FOWLER, EDWARD: An English clergyman connected with the liberal school in the Church of England and with the "Cambridge Platonists" (q.v.); b. at Westerleigh (8 m. e.n.e. of Bristol), Gloucestershire, 1632; d. at Chelsea Aug. 26, 1714. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (B.A., 1653), and then migrated to Trinity, Cambridge (M.A., 1655). He was for a while Presbyterian chaplain to the Dowager Countess of Kent, and rector of Norhill, Bedfordshire, from 1656. On the passing of the Act of Uniformity, he hesitated for a while, but finally conformed, and, besides two London livings, received a prebend at Gloucester in 1676, and became bishop of that see in 1691. He is related with the Cambridge school by his correspondence with More, especially on ghost-stories, from 1678 to 1681, and by his defense of their doctrines, published anonymously as a "Free Discourse" on the Principles and Practice of certain Moderate Divines . . . called Latitudinarians (London, 1670). Its better-known sequel,The Design of Christianity (1671), vigorously attacked by Bunyan, and the Libertas Evangelica (1680), may also be mentioned. Influenced as he was by the Platonic school, he yet does not strictly belong to their ranks. His type of latitude was that characteristic of the Revolution period, when the movement had largely ceased to occupy itself with higher philosophy and had become practical, political, and ambitious.