258 BOWEN 1st class Mod., 1856; Fellow, 1857; B.A. and ist class, and Pres. of the Oxford Union Soc.,() 1858; having obtained the Hertford scholarship in 1855, the Ireland Scholarship, and Latin verse Prize in 1857, and the Arnold Prize in 1859. M.A., 1872, being cr. D.C.L., 13 June 1883. Barrister (Line. Inn), 1861; Junior Standing Counsel to the Treasury, and Recorder of Penzance, 1872; one of the Judges of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, 1879-82, being knighted, 26 June 1879; one of the Lords Justices of Appeal, 1882-93; P.C, 29 June 1882; F.R.S.,2i May 1885; Hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh, 1888. Hewas, 23 Sep. 1893, made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary (under "Mi? appellate Juris- diction Act, 1876") being granted the dignity of a Baron for lifeC') by the style of BARON BOWEN OF COLWOOD, Sussex. Trustee of the Brit. Museum 1893 till his death. He w., 7 Jan. 1862, at St. John's, Paddington, Emily Frances, sister of Stuart, ist Baron Rendel of Hatch- lands, 1st da. of James Meadows Rendel, of Plymouth, Civil Engineer, by Catherine Jane, da. of W. James Harris, of Plymouth. He d. s.p., of "a cruel disease, borne with exemplary patience," in Princes gardens, 10 Apr. 1894, aged 59, and was bur. at Slaugham, Sussex, when his Peerage became extinct.i^) Will pr. at ;^26,994 personalty. His widow d., after a long illness, at 2 Queen's Gate gardens, 24, and was bur. 27 Mar. 1897, at Slaugham. W^ill pr. at ;^34,250 personalty. (*) For a list of peers who have been Presidents of the Union Society at Oxford or at Cambridge, see vol. iv. Appendix F. () See ante, page 180, note " b," sub "Blackburn" as to these creations. (') He is spoken of, by one who knew him well, as "of an amiable disposition; a baby face, and mincing manner; a subtle mind and ready wit; entirely devoid of hum- bug." According to A. G. C. Liddcll, " He had that almost exaggerated suavity and politeness which characterised Oxford men in the fifties." The Times (12 Feb. 1897) writes of him as "versatile, many sided, gifted; and nimble minded, ' delightfully clever ' as his first schoolmaster characterized him, and possessed of fascinating social gifts. As counsel he was matchless in industry; with juries he was not very successful." Some of his witty sayings are widely known, e.g., that the Judges' address to the Sovereign should not run " conscious as we are of our shortcomings," but " conscious as we are of one another's shortcomings," as also his paraphrase of the title of a work, called Defence of the Church of England, by a Beneficed Clergyman, as " Defence of the 39 articles by a bond fide holder for value." His distinguished career as a scholar was succeeded by one hardly less so at the Bar. He was a member of the Western Circuit; was junior counsel (Coleridge, afterwards Chief Justice, being the senior) for the infant heir in the first "Tichborne trial," and again (with Hawkins, Q.C.) at the longer criminal trial that followed; he was com- plimented by Ch. Justice Coleridge for his able summing up of the Duke of Norfolk's [successful] claim to the Fitzalan chapel attached to Arundel church. His life, by Sir Henry Cunningham, was pub. in 1897. -^ touching tribute was paid to him soon after his death, by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Esher, who declared in the Court of Appeal, that, in his opinion, Bowen "was the most distinguished Judge who had sat in an English Court during the long period [more than 50 years] of his acquaintance with the occupants of the English bench." It was understood that had he lived he would have been offered the Mastership of Balliol in succession to Jowett. V.G.
