DOWDESWELL, Richard (c.1653-1711), of Pull Court, Bushley, Worcs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1685 - 1687
1689 - 1710

Family and Education

b. c.1653, 1st s. of William Dowdeswell of Pull Court by Judith, da. of Elkin Wymondsold of Putney, Surr.  educ. Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 27 July 1669, aged 16.  m. 1 Jan. 1677, Elizabeth, da. of Sir Francis Winnington*, and sis. of Edward* and Salwey Winnington*, 5s. (3 d.v.p.) 3da.  suc. fa. 1683.1

Offices Held

Freeman, Preston 1682, Tewkesbury by 1698; sheriff, Worcs. Nov. 1688–Mar. 1689.2

Biography

Dowdeswell was the grandson of Richard Dowdeswell, Member for Tewkesbury 1660–73. The family’s interest in the borough was based upon the ownership of local property, Pull Court, lying in the next parish. After sitting in the 1685 Parliament, Dowdeswell was suggested as a possible Whig ‘collaborator’ to be added to the commission of the peace in 1688 and was selected as sheriff of the county in November 1688. He was returned to the Convention of 1689 and again in 1690. There can be little doubt of his adherence to the Williamite regime, as he was active in the lieutenancy, especially in seizing horses from the disaffected, and was even prepared to act as a surety for Worcestershire’s receiver of the poll tax. He was also active in the Gloucestershire bench. At the outset of the 1690 Parliament he was classed as a Whig by the Marquess of Carmarthen (Sir Thomas Osborne†). In April 1691 Robert Harley* tentatively assessed him as a Country supporter. In the following session, on 31 Oct. 1691, he was appointed to prepare the bill to secure the rights of borough corporations, an indication perhaps of contemporary problems in Tewkesbury. Indeed, by May 1693 Dowdeswell, together with his fellow Member (and father-in-law) Sir Francis Winnington, had set in train a petition for a new charter which was eventually granted by the crown in 1698. On Grascome’s list, compiled originally in the spring of 1693, Dowdeswell was classed as a Court supporter. He was certainly prepared to invest in the regime, lending the government £400 on the security of the parliamentary aid in January 1695. He provided a further indication of this support on 13 Apr. 1695, when he acted as a teller in favour of giving an early hearing to the glass duty bill.3

Returned again for Tewkesbury at the 1695 general election, Dowdeswell continued to support the ministry. He was forecast as likely to support the Court on 31 Jan. 1696 on the division over the council of trade, signed the Association and in March voted for fixing the price of guineas at 22s. He acted as a teller twice during April 1696: on the 17th, at the report of the low wines duty bill, against a clause safeguarding the rights of persons with claims on the hereditary excise by virtue of letters patent from Charles II; and on the 24th, in favour of retaining in the bill establishing the land bank the clause naturalizing subscribers. In the following session he voted on 25 Nov. 1696 for the attainder of Sir John Fenwick†. Two days later he acted as a teller against a motion to refer to the committee on the bill regulating elections a petition from Southwark, arguing the right of people to sit in the House with large personal estates but little landed property. On 3 Mar. 1697 Dowdeswell told against a resolution from ways and means for a duty on all goods containing wool, silk or hair, a tax which would have fallen heavily on his constituents. In the last session of this Parliament, he acted as a teller on 21 Jan. 1698 in favour of a clause to a naturalization bill that no person should benefit who removed himself and his family out of England.

