William Fowler (c. 1560 – 1612) was a Scottish poet or makar (royal bard), writer, courtier and translator.
Early life
William Fowler was the son of Janet Fockart and William Fowler, a well-connected Edinburgh merchant burgess who sold a variety of fine fabrics. He graduated from St Leonard's College, St Andrews in 1578. By 1581 he was in Paris studying civil law. At this time he published An ansvver to the calumnious letter and erroneous propositions of an apostat named M. Io. Hammiltoun a pamphlet criticising John Hamilton and other Catholics in Scotland, who he claimed had driven him from that country. In response, two Scottish Catholics, Hamilton and Hay, manhandled him and dragged him through the streets to the Collège de Navarre.
London and secret correspondence
Following his return to Scotland, he visited London to retrieve some money owed to his father by Mary, Queen of Scots. Here he frequently visited the house of Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissiere, where he met Giordano Bruno, currently staying there. He was soon recruited by Francis Walsingham to act as a spy until 1583, by which time he felt his consorting with French Catholics was compromising his religious integrity. Castelnau showed some of Mary's letters to Fowler, and he described them to Walsingham. Fowler also informed on John Mosman, a goldsmith who was carrying Mary's letters.
Fowler's letters to Walsingham mention his widowed mother's concern at his role and intrigues in London and her moneylending activities, and information he obtained in January 1583 from the exiled Scottish Duke of Lennox.
Coded letters mentioning Mary's distrust of Fowler was discovered in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and deciphered in 2023. In May 1583, while William was intriguing in London, his sister Susannah Fowler married John Drummond the king's doorkeeper and son of Robert Drummond of Carnock, their son was the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden.
A Career at Court
In September 1584, he met the German traveller Lupold von Wedel in Edinburgh and told him that he been teaching King James the art of memory. Fowler later noted that while he was teaching James the art of memory, the king taught him poetry and imprese or emblems.
Fowler was part of a literary circle around King James which has become known as the "Castalian Band" and included Alexander Montgomerie, John Stewart of Baldynneis, Alexander Hume, Thomas and Robert Hudson, and James VI himself. In 1591 Fowler contributed a prefatory sonnet To the Only Royal Poet to James VI's poem the Furies, printed in His Majesties Poeticall Exercises; while James, in return, commended, in verse, Fowler's Triumphs of Petrarke.
Fowler dedicated his Triumphs to Jean Fleming, wife of the Chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane. Mary Beaton, Lady Boyne the former companion of Mary, Queen of Scots, and "E. D.", probably Elizabeth Douglas, wife of Samuel Cockburn of Temple-Hall, contributed sonnets in praise of the author. Fowler dedicated a translation from Ariosto to Mary Beaton, who was a member of his literary circle. He wrote an epitaph for Elizabeth Douglas, Samuel Cockburn's wife, who died in 1594.
Secretary to the queen
In 1589, he was appointed to the diplomatic mission to Denmark to arrange the marriage of James VI to Anne of Denmark with John Skene. He was a paid negotiator for the city of Edinburgh, charged with raising the profile of the burgh. Fowler wrote from Denmark about the progress of the marriage negotiations to the English ambassador in Scotland William Ashby who forwarded his letter to William Cecil.
King James sailed to Norway to meet his bride. On 28 November 1589, at Oslo, Fowler was appointed private secretary and Master of Requests to Anne of Denmark. He retained these positions when Anne went to England.
Fowler returned to Scotland before James VI, and planned to rejoin the royal party in Denmark in April 1590. The English diplomat in Edinburgh Robert Bowes reported to Burghley and Walsingham that Fowler had obtained two letters in cipher, one to the Earl of Erroll and the other mysteriously addressed to "Assuerus the Painter". Fowler gave the letters to the Provost of Edinburgh, Sir John Arnot to show them to the Privy Council. The Earl of Bothwell said the letters meant nothing to him, Bowes thought they looked like letters he had previously seen which referred to alleged Catholic and Spanish plots.