Fowler, John

, a celebrated English printer, was born at Bristol, educated at Winchester school, and admitted fellow of New college, in Oxford, in 1555, after two years of probation, where also he took his master’s degree. But refusing to comply with the terms of protestant conformity in queen Elizabeth’s reign, he resigned his fellowship, after holding it about four years, and, leaving England, took upon him the trade of printing, which he exercised partly at Antwerp, and partly at Louvain; and thus did signal service to the papists, in printing their books against the protestaut writers. Wood says that he was well skilled in Greek and Latin, a tolerable poet and orator, a theologist not to be contemned; and so versed also in criticism and other polite literature, that he might have passed for another Robert or Henry Stephens. He reduced into a compendium the “Summa Theologiæ” of Thomas Aquinas, under the title of “Loca Communia Theologica,” and wrote “Additiones in Chroiiica Genebrandi;” a “Psalter for Catholics,” which was answered by Sampson Dean, of Christ-church, Oxford, 1578; also epigrams, and other verses. He also translated from Latin into English, “The Epistle of Osorius,” and “.The Oration of Pet. Frarin, of Antwerp, against the unlawful insurrection of the protestants, under pretence to reform religion,” Antwerp, 1566. This was answered by William Fulke, divinity-professor in Cambridge. Fowler^died at Newmark, in Germany, Feb. 13, 1579. ¹