HOWE, George (c.1594-1647), of Berwick St Leonard, Wilts. and Chancery Lane, London

Howe’s father was granted arms in December 1625, but George Howe and his elder brother John, created 1st baronet after the Restoration, chiefly owed their establishment as substantial country gentlemen to their maternal uncle, Sir Richard Grobham. Grobham, who was descended from Somerset farming stock, enriched himself in the City of London, acquired property from his wife’s family, the aldermanic Whitmores, and bought further land in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. In an indenture of January 1627 in which the Howe brothers were described as his ‘servants’, Grobham, who was childless, designated as his principal heir his great-nephew, George Grobham of Broomfield and Enmore (then aged about five), son of their sister Anne. The provision was reasserted in Sir Richard’s will of December 1628 and the inquisition post mortem of March 1630; the Howe brothers, who were executors, had merely reversionary interests in the main estates and consolationary bequests in additional lands. However, not only did George Grobham die at some time between December 1639 and March 1643, but it seems that long before this his Howe uncles had taken possession of major portions of the Grobham legacy and secured themselves in their respective county elites.9Wilts. N and Q, v. 32-9; Abstracts Wilts. IPMs Chas. I, 103-7; Vis. of England and Wales Notes, xiii. 95

While John Howe married the daughter of a master in chancery and lived mainly in Gloucestershire, about the mid-1620s George married a Kentishwoman and subsequently settled at Berwick St Leonard’s, sometimes known as Cold Berwick, situated in the Wiltshire parish of East Knoyle about a mile from the parliamentary borough of Hindon. In 1634 he also bought the manor of Searchfield in Hampshire.10VCH Hants, iv. 562. By the late 1630s he was probably on the Wiltshire commission of the peace, and if not, still a man of some standing locally. In December 1637 the lords of the admiralty asked Howe, justice of the peace John Toppe and two others to investigate a complaint by the dean of Windsor, Christopher Wren, who was rector of East Knoyle, that men digging for saltpetre had undermined his pigeon-house. Then, if not before, Howe was drawn into a long-running multi-party dispute involving Wren, his chaplain at Hindon free chapel Samuel Yerworth, the saltpetre-men and various local constables and inhabitants. Reporting on 6 January 1638, Howe and Toppe blamed the collapse of part of the building squarely on the saltpetre-men, a verdict likely to have won approval from those in Hindon who had been objecting to the services demanded of them by the latter.11CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 217, 434, 502, 506, 515; 1636-7, pp. 52-3, 148, 193, 208; 1637-8, pp. 37, 143.

There is no evidence as to whether Howe was a candidate in parliamentary elections at Hindon in March and October 1640. However, at the by-election in March 1641 occasioned by the death of Sir Miles Fleetwood*, Howe appears to have mounted a challenge. On that occasion the indenture seemed to show that local gentleman Thomas Bennett* had been returned by a majority, but when on 13 August Bennett’s death prompted a motion for a writ for a second by-election, thanks to interventions by Sir Walter Erle* and others, it emerged that Howe had already questioned the legality of Bennett’s election.12Harl. 164, f. 28v How long this had been pending is unclear. Perhaps Howe’s petition, referred to committee only on 18 August, had lain gathering dust for some time; that is not unlikely, although it leaves unanswered questions about why MPs like Erle, a noted oppositional figure, should remember it at this juncture.13CJ ii. 261b. On 18 August several MPs again queried the legitimacy of Bennett’s sitting and blocked the new writ, but thereafter, although order was taken for Howe to be informed the matter was in hand, it sank under the weight of important business before the House.14Harl. 164, f. 38v.

Howe’s allegiance during the first civil war is opaque. His brother John acted as a commissioner to raise money for the king in Wiltshire and as a consequence was fined £120 by the county committee in May 1645.15Waylen, ‘Falstone Day Bk.’ 346. On 3 December that year, George himself was found to have given money to both sides (including £100 to parliamentarian sheriff Colonel Edmund Ludlowe II* and £35 10s to parliamentarian commander Sir Edward Hungerford*), and required to hand over a further £100 to the same committee.16Waylen, 'Falstone Day Bk.’ 356. But payment in full by the agreed date of 13 December apparently removed any royalist taint – at least in the eyes of a critical mass of voters locally and of well-disposed persons in London. On 30 December, following the belated issue of a writ that October, more than 30 voters returned him as member for Hindon.17C219/43/3, no. 5; CJ iv. 305a. However, at an unknown date a smaller group elected Ludlowe’s uncle, Edmund Ludlowe I* of nearby Kingston Deverill.18C219/43/3, no. 8. According to Colonel Ludlowe’s published account, the bailiff and burgesses elected his uncle first, but ‘the rabble of the town, many of whom lived on the alms of’ Howe, then chose him, and the sheriff, Alexander Thistlethwayte*, ‘pretending that they had chosen the latter ... returned both’. ‘By this means Mr Howe got first into the House’, although he was commanded to withdraw when the confusion was discovered.19Ludlow, Mems. i. 132. The Memoirs were correct as to weight of numbers, but the local men of substance generally seem to have supported Howe; the contest may well have been shaped by rivalry between the uncompromising colonel and the Presbyterian-leaning man who had replaced him as sheriff.20CJ iv. 414a. There is no evidence for the claim that Howe took his seat, but he certainly derived some benefit from the election. The double return, referred to the committee of privileges on 7 February 1646, was recommitted that December and disappeared from view.21CJ iv. 431b; v. 1a, 25b, 27b, 30b. In the meantime, on 1 June Howe – described as being ‘of Chancery Lane’ – was discharged by the Committee for Advance of Money* from an assessment of £500 on the ground of having been chosen MP before the assessment was made.22CCAM 55.

Perhaps thanks to links with Wiltshire Presbyterians, Howe’s political rehabilitation was secure: like his brother’s sons Richard Grobham Howe* and John Grobham Howe*, he took a full place in the local elite. Added on 25 May to the Wiltshire commission of the peace, he was recorded in attendance at sessions in Marlborough (6 Oct. 1646; 5 Oct. 1647) and Salisbury (14 Aug. 1647).23C231/6, p. 47; Waylen, 'Diary of Anthony Ashley Cooper', 24; Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, ff. 54, 94. He died on 5 December 1647 with his election to Parliament unresolved.24Vis. of England and Wales Notes, xiii. 95. By a will drawn up in June 1643 he left to his younger son John £800 and property in Somerset (where his wife had a life interest) and London, and to his daughter (?Margaret, b. c.1626), wife of John Still, a token bequest. His heir was his elder son George Grobham Howe†, who was elected for Hindon to the Convention and created baronet in June 1660.25PROB11/203/236; HP Commons 1660-1690.