William Bowles (1686–1748)

William Bowles (11 February 1686 – 14 May 1748), of Burford, Shropshire, was an English glass manufacturer and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons for more than 20 years from 1727 to 1748.

When his father died in 1718 he became the proprietor of the Vauxhall glassworks in London, the major glass works in the country.

He had purchased Burford on the understanding that the estate contained a deer park, but afterwards he discovered that it did not, and undertook six years of litigation.

In Parliament, he spoke against a proposal to reduce the interest on the national debt in 1737 and did not take part in the division on the Spanish convention in 1739.

He voted with the Administration on the chairman of the elections committee in December 1741, but was absent from an important division on 21 January 1742, when he ‘sat diverting himself all night at Garraway's Coffee House’.