Thomas Fowler

Who was Thomas Fowler?

Thomas Fowler, English lawyer, diplomat, courtier, spy, servant of the Countess of Lennox, broker of the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, steward of the Earl of Leicester, advisor to James VI of Scotland and the Scottish ambassador in London, Archibald Douglas.

John Knox and the English diplomat Thomas Randolph wrote that Thomas Fowler was an Englishman. It is not known if Thomas was any relation of the Scottish poet and royal secretary William Fowler, with whom historians have confused his son William Fowler. The Fowler surname is found in the parish registers of Settrington, Margaret Douglas' Yorkshire manor, and Thomas may have been a member of an English family, or perhaps a Scottish family settled in England, attached to the Lennox household. In 1562 Fowler, clerk of the Countess' kitchen, was noted with Laurence Nisbet, Francis Yaxley, and Hugh Allan, the schoolmaster, as a potential witness against the Countess. This Fowler had killed a stranger servant in 1561.