William Fowler (makar)

William Fowler (c. 1560 – 1612) was a Scottish poet or makar (royal bard), writer, courtier and translator.

William Fowler was the son of Janet Fockart and William Fowler, a well-connected Edinburgh merchant burgess who sold a variety of fine fabrics. He graduated from St Leonard's College, St Andrews in 1578. By 1581 he was in Paris studying civil law. At this time he published An ansvver to the calumnious letter and erroneous propositions of an apostat named M. Io. Hammiltoun a pamphlet criticising John Hamilton and other Catholics in Scotland, who he claimed had driven him from that country. In response, two Scottish Catholics, Hamilton and Hay, manhandled him and dragged him through the streets to the Collège de Navarre.

Following his return to Scotland, he visited London to retrieve some money owed to his father by Mary, Queen of Scots. Here he frequently visited the house of Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissiere, where he met Giordano Bruno, currently staying there. He was soon recruited by Francis Walsingham to act as a spy until 1583, by which time he felt his consorting with French Catholics was compromising his religious integrity. Castelnau showed some of Mary's letters to Fowler, and he described them to Walsingham. Fowler also informed on John Mosman, a goldsmith who was carrying Mary's letters.

Fowler's letters to Walsingham mention his widowed mother's concern at his role and intrigues in London and her moneylending activities, and information he obtained in January 1583 from the exiled Scottish Duke of Lennox.

Coded letters mentioning Mary's distrust of Fowler were discovered in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and deciphered in 2023. In May 1583, while William was intriguing in London, his sister Susannah Fowler married John Drummond the king's doorkeeper and son of Robert Drummond of Carnock, their son was the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden.

In September 1584, he met the German traveller Lupold von Wedel in Edinburgh and told him that he been teaching King James the art of memory. Fowler later noted that while he was teaching James the art of memory, the king taught him poetry and imprese or emblems.

Fowler was part of a literary circle around King James which has become known as the "Castalian Band" and included Alexander Montgomerie, John Stewart of Baldynneis, Alexander Hume, Thomas and Robert Hudson, and James VI himself. In 1591 Fowler contributed a prefatory sonnet To the Only Royal Poet to James VI's poem the Furies, printed in His Majesties Poeticall Exercises; while James, in return, commended, in verse, Fowler's Triumphs of Petrarke.

Fowler dedicated his Triumphs to Jean Fleming, wife of the Chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane. Mary Beaton, Lady Boyne the former companion of Mary, Queen of Scots, and "E. D.", probably Elizabeth Douglas, wife of Samuel Cockburn of Temple-Hall, contributed sonnets in praise of the author. Fowler dedicated a translation from Ariosto to Mary Beaton, who was a member of his literary circle. He wrote an epitaph for Elizabeth Douglas, Samuel Cockburn's wife, who died in 1594.