[2] Bowles is first mentioned in the Military Entry Books in January 1692, when he was appointed captain-lieutenant in the regiment of Colonel W. Selwyn, later the 2nd Queen's, then just arrived in Holland from Ireland.
In July 1705 he succeeded Colonel Caulfield in command of a regiment of foot in Ireland, with which he went to Spain and served at the Siege of Barcelona.
According to the memoranda of General Erie, Bowles's was one of the regiments broken at the bloody battle of Almanza.
After this Bowles's regiment disappeared from the rolls, and its colonel remained unemployed until 1715, when, as a brigadier-general, he was commissioned to raise a corps of dragoons, of six troops, in Berkshire, Hampshire, and Buckinghamshire, to rendezvous at Reading.
Brigadier General Bowles was replaced in 1721 at Dublin Castle by Philip Honywood, Esq.