Bowden, William (d. 1780)

London merchant and civic leader.

Traded with America. Director of the Bank of England (1763-80). A prominent Dissenter, member of the Presbyterian Board (1772-80), and treasurer of St. Thomas’s Hospital, where he was concerned with sick and maimed merchant seamen. Elected governor of the New England Company, an English Protestant missionary society that aimed to convert New England Indians to Christianity (1772).