John William Bowden

John William Bowden (21 February 1798 – 15 September 1844) was an English functionary and writer on church matters. He was a close friend of John Henry Newman, who described their relationship in his Apologia. According to David L Edwards, this was one of several "bitter" partings with early friends by Newman.

Life He was born in London, the eldest son of John Bowden, Governor of the Bank of England in the 1820s. In 1812 he went to Harrow School, and in 1817 entered as a commoner at Trinity College, Oxford, simultaneously with his close friend John Henry Newman. In 1830 Bowden obtained mathematical honours, and on 24 November took his degree of B.A. In collaboration with Newman, in the following year, he wrote a polemical poem in two cantos, St. Bartholomew's Eve On 4 June 1823 Bowden took his degree of M.A.

In the autumn of 1826 he was appointed a commissioner of stamps, holding the position for fourteen years, resigning it on account of ill-health in 1840. From 1833 he keenly took part in the Tractarian movement. In the spring of 1839 Bowden was first attacked by tuberculosis, which proved fatal. In the autumn of 1839 he went abroad with his family. The winter of that year he spent in Malta.

Family Bowden married, on 6 June 1828, Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Sir John Edward Swinburne. They had two children, Charles Henry Bowden (1836–1906), a priest of the Birmingham Oratory, and Emily Frances Bowden (1833–1909), translator of Ida, Countess von Hahn-Hahn's Fathers of the Desert. Elizabeth was a Catholic convert, and founder of a Catholic church in Fulham. She died in 1896.