Tablature for a six-course lute, with one item, probably for gittern, that was never completed, may be found on the parchment flyleaves of London, British Library, MS Stowe 389, a fourteenth-century volume of statutes in Latin and Anglo-Norman. A prefatory note to the lute tablature reads ‘The xviijth daie of maye the same writtin by one Raphe Bowle to learne to playe on his Lutte in anno 1558.’ As a result of this note, and the interest of the music on the leaves, Bowle has become an established figure in lute research, but much of what is commonly assumed to be knowledge about him is supposition, and is open to question. The use of third person in the inscription (‘to playe on his Lutte’) and the indefinite article (‘by one Raphe Bowle’) should indicate that the note is not in Bowle's hand, and that the scribe did not know him. Indeed, it may indicate that the tablatures are not in Bowle's hand either; the pieces were perhaps transcribed into Stowe 389 from a larger collection of Bowle's, now lost, bearing a prefatory note that the scribe chose to retain. In that case, the date of 18 May 1558 may identify the day when the scribe added the note, not when Bowle copied the music. This is consistent with the layout of the inscription, correctly reported in RISM, Bvii, 192, where the information about Raphe Bowle forms – should one wish to read it so – a parenthesis between two elements of the scribe's dating note:

Even on this interpretation, however, whereby we would no longer have anything in Raphe Bowle's hand, nor any date save 18 May 1558 as a terminus ad quem for his original (and lost) copy of the tablature, he remains a lutenist who made an important collection of pieces, and his identity therefore continues to be a matter of considerable interest. A likely candidate is the Ralph Bowle of St Lawrence in Thanet, for whom Administration was granted in 1575–6. It is not clear how he is related to any other recorded Kentish Bowle/Bowles/Bolles.