Robert Bowyer (diarist)

Robert Bowyer (ca. 1560–1621) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1601 and 1610.

He served as Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London early in the reign of James I of England and was named to the office of Clerk of the Parliaments in 1610. He is notable for his Diary, which records much of the detailed proceedings of Parliament between 1605 and 1607.

He should not be confused with the Robert Bowyer who was granted the reversion of some minor Exchequer offices in 1604, or with his cousin Robert Bowyer (d. 1626) a London merchant whose memorial was in St Olave Jewry.

Bowyer was the second son of William Bowyer, Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London and his wife Agnes, daughter of Sir John Harcourt (d. 1566) of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, the widow of John Knyvet of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk. Robert had an elder brother William (who died young), a sister Judith, and an older half-brother Henry Knyvett.

His father died in 1569 or early 1570, and young Robert was placed with his uncle, Francis Bowyer, a wealthy alderman of London. He received his BA from Oxford in 1579 and continued his studies briefly at Clifford's Inn before entering the Middle Temple in 1580.

Bowyer attached himself to Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (later the Earl of Dorset). In 1594 and 1597 he pursued the position of Clerk of the Parliaments (that is, senior clerk of the House of Lords), without success. The role went to Thomas Smith, clerk of the Privy Council, who had written to the Queen's Secretary Robert Cecil "I think there is or will be one Bowyer, a suitor for the place by means of my Lord of Buckhurst, who may be well worthy, perhaps, of some other and greater preferment, but I may be bold to say (without any ill affection to the man), that he is not fit for this place, by reason of a great imperfection he hath in his speech." The role went to Smith, and Bowyer was given the reversion of the position (which he took up after Smith's death in December 1609).

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