Bowbearer

In Old English law, a Bowbearer was an under-officer of the forest who looked after all manner of trespass on vert or venison, and who attached, or caused to be attached, the offenders, in the feudal Court of Attachment.

The bow was a renowned English weapon, made of wood from the yew tree.

The best-documented example of Bowbearers in England is to be found in the Forest of Bowland in north-eastern Lancashire.

In the late twelfth century, Oughtred de Bolton, son of Edwin de Bolton ("Edwinus Comes de Boelton" in the Domesday Book) is described as an early Bowbearer in the royal forests of Bowland and Gilsland, at the time of Henry II. However, this account is flawed as the possibility of Oughtred being the son of Edwin is fanciful and cannot be substantiated. It would have been impossible for Oughtred to have been Bowbearer of Gilsland before the 1170s when the barony was first brought into the Norman realm. Prior to that, it had formed part of the kingdom of the Scots .

After the early fourteenth century, it is often difficult to distinguish between Bowbearers and Master Foresters in the Bowland record:

Bowbearers of Bowland (1150–1304)

Master Foresters and Bowbearers of Bowland (1304–1650)

Bowbearers of Bowland after 1660

Perhaps the most notorious Bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland was Sir Nicholas Tempest, who was executed at Tyburn in 1537. Tempest was one of the northern leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Catholic uprising against Henry VIII and was linked to Sawley Abbey.

The Parker family were the Bowbearers of the Forest of Bowland from the time of the English Restoration in 1660. The family likes to claim the office traces back as far as Robert Parker in the early 16th century but this is difficult to substantiate given the available evidence. In reality, while the family did have Bowbearers over many generations between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the office was always granted to them by their local lord, the Lord of Bowland, the so-called Lord of the Fells.

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