LOWRY, John (d. 1669), of Cambridge, Cambs.

Lowry’s family background is obscure. Nothing is known of his parentage, although John Lowry, a fishmonger to whom the Cambridge corporation leased some land in 1620, may well have been his father.24Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, lease bk. A, 1558-1637, f. 183. The first record of the future MP is his marriage in 1612, after which he and his wife were living in Cambridge, in the parish of the Holy Sepulchre, and began to raise a family.25Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge par. reg. He is said to have been apprenticed as a chandler and by 1617 he was being described as such.26Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 304n; CUL, EDC 2/4/2, f. 8v. It may be that he inherited an ongoing business from his father-in-law, probably the Mr Lane who was the previous owner of the booths on Stourbridge Common on which Lowry took out a long-term lease in 1630.27Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, f. 187v. Like many traders in Cambridge, Lowry was probably heavily dependent on the annual Stourbridge fair. In later years he took out further leases to secure stalls for the duration of what was the most important commercial event in East Anglia.28Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 281; Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, lease bk. B, 1638-1712, f. 66. He was not one of the Cambridge chandlers who in 1629 tried to challenge the right of the university authorities to fix the price of candles within the limits of the town.29Downing Coll. Cambridge, Bowtell MS 141. He did, however, oppose the enclosures of Jesus Green and Parker’s Piece.30CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 37.3, no. 100. In late 1637 the Cambridge mayor, John Lukin, employed him as one of the Ship Money collectors in the town.31CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 36.1, no. 27. By 1639 he owned a shop next to the belfry of St Michael’s church, for in that year the curate, William Loe, complained to the episcopal visitors sent by Bishop Matthew Wren that he was often disturbed by the noise made by Lowry. More seriously, the visitors heard how Lowry refused to bow at the name of Jesus during services at the Holy Sepulchre church, thus identifying him as an opponent of the Laudian innovations.32Episcopal Vis. Returns for Cambs. ed. W.M. Palmer (Cambridge, 1930), 35-6; W.M. Palmer, ‘Episcopal vis. returns, Cambs. 1638-62’, Trans. Cambs. and Hunts. Arch. Soc. iv. 348; LPL, MS 943, p. 616. Lowry’s reputation as an anti-Laudian probably played a major part in his election to the Long Parliament in 1640.

In 1640 Lowry was by no means a major figure on the Cambridge corporation. Since the mid-1620s he had held a number of civic offices in the town, but so far had not risen beyond the rank of common councilman.33Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, ff. 130, 133, 139v, 142, 143v, 151v, 174, 248v, p. 299. In March 1640 he was a signatory to the return declaring that the corporation had elected one outsider, Oliver Cromwell*, to serve as MP alongside the far more substantial figure of Thomas Meautys*, clerk of the privy council and their MP in the four previous Parliaments.34C 219/42, pt. 1, no. 55. If that result had been unexpected, the outcome of the election to the Long Parliament was even more so. Disregarding the nominations made by Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch†), the Cambridge burgesses on 27 October chose Cromwell and Lowry.35Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 304. What infighting lay behind this upset can only be the subject of speculation. That Lowry was not even an alderman probably indicates that he was backed by more junior members of the corporation rebelling against theirs seniors. His supporters may well have been a godly faction who had promoted Cromwell’s candidacy and who saw in Lowry someone with the same religious views.36A. Barclay, Electing Cromwell (2011), 115-43. Once Lowry was their MP, the aldermen had little option but to promote him when the next vacancy occurred among their ranks in May 1641.37Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 332; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 148-9.

It can be assumed that Lowry joined Cromwell in opposing the policies of Charles I. In early May 1641 they both wrote to the Cambridge corporation recommending that its members take the Protestation to protect the Protestant religion. The measure was ‘a just, honourable and necessary act’ which would bring ‘stability and security’ to the kingdom; taking the oath ‘carries strength with it, it is dreadful to adversaries, especially when it is in order to the duty we owe to God, to the loyalty we owe to our king and sovereign, and to the affection due to our country and liberties’.38Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 332-3; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 311. Lowry himself had taken it on 7 May.39CJ ii. 137a; Procs. LP iv. 247, 253. Passions ran high in Cambridge and not all his constituents supported him. In August 1641 one of them, Nicholas Tabor, was summoned to appear before the Commons after it was reported that he had called Lowry ‘an ass and a fool’ and that, on being warned that Lowry was an MP, had replied that ‘he cared not, if Mr Lowry and he both were hanged’.40CJ ii. 252a. On 9 June 1642 Lowry successfully persuaded the Commons to allow £30 from the £230 which had been raised in Cambridge for the relief of Ireland to be distributed to those Irish Protestants who had taken refuge in the town. The following day he promised to provide a horse as his contribution towards Parliament’s military preparations.41PJ iii. 52-3, 474.

