In this post I want to summarise briefly what we know about the family background of my 13 x great grandfather Gabriel Fowle of Southover, Lewes, in Sussex, who died in 1555. I’m indebted to William Green of Spokane, Washington, USA, whose article in the Sussex Family Historian enabled me to find my way through the fog of conflicting accounts of the Fowle family available online, and who has been generous in sharing the fruits of his research with me.
Lamberhurst in 1912
Gabriel Fowle was born in about 1507, almost certainly in Lamberhurst, on the Kent-Sussex border, the third and youngest son of Nicholas Fowle and his wife Elizabeth. Gabriel’s older brothers were Thomas and John: not Bartholomew and Robert, as mistakenly stated in a number of pedigrees circulating online. It’s possible that Thomas is the person of that name who died in 1525 and asked to be buried in St Margaret’s church, Southwark, and who is almost certainly not my 15 x great grandfather, as I speculated in an earlier post.
Nicholas Fowle made his will in March 1522/3 and seems to have died soon afterwards. Bill Green suggests that Nicholas Fowle was born in about 1468 and might have been the son of William Fowle who died in about 1490, who had another son named John.
