The Letters of Fr. Frederick Bowles

In 2022, the National Institute for Newman Studies began a second phase of the digitization project at the Birmingham Oratory. The project involved scanning the correspondence archives of the Oratory Fathers who lived and worked with Cardinal Newman, including Fathers William Neville, Frederick Bowles, Edward Caswall, Paul Eaglesim, and Nicholas Darnell.

This material has been waiting in the queue for cataloguing since the completion of the digitization, and in 2025 we have now begun to bring it online. The first of the collections to be launched are the 120 letters written to Father Frederick Selwood Bowles, dating from the 1830s to the 1880s.

Frederick Sellwood Bowles was born in Milton, Berkshire, the son of Thomas Bowles, JP and Hester Sellwood. He attended Exeter College, Oxford and took Anglican Orders. As an Anglican, he served as Newman’s curate at Littlemore from 1842, eventually converting to the Catholic Church in 1847, and he was ordained with Newman in Rome.

Fr. Bowles remained with the Birmingham Oratory for twelve years, but he left in 1860 when his worsening depressive nature caused him to struggle with community life. He remained a priest and spent the remainder of his years ministering on the Isle of Wight, before moving to Harrow. Newman maintained a friendly correspondence with his old friend, and one of his final journeys away from Birmingham was to visit him in London.

Although by the time of his death in 1902, Father Frederick had been alienated from the community for more than forty years, his papers would be returned and kept at the Oratory archives, possibly by his elder sister Emily Harriet Bowles (1818–1905), who also became a Catholic and was a regular correspondent with Cardinal Newman.

In this collection there are sets of letters between Father Bowles and Father Richard Stanton and Father Joseph Gordon, in which the foundation of the London Oratory is discussed. Fr. Gordon was the first English Oratorian to pass away in 1852. The largest set of letters are from David Lewis, the Welsh-born, Oxford Movement convert who did not enter Catholic ministry, but who joined the editorial team of The Tablet and lived at Arundel. There are also smaller sets of letters from the Duke of Norfolk, Fr. Ambrose St. John, and Fr. Nicholas Darnell, as well as from Charles Eyston, the Catholic squire at Hendred, Berkshire, where his younger brother, Rev. Thomas Bowles (1822–1899), would become the Anglican rector.

The second part of the collection are family letters. Father Frederick was the third of eleven children, and he maintained good relations with his siblings, even after his reception into the Catholic Church. His most frequent correspondents were the previously mentioned Rev. Thomas Bowles and Emily Bowles. Other siblings from whom there are letters include Alice Sophia Bowles (1834–1921), John Samuel Bowles, JP (1816–1884), Richard Francis Bowles (1828–1916) an East India Merchant, and the Rev. Samuel James Bowles (1826–1885), who held the living of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.

The only one of the siblings who did not write to Father Frederick after his conversion was his sister Anna Mary Bowles (1831–1886). His other remaining brothers and sisters all died young—Hester Bowles (1813-1845), Henry Bowles (1816–1841), and Francis Bowles (1834–1852).