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• From Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset, Volume 12, p. 221 here

The five entries which are now printed have been kindly sent us by Mr J. J. Hammond and Mr T. H. Baker. One of them sketches the life of Thomas Bower, a native of Mere, Wilts, member of Christ Church, Oxford, where he took two degrees in Arts, Chaplain to John Pierce, Bishop of Sarum, and afterwards Rector of Pentridge, Dorset, and of Wylye, Wilts, who died on 23rd February, 1618-9, in his 65th year. He twice married, and had two sons, Samuel and James, and three daughters, Susanna, Honor, and Elizabeth.

Another entry refers to his first wife, Elizabeth, who was buried on 7th August, 1603.

A third entry records the death on 15th Nov. and the burial on 18th Nov., 1618, in her 55th year, of Anne, his second wife, a daughter of the Hussey family of Edmondsham, Dorset, and previously the wife of Thomas Virgin of the same county. She was mother of four sons, three by her first, and one by her second husband.

Hutchins’ Dorset, Vol. III, p. 242, in the Hussey pedigree, states that Ann, daughter of Thomas Hussey of Edmundsham, was married to Thomas Vergine, co. Somerset, but does not mention her marriage to a second husband. The same volume at page 443 states that Thomas Power was Rector of Pentridge, 1579-1618. Thomas Bower does not occur in the pedigree of Bower of Ewern Minster at page 538 (Ibid.), nor in Foster’s Alumni Oxonienses."

Dorset Editor.

1618. Reverendus Vir Thomas Bower hujus ecclesiae Rector hos vitae suae gradus habuisse noscitur. Natus in oppido Mere ex ingenua ibidem familia oriundus, Liberalibus Artibus inde a puero pro egregia Indole parentum curé. educatus, ita in studiis profecit ut gradatim ad locos eminentes promoverit, amplissimo praesuli Johanni Pierce tunc