Fowler, Christopher (1613-03-25 - 1676-01-15)

Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire ca. 1613 to John Fowler. Matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1631; BA, 1631-1632; MA from St Edmund Hall, 1634. Rector of West Woodhey, Berkshire, 1640, around which time he married Elizabeth Burges of Marlborough with whom he had five daughters and . He seems to have assumed some unofficial duties at St Mary, Reading in 1643 after the royalist vicar joined the king at Oxford. His contemporary Anthony Wood in his Athenae Oxonienses (vol. III) described his sermons attracting "a numerous crowd of silly women and young people" as a result of his "very many odd gestures and antic behaviour (unbeseeming the serious gravity to be used in the pulpit)." Officially made minister of St Mary, Reading in 1645; fellow of Eton College that year as well. He held these posts until 1662 when he was deprived of those livings for nonconformity. He continued to preach, relocating to Kennington, Surrey where he was granted license to preach in his home there in 1672. Died at Southwark 15 January 1676.