Family and Education

b. aft. 1763, o.s. of Lewis Allsopp, mercer, of St. Mary, Nottingham by his w. Catherine née Stevens of Chilwell, Attenborough.1 unm. suc. fa. 1792; to estate of Caleb Lowdham of Leicester 2 and took additional name of Lowdham 26 Feb. 1825.

Offices Held

Solicitor to duchy of Cornwall 1822-d.; sec. of lunacy to ld. chancellor 1827-d.

Capt. Leics. vol. inf. 1803.

Biography

Allsopp’s father was enrolled a burgess of Nottingham, where he was a draper, in 1760. Lewis became an attorney in King’s bench, 21 June 1802. His practice at Old Pavement, Nottingham, was continued after his death by the partners of his later years, George Freeth and James Parke. In March 1807, after he had been elected a junior common councilman of Nottingham, he was at first refused his seat because he would not take an oath to keep secret the acts and proceedings of common hall. By September 1807 he was on the finance committee, and afterwards active in many municipal projects such as sewage and gas lighting.3 He was a commissioner for enclosure (1808-28)4 and opposed the enclosure of Nottingham’s common fields, October 1813. In June 1816 he moved the examining of the town gaoler for alleged mistreatment of the Luddite Francis Ward. He remained a junior concilman until his resignation in January 1835. In 1814 and in June 1817 he kept the Home secretary informed of unrest in the Nottingham district.5

His coming into Parliament was somewhat fortuitous. His interest in politics was intermittent, to judge by his voting behaviour at Nottingham, where he did not vote in 1803 and 1812, but generally supported the Blues and was active on behalf of Arkwright in 1812 and Assheton Smith in 1818. Before the election of 1818 he offered himself on the Hallet interest to the electors of Camelford, but withdrew on the day of the election; when that election was declared void and one of the defeated candidates died, Allsopp replaced him successfully.6 While in Parliament, he voted with administration against Tierney’s censure motion, 18 May 1819. In the following month his election was declared void and he was incapacitated from sitting in that Parliament for an election offence. He never sat again, but prospered as a solicitor to the duchy of Cornwall. He died 18 July 1835, ‘at the home of his old friend Joshua Walker esq. in Grove End Road’. By his will, in which the principal beneficiaries were his four sisters’ families, he left £5,000 to Sir George Harrison, auditor of the duchy of Cornwall, ‘my dear and best friend’, and to ‘my friends Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham’ £500 each.7

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes

• 1. Nottingham Mar. Licences (Thoroton Soc. rec. ser. x), 124. They were married at Attenborough, 31 Jan. 1763.
• 2. PCC 209 St. Albans.
• 3. Nottingham Recs. vii. 419; viii. 54, 63, 177, 217, 228, 230, 465.
• 4. Land Enclosures in Notts. (Thoroton Soc. rec. ser. v), 115, 153.
• 5. Luddism in Notts. (Thoroton Soc. rec. ser. xxvi), 66, 70; Pellew, Sidmouth, iii. 179, 189.
• 6. CJ, lxxiv, 405; see CAMELFORD.
• 7. Gent. Mag. (1835), ii. 331; PCC 608 Gloucester.