LOWNDES, Richard (?1707-75), of Winslow, Bucks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790, ed. L. Namier, J. Brooke., 1964
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1741 - 1774

Family and Education

b. ?1707, 1st s. of Robert Lowndes by his w. Margaret.  educ. Eton; Worcester, Oxf. 13 July 1724, aged 17.  m. Essex, da. and coh. of Charles Shales, a London banker, 1s. 2da.  suc. fa. 1727.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Bucks. 1738-9.

Biography

Lowndes was returned unopposed for Buckinghamshire in 1754 and at both his subsequent elections. He was classed as Tory in Dupplin’s list of 1754 and in Bute’s of December 1761. A supporter of the Bute and Grenville Administrations, he seems to have followed Grenville into opposition, and he voted against the Rockingham Administration on the Opposition motion that the American papers should be laid before the House, 18 Dec. 1765,1 and on the repeal of the Stamp Act, 22 Feb. 1766. He voted with Opposition on the land tax, 27 Feb. 1767, and on Wilkes’s petition, 27 Jan. 1769, but henceforth appears to have supported Administration till he left Parliament; and when he voted with Opposition on Grenville’s Election Act, 25 Feb. 1774, was counted in the King’s list as a dissenting friend. Lowndes’s only reported speech was on 9 Jan. 1770 in a debate on the Buckinghamshire petition. He did not stand again in 1774, and died 6 Oct. 1775.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: Mary M. Drummond

Notes

  • 1. Harris’s ‘Debates’.