Once the fighting began, Lowry sided with Parliament, probably remaining on at Westminster as an obscure but firm supporter of the war effort against the king. In late March 1643 he evidently endorsed the proposal that all MPs should be forced to make a financial contribution: Sir Simonds D’Ewes* included him among the ‘mean or beggarly fellows’ who backed this move without themselves having any estates to lose.42Harl. 164, f. 345v. On 6 June he was among those who took the oath pledging loyalty to the king and Parliament following the discovery of Edmund Waller’s* plot.43CJ iii. 118b. The committee created on 10 June to consider the petition from Cambridge University was the most important, if unsurprising, of his committee appointments during this period. One of the few other committees to which he was named was that on the security of King’s Lynn (2 Oct. 1643), another matter of some interest to his constituency. He was given leave to retire to the country for a short time that September.44CJ iii. 124b, 229b, 260b. On 30 September, presumably on his return, he took the Solemn League and Covenant.45CJ iii. 259a.

On several occasions during the civil war Lowry proved to be of use to Parliament as its agent in Cambridgeshire. In October 1643 he and the leading Suffolk MP Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston* were sent by the Commons to Cambridge to mediate in a dispute between the town and the garrison stationed at Cambridge castle. They were also instructed to make sure that the local committees there, including possibly the committee of the Eastern Association*, met as often as they were supposed to.46CJ iii. 278b. Two weeks later Lowry replaced the indisposed Sir Dudley North* on the delegation of MPs who travelled to discuss the state of the garrison at Newport Pagnell with Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.47CJ iii. 296a. In July 1645 North wrote to Lowry to say that the Commons wanted the cavalry forces raised to defend Cambridgeshire sent into Lincolnshire and that other urgent steps should be taken to protect East Anglia from the royalist forces advancing southwards.48CJ iv. 202a. Over the following weeks Lowry twice wrote to Speaker William Lenthall keeping him informed of the unfolding crisis. On 27 August he reported that the king had defeated their forces at Huntingdon, that he had then threatened Cambridge, but that he had finally moved off towards Bedford.49Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 24, 118-119.

Normally, an Cambridge alderman like Lowry could expect to serve his turn as mayor, but it was recognised that the mayoralty would be difficult to combine with service in Parliament. By August 1643 the fact that he had not yet served in the town’s highest office was sufficiently unusual for the corporation to order that he should continue to rank above those appointed as aldermen after him, even if they had already served as mayor.50Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 369. A year later it decided that this anomaly should cease and so did appoint him as mayor. The Commons gave him special permission to absent himself from Parliament during his year in office.51Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 406; CJ iii. 637b.

Even before he took up this new position Lowry was using it to court controversy. Controversially, new Cambridge mayors had long taken an oath promising to protect the university’s privileges. Since 1641 some on the corporation had made a point of reviving this ancient dispute.52Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 153-6, 162. Lowry now sought to widen it into a general challenge to the university’s involvement in the town’s affairs, and began by refusing to take the oath. On 18 September 1644 the corporation backed him by declaring that former orders enforcing the oath no longer applied.53Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 406. The problem, as he explained later to the Commons, was the requirement placed on the mayor to promise ‘to look carefully to the assize of bread and beer, which oath was impossible for him to keep because the taskers of the university used to take that care upon them’.54Add. 31116, p. 451. In October 1644 he objected that another of the oaths required by the university violated the 1642 Act barring clergymen from exercising temporal jurisdiction, declaring that, ‘the town and corporation of Cambridge had been a long time in subjection and bondage under the university, and [that] now they resolved to shake off that yoke’. He also asserted that it was contrary to Magna Carta.55CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 37.4, no. 60α. Lowry may have wished to avoid binding himself in a promise which would compromise his support for any further attempts to reform the university in the wake of the sweeping purge