WILLIAM

See also:

• WILLIAM BOWYER (1663-1737)

BOWYER (1663-1737)  , English printer, was born in 1663, apprenticed to a printer in 1679, made a liveryman of the Stationers' Company in 1700, and nominated as one of the twenty printers allowed by the Star Chamber . He was burned out in the great fire of 1712, but his loss was partly made good by the subscription of friends and fellow craftsmen, as recorded on a tablet in Stationers' Hall, and in 1713 he returned to his White-friars shop and became the leading printer of his day . He died on the 27th of December 1737 . His son, WILLIAM BOWYER (1699-1777), was born in London on the 19th of December 1699 . He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and in 1722 became a partner in his father's business . In 1729 he was appointed printer of the votes of the House of Commons, and in 1736 printer to the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was elected a fellow in 1737 . In 1737 he took as apprentice John Nichols, who was to be his successor and biographer . In 1761 Bowyer became printer to the Royal Society, and in 1767 printer of the rolls of the House of Lords and the journals of the House of Commons . He died on the 13th of November 1777, leaving unfinished a number of large works and among them the reprint of Domesday Book . He wrote a great many tracts and pamphlets, edited, arranged and published a host of books, but perhaps his principal work was an edition of the New Testament in Greek, with notes . His generous bequests in favour of his own profession are administered by the Stationers' Company, of which he became a liveryman in 1738, and in whose hall is his portrait bust and a painting of his father .