In 1710, he moved to London, staying in the house of the father of John Bowes, who had been one of Jollie's students and would one day become Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Not thirty names of his students are known, but the list includes Thomas Bradbury, Benjamin Grosvenor, D.D., William Harris, D.D. (1675?–1740), John Bowes (1690–1767), Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Thomas Secker (in 1708–9), archbishop of Canterbury, and Nicholas Saunderson, scientist and mathematician.
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Bowes was the illegitimate son of John Bowes the 10th Earl of Strathmore, and Kinghorne.
In 1767, the granddaughter of Sir William Bowes – the "Bowes heiress" Mary Eleanor Bowes – married John Lyon, 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, who changed his surname to Bowes due to a provision in her father's will that any suitor had to take the family name.