Nothing is known of him. He may have been the brother of Alexander Nowell, a prominent divine both under Mary and her successor, and for a time Head Master of Westminster, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, and for over forty years Dean of S. Paul's. This Alexander was a leader of education; he wrote a Catechism that became a school text-book and he assisted to re-found a free school at Middleton. It is not a wholly unsound conjecture, if we suppose that the John Nowell, who assisted to re-found Giggleswick was, if not a brother, at least a member of the same family as Alexander whose home was at Whalley. We know at least that he was Vicar of Giggleswick till 1558. During his first five years Richard Carr, assisted for a time by Thomas Iveson, was continuing to teach in the small and irregular building of James, his uncle; and as a stipend he was receiving annually £5 6_s._ 8_d._ This money ceased to be paid after 1553, in which year on May 26 Edward VI "of happy memory" was pleased to grant a Charter to the School and to endow it with property. This he did at the humble petition of John Nowell, vicar, Henry Tennant, gentleman, and other inhabitants of the town and parish of Giggleswick in Craven. Quite forgetful of the School's previous existence for over half a century, he ordains that "from henceforth there may and shall be one Grammar School ... which shall be called the Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth of Giggleswick, and the same School for ever to continue of one Schoolmaster or Headmaster and of one Under Master or Usher." This limitation of the teaching staff to one Headmaster and one Usher led to serious qualms of conscience among the Governors in the last decade of the eighteenth century, when the revenues and numbers of the School had been very greatly increased. They then added to the number of the staff and discovered that they had contravened the Charter of Edward VI, and this difficulty was one of those that led to the application in 1795 for new Statutes.