E.A. Webbe’s History of Chislehurst (Pages 225-229)states:

Returning to Bishop’s Well, and taking a western direction, we pass through an exceedingly pretty piece of road, divided from the Common by Mr. Martin’s house and grounds, and shaded by fine old trees. Mr. Martin’s property has undergone many changes since 1647, when it was the seat of Robert Bowles Esq., a gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber, whose mansion occupied the site of the present one. The house is shown on an old map of the seventeenth century as having four gables facing south, its entrance being on the east, and the carriage entrance on the south. The house and gardens occupied rather more than half of the ground, the western portion being a meadow. There was stable in the south-east corner, and in the centre of the south frontage there was a small house, with a separate garden, probably the bailiff’s.

The Bowles family, from the time of Elizabeth until the commencement of James II, held Court appointments in that department of the Royal wardrobe known as the “Tents, Toiles, Hayes and Pavilions.” The salary attached to the posts was merely nominal, but the “perquisites” appear to have been desirable, and in the case of this family they proved exceedingly lucrative, by reason of its being the sole firm of tent-makers in England. This we learn from a petition of one of them, in which he speaks of “the ancient art of making tents and pavilions, which is known to no other person in his Majesty’s dominions”.

Robert Bowles, of Chislehurst, was the son of William Bowles, of Bromley, whose father came from Lincolnshire, being probably a cadet of the ancient family whose name was then spelt “Bolles.” In 1614 the first mention of the family occurs in our Parish Register, the baptism of Robert, third son of Robert Bowles, gent., and it is probable  it was at about this time that he came to reside there. Robert Bowles’ fourth son, Francis, was baptized here in 1617, and in 1619 a daughter was christened by the unusual name of Adrian. In 1638 he was granted the office of Yeoman of his Majesty’s Tents and Pavilions.

When the Civil War broke out his son Francis was a captain in the King’s army, and served with much distinction throughout the campaign. During the Commonwealth, however much the family may have regretted the gaieties of Court and the loss of their privileges as gentlemen of the King’s Chamber, they did not suffer in their fortunes, for we find in the State Papers that they carried out several large orders for the army of Cromwell, at the time of the war in Ireland.

At the Restoration neither Robert, nor William, his second son (who was associated with him in his business), appear to have been among the early applicants for royal favour, but to have adroitly put forward Francis, the soldier, as the representative of the family loyalty, fearing no doubt that their business relations with the late Lord Protector might injure their chances. Captain Francis presented himself at Whitehall and displayed his scars, received in the cause of loyalty, and was kindly received and commiserated by the King, who promised him, as a reward for his services, the first Commissionership of Excise that fell vacant. But when the opportunity for fulfilment arrived, Charles forgot this promise (like many others) and the coveted post was bestowed on a more recent applicant. The captain returned promptly to the attack, and reminded the King in a petition of the promise “made by his Majesty, when he lately took a view of his wounds, undergone in the service of the late King, of which no man in the three kingdoms can show the like.” Just at this time the lately appointed Master of the Tents died, a great chance for the family, which was not neglected by Francis, for he followed up his first petition with another. “I engaged in your service in the late wars,” he writes; “at Edgehill II was the first man struck, and was stripped and left for dead, but being found alive next day was taken to Oxford, where the late King ordered great care to be taken of me, so that I was able to serve at Bristol and Naseby, and taken prisoner at the Vale of Evesham. I beg the Mastership of the Tents, void by death. My father and grandfather were Yeoman and Groom of the Tents above 100 years.” Clearly there was no resisting the pertinacity of Captain Francis Bowles, whose bluff, soldier-like petition has a peremptory tone, which scarcely admits of refusal. The appointment was made, and from that time forth, King Charles, who above all things loved a quiet life, was prompt in granting every request (and they were many) of the Bowles family. There were usually two Masters of the Tents, and we soon after find William Bowles as one, the other being held by one Robert Child Esq., so Francis probably obtained some other appointment more congenial to a military man.

In 1666 William Bowles, one of his Majesty’s Privy Chamber, a Justice of the Peace, and eminent for his “loyalty”, applied to be made a baronet, to which assent was given, but the honour was changed at his desire to that of knighthood, an alteration he had a prudent reason for seeking, in the extravagance and gambling propensities of his eldest son. This son, also William, held the second Mastership of the Tents, with his father as chief, and afterwards in conjunction with his brother Charles, on his father obtaining the post of Keeper of the Royal Wardrobe at Greenwich. Sir William died in 1680, and by his will left an estate at Clewer to his eldest son, and the bulk of his property to Charles, with a reversion of a large part of it to William’s children - in the event of his having a family - “in order,” as he says, “to prevent the estate from being destroyed.”

George Bowles, Sir William’s elder brother, adopted the profession of his maternal grandfather, Dr. George Baker, who had been surgeon to Queen Elizabeth. Dr. Bowles studied at Leyden after matriculating at Queen’s College, Oxford. Like most seventeenth century physicians, he was an ardent botanist, and was in the habit of exploring this neighbourhood with his scientific friends. His grandfather, Dr. Baker, wrote an introduction to Gerarde’s first “Herbal,” and in the 1633 edition of that quaint work, the editor, Thomas Johnson, among the acknowledgments in his preface, remarks that “Mr. George Bowles of Chislehurst in Kent must not  here be forgot, for by his travels and industry I have had knowledge of divers plants which were not thought, nor formerly knowne to growe wild in the kingdom, as ye shall find in divers places in this book.”

He died in 1675, leaving one son and several daughters. The family had parted with their Chislehurst property at the commencement of the Commonwealth, and at the time of his death he was living in Peckham, Surrey. By one of these touches of sentiment which is so pleasant to come across in old wills, he desired to be interred at Chislehurst. As it had never been the family burial-place, his only reason could be the affection in which he held his old home, and the peaceful churchyard he had known from his boyhood. Being as a stranger, and debarred from sepulture within the church, he desires to have his executors to have his body buried without ostentation “as nigh to the church wall as may be permitted, and on the south side between the buttress that is next to the chancel door, and the next buttress that tends to the church porch.” The Rector interpreted his desire in the most liberal manner, by laying him in the porch, where his brother Sir William and his wife were afterwards, by their special desire, laid beside him.

Lady Bowles, who was the daughter of Dr. Donne, the poetical Dean of St. Paul’s, died in 1679; and in the following year Sir William took a second wife, Mistress Margaret Bruce, widow, whose society he did not long enjoy, as he only survived the marriage for two months. The second Lady Boles consoled herself in the following year with a third husband, one “Samuel Somerford of the Middle Temple, Esq., aged 38.” She had described herself at the time of her former marriage as “about 50,” and in the licence for this she appears as “about 40” - an amusing instance of a feminine foible of great antiquity. Her step-daughter, Margaret Bowles, was guilty of a similar misstatement. At the time of her marriage with Peter Scott, whose age was 21, she described herself as “about 20,” when, on the showing of the Parish Register, she was at least 27. Her husband was grandson and heir to Sir Peter Scott of Camberwell; after his marriage he took Orders, and, on the prayer of his father-in-law, was presented by the King to the living of Sunninghill, Berks, and eight years later became a Canon of Windsor.

William Bowles only held the Mastership of the Tents for two years after his father’s death, being succeeded by his brother Charles. In 1685, the year of the accession of James II, Charles Bowles was appointed a Commissioner of Musters, and in that position gave offence to the King by refusing to dispense with the test and oath to certain Roman Catholics who wished to enter the army. At the instigation of King James, the Lords of the Treasury refused to pass the accounts of his office, and did not reply to a petition that they should do so, which he sent them. From that time the “tents, Toils &c.,” ceased to be a department in the office of the Royal Wardrobe. William went to live in Buckinghamshire on the estate left to him by his father, and Charles retired to the old family mansion on Clerkenwell Green. When William died in 1697, without issue, Charles succeeded to the Property at Clewer, where he died in 1700. From his eldest son were descended the Bowles family of North Aston Hall, Oxon.