With the aid of a new charter, naming him as one of the 24 ‘principal burgesses’, Dowdeswell was re-elected for Tewkesbury in 1698. In Worcestershire politics he appeared at the county election in favour of the Whigs. On a comparative analysis of the old and new Parliaments he was marked as a Court supporter, but a subsequent calculation queried this definition. On 11 Mar. 1699 he told in favour of taking the second reading of the land tax bill on the following Monday (13 Mar.), but this was resolved for Tuesday instead. This tellership probably indicates less enthusiasm for disbandment than an attempt to delay the committee of the whole on the state of the navy, which was criticizing the conduct of the Earl of Orford (Edward Russell*). Such a motivation would have been entirely consistent with a contemporary analysis of the House into interests, which placed Dowdeswell under Charles Montagu’s* influence. Modern scholars have agreed that he was a follower of the Junto, but have seen a Worcestershire connexion with Lord Somers (Sir John*) as the decisive link. It would in fact be more accurate to characterize Dowdeswell as a committed Whig who not only owed his seat at Tewkesbury to his own efforts, but also played a significant role in Worcestershire politics. Certainly William Walsh* felt that Dowdeswell should be consulted about the forthcoming county contest in 1701. Walsh faced a dilemma in that he did not want a county meeting to intervene in the run-up to the poll to enforce an electoral agreement. Dowdeswell, together with his friends William Lygon and Edmund Lechmere, favoured a meeting of the freeholders, despite uncertainty as to who had the authority to call one in the absence abroad of the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury. He acted as a teller on 5 June 1701, when he supported an attempt to get Richard Porter appointed a land tax commissioner for Suffolk.4

The election of November 1701 saw Dowdeswell keenly espousing the candidature in Worcestershire of William Bromley I*, and willing to discuss with Lygon and Lechmere the joint disposal of their second votes. In a parliamentary calculation by Robert Harley in December 1701, Dowdeswell was classed either as doubtful or absent. Since it is unlikely that Harley was unsure of his views, it is more probable that he was absent for at least the early part of the session. Although he was named to the committee of elections and privileges on 2 Jan. 1702, his next appointment was not until 13 Mar. He was present for the Queen’s speech on 30 Mar. which, as he put it,

occasioned some very warm ones in our House, some setting it out as a proof of her unparallelled goodness and a heart entirely English; others looked upon these great encomiums to be a reflection upon the memory of our late king and asserted that his heart was as entirely in the interest of England as ever anyone’s was and that he had given as good proof of it.

In this letter Dowdeswell again showed himself a committed supporter of Bromley in Worcestershire elections, and an advocate of holding a county meeting to coincide with the quarter sessions to arrange the shire representatives. Returned again for Tewkesbury in the 1702 election, on 19 Nov. he was a teller against declaring John Grobham Howe* elected for Gloucestershire. He also sent detailed parliamentary reports to William Lygon. On 14 Dec. 1702 he discussed in detail the likely composition of the grant of supply. Later the same month, on the 22nd, he sent Lygon a copy of the Commons’ address in response to the Queen’s desire to reward the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†) ‘by which you will find the grateful memory we have for King William’. This was no doubt a reference to the phrase in the address about the ‘exorbitant grants’ of the previous reign and the rejection by the Commons of an amendment describing in the same way the grants of Charles II and James II. On 16 Jan. he informed Lygon of a lengthy debate held the previous day over whether the malt tax bill should be carried up to the Lords. This had been disputed because Members felt ‘that there are some bill[s] of moment depending and therefore it was necessary to keep the money bills in our own possession till these matters were adjusted’. The main item was undoubtedly the occasional conformity bill, the subject of a free conference between the Houses on 16 Jan., which Dowdeswell ‘attended as a spectator till almost ten o’clock and then I left them not likely to make an end to it’. On 6 Feb. 1703 Dowdeswell reported the defeat of the occasional conformity bill the previous day, as the Commons voted to adhere to their rejection of the Lords’ amendments. On 13 Feb. he voted for the Lords’ amendment to the abjuration bill enlarging the time for taking the oath. Four days later he acted as a teller for the second time during the session, in favour of adding to the bill reviving the commission of accounts a clause for stating the debts due to several soldiers for attendance at sieges in Ireland.5

One of the surviving letters from Dowdeswell to Lygon during the 1703–4 session dealt extensively with the second occasional conformity bill. On 7 Dec. 1703, Dowdeswell reported the passage of the bill in the Commons with the hope that it would be opposed in the Lords. There were grounds for optimism, he believed, as ‘a computation is made that it will be flung out by three’ and because the Queen and Prince had gone to Windsor, ‘which we hope will not encourage the passing of it’. He then gave a detailed justification of the Whigs’ actions in opposing the bill even though they were in a minority:

It has every time been very well debated on our side, as we that are against it are apt to judge. We have divided upon it three times and still increased our numbers, though the division this day was 223 and 140. We do not think ourselves wrong in dividing, though we still lost it, for we have thereby showed faces that everyone may judge of us according to their respective opinions: besides we have given in it encouragement to such of the Lords as are against it that it cannot be said all the Commons of England are for it; besides the Queen will see it is not perfectly agreeable to all the nation.

The question of occasional conformity was revived in the following session. Dowdeswell was forecast as a probable opponent of the Tack on 30 Oct. 1704 and did not vote for it on 28 Nov. Two days later he wrote to Lygon recounting the debate on the Tack, which was espoused

as being the best and securest way to make the conformity bill pass with the Lords, but it was opposed as a thing of the last consequence in relation to the carrying on of the present war, which is undoubtedly the security of England, for should the Lords, who have generally protested against receiving any bill with a tack to it, have flung out the said bill by reason of the Tack, which I do verily believe they would, our allies would have been startled, our soldiers must have wanted subsistence and our supplies put so far back as would have given a great advantage to the common enemy; at last after a debate of seven hours we divided upon the question and there were for the Tack 134, against it 251.

Given Dowdeswell’s views on the Tack, it was not surprising that Lygon was doubtful of being able to draw him into supporting Sir John Pakington, 4th Bt.*, rather than Walsh as a partner for Bromley in the forthcoming Worcestershire county election.6

Following Dowdeswell’s re-election for Tewkesbury at the 1705 he was listed as ‘Low Church’. He was absent from the division over the Speaker on 25 Oct. 1705 but had arrived by 10 Dec., when he provided Lygon with an account of the debate over joining with the Lords’ address repudiating the notion that the Church was in danger. Opponents of the resolution pointed out the threats

from papists and Dissenters who are its professed enemies; from the occasional conformists who qualify themselves for places of trust yet still continue Dissenters; from the many pamphleteers who so frequently defame the universities and clergy; from the immorality and profaneness of the age; from the Queen’s charity to the inferior clergy not being perfected, it being delayed by such persons as are about her Majesty’s person; from the Act of parliament which passed in Scotland for their better security; from the many seminaries and schools which are set up by Dissenters.

On 20 Dec. 1705 Dowdeswell received leave of absence for three weeks. However, he was probably back by 24 Jan. 1706 when he was nominated to an inquiry committee. On the 31st he apologized to Lygon: ‘I do assure you that attending three nights a week at committees and the other days sitting so very [late?] I have not had time to write to anybody.’ He reported that the Commons had added a clause to the regency bill ‘to exclude all persons (some only excepted) that at the demise of her Majesty shall have any place or offices of profit under the crown from sitting in the House’ and correctly predicted that the Lords would not let the clause stand in that form. By 12 Feb. he was worried that the whole bill would be lost ‘by the disagreement of the two Houses concerning a clause which we added’. His own position was made clear by the division list of 18 Feb., which noted him as a supporter of the Court on the ‘place clause’. In the following session Dowdeswell remarked to Lygon on 28 Jan. 1707 that the Commons’ work was really beginning. He illustrated what he meant with an account of the previous day’s report from the committee of supply ‘which has agreed to several articles which have been expended the last year and were not contained in the estimate of the expense of the war which was given in and agreed to the last sessions’. The sum involved was about £930,000, which provoked complaints that the Commons had granted all that had been demanded and that ‘it was too great a power which the ministry took upon them to engage the credit of the nation without consent of Parliament’. Dowdeswell was of an opposite view, fully supporting the ministry, ‘since unexpected occasions offered which the ministry embraced and which were so much for the public advantage’. No doubt he was one of the majority that sanctioned the expenditure retrospectively. Dowdeswell also offered a comment on the Queen’s speech recommending the Union: ‘I do judge it will be much opposed in our House, yet with numbers that will not come near to a majority.’ During the summer of 1707, William Walsh discussed Dowdeswell’s possible stance in the by-election for Worcestershire caused by the death of his friend Bromley. Walsh hoped that Dowdeswell could be influenced by his brother-in-law, Judge Tracey, in favour of Sir Thomas Cookes Winford, 1st Bt.*, if it came to a contest. Although no letters survive from Dowdeswell to Lygon for the 1707–8 session, the Journals indicate that Dowdeswell attended at least part of the time. On 15 Dec. his name was added to the committee of privileges (perhaps indicating that he may have been absent at the very beginning of the session, as in 1705). Contemporaries had no difficulty in establishing his political position, two lists of 1708 classifying him as a Whig.7

Re-elected yet again in 1708, Dowdeswell does not seem to have been very active in the new Parliament. He was present in 1709 to vote for the naturalization of the Palatines but, significantly, his name does not appear on any lists detailing the division over the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell in the following session. It seems probable that by this time he was ailing, which may have been a contributory factor to his defeat at Tewkesbury in 1710. It was reported in July 1711 that Dowdeswell was ‘so very weak that [he] cannot survive the autumn’, and on 14 Oct. William Dowdeswell wrote that his father had died ‘suddenly, in the space of four hours, on Sunday last’ (the 7th). Judging by his will, made in 1708, Dowdeswell was a wealthy man. He left £3,000 or £4,000 to each of his children, including £3,000 to his daughter Elizabeth, who had married without his consent. According to a list of 1710 he also possessed £2,000 in Bank stock. He was succeeded by his eldest son, William, who quickly regained the Tewkesbury seat.8

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: Stuart Handley

Notes

  • 1. Vis. Eng. and Wales Notes ed. Crisp, vii. 64–67; Glos. N. and Q. ii. 412; Temple Church Reg. (Harl. Soc. Reg. n.s. i), 70.
  • 2. J. Bennett, Hist. Tewkesbury, 393; Preston Guild Rolls (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. ix), 185.
  • 3. Duckett, Penal Laws and Test Act (1882), 242; Epistolary Curiosities ed. Warner, i. 144–6; Cal. Treas. Bks. ix. 604; x. 915; HMC Portland, x. 75; CSP Dom. 1694–5, p. 325; 1693, pp. 156–7; Bennett, 393.
  • 4. Shrewsbury Corresp. 539; W. L. Sachse, Ld. Somers, 108, 112, 140; Surr. RO (Kingston), Somers mss 371/14/B18, 20, Walsh to Somers, 4, 7 Dec. 1700.
  • 5. Hereford and Worcester RO (Worcester St. Helen’s), Cal. Wm. Lygon letters 40, 55, 64, 67–69, Dowdeswell to Lygon, 16 Nov. 1701, 31 Mar., 14, 22 Dec. 1702, 16 Jan., 6 Feb. 1702–3; HMC Lords, n.s. v. 199–200.
  • 6. Cal. Wm. Lygon letters 83, 86, 104, 106b, Dowdeswell to Lygon, 7, 16 Dec. 1703, 30 Nov. 1704, Lygon to [?Wm. Bromley I*], 30 Jan. 1704[–5].
  • 7. Ibid. 152, 162, 165, 236–7, Dowdeswell to Lygon, 11 Dec. 1705, 31 Jan., 12 Feb. 1705–6, 28 Jan., 15 Feb. 1706–7; Somers mss 371/14/L29, Walsh to Somers, 18 Aug. 1707.
  • 8. Cal. Wm. Lygon letters 434, Roger Tuckfield to Lygon, 28 July 1711; Add. 70375, William Dowdeswell to Edward, Ld. Harley*, 14 Oct. 1711; PCC 6 Barnes; Egerton 3359.