HOWE, Richard (c.1652-1730), of Chedworth, Glos.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Mar. 1679
Oct. 1679
Feb. 1701

Family and Education

b. c.1652, 2nd but o. surv. s. of Richard Grobham Howe. educ. Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 13 July 1667, aged 16. m. 12 Aug. 1673, Mary, da. of Sir Henry Frederick Thynne, 1st Bt., of Kempsford, Glos., s.p. suc. fa. as 3rd Bt. 1 May 1703.

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Wilts. 1677-80, Glos. and Wilts. 1689-90; j.p. Glos. by 1680-7, ?1689-96, Glos. and Wilts. 1700-?d.; dep. lt. Glos. 1702-?14.

Biography

Howe was returned to the first and second Exclusion Parliaments for the family borough of Hindon. He was marked ‘honest’ by Shaftesbury and voted for the bill, but was otherwise inactive. By 1681 he was probably an opponent of exclusion. He stood down at Hindon under a family arrangement and declined contesting Appleby on the Lowther interest. But he obtained his father’s consent to run again in 1685 on condition that he bore all the expenses himself. ‘I need not tell your lordship how ill that will suit with my condition’, he wrote to his brother-in-law Lord Weymouth (Thomas Thynne I). His efforts to induce the Tory Robert Hyde to join with him at Hindon proving fruitless, he hoped that the Whig Henry Powle would consent to combine interests with him at Cirencester, but in the end it was Weymouth who found him a seat at Tamworth. Howe was appointed to only one committee in James II’s Parliament, that to consider reform of the bankruptcy laws, but Weymouth was sufficiently pleased with his performance to recommend him again to the electors in 1688, though James’s electoral agents disapproved. He did not however go to the poll in 1689, and, when he returned to Parliament, it was on his own interest. A strong Tory who refused the Association in 1696, and later a Jacobite sympathizer, he died on 3 July 1730. His heir was his cousin, the eldest son of John Grobham Howe II.

Hoare, Wilts. Branch and Dole, 49; Cumb. RO, LW2/D10, Lowther to Lowther, 22 Jan. 1681; HMC Bath, iv. 368; Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 18, ff. 178, 179, 189; 28, f. 231; PC2/76, f. 253.

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: John. P. Ferris

Notes