, Dame Anne Bowes died and was accorded a full heraldic funeral on 22 October, described by Henry Machyn.
The Heralds accompanied 100 men and women in gowns in the procession: great gilt candlesticks, tapers and branch-lights were borne along, with the company of priests and the singing clerks, leading the corpse with four pennons of arms around her and 12 servants bearing torches.
[3] Dame Anne leaving him with several children, in 1554 he remarried to Elizabeth Harlow, widow of the assay-master at the Tower and Southwark mints William Billingsley, citizen and Haberdasher, who had died in 1553.
[79] An original letter survives, dated February 1556/57, in which Bowes thanks the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of York for their approval (signified in December 1556) of his plan to found a perpetual chantry in the church of St Cuthbert's at Peaseholme.
In the meantime his newly presented rector for St Mary Woolnoth had died, and on 30 November 1558 his replacement, Miles Gerard, was installed by Edmund Bonner (who hung on as Bishop of London until 1560).
[20] Little time was lost in removing the roodloft (and presumably the recently repainted and gilded figures), the timber of which was delivered in 1560, at Bowes's order, to the governors of the Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, which had been brought under united administration in 1557.
In April 1561 the child choristers of St Paul's were brought in to assist the church choir at the marriage of Lady Bowes's daughter Cicely Billingsley.
[91] It is as a civic figure, the continuing alderman for Langbourn ward, Comptroller-General of the Hospitals, and Upper Warden of the Goldsmiths's Company, that Bowes features most prominently in his last years.
[92] Elizabeth's coinage reforms of 1561 were supervised (under Sir Edmund Peckham, High Treasurer of the Mint) by her Comptroller (1559) and Under-Treasurer (from 1561), the Goldsmith Thomas Stanley, who as Assay Master had advised on standards in 1551 as the debasement was halted.
On that day it became a custom for the lord mayor and aldermen to go in procession to hear the sermon, and afterwards for each of them to go to the altar and lay down a penny, and so to take up twelvepence to give to the poor.
[116] If Catholic sensibilities are perhaps expressed in his reference to "the holy and blessed company of heaven" in the opening formula, his request that the twenty parish clerks conveying his body to burial should wear the surplice was in accordance with the existing conformity.
To Martin he left his leasehold mansion, with remainder to Thomas, together with his lease at Moorfield and his household stuff at North Cray, Woolwich and Mile End.
"[120] Anthony Munday's 1633 edition of Stow's Survey of London records the more outward arrangements of Bowes's tomb, which has long since disappeared: 'A goodly Marble close tombe under the Communion Table: "Here lyeth buried the body of Sir Martin Bowes, Knight, Alderman and Lord Maior of London, and also free of the Goldsmiths Company: with Cicilie, Dame Anne and Dame Elizabeth, his wives.
[127] Among the six quarterings in the arms shown above the monument are: Thomas Allen in 1828 described the pennons in St Mary Woolnoth emblazoned as follows:[122] A portrait is said to have been painted by William Faithorne (1616-1691), and presented by him to the Goldsmiths' Company.
The primary image is the portrait of head and shoulders only (wearing a furred robe with a simple chain, and a very minimal ruff at the collar), which is inscribed "Sr: Mart: Bowes, Knight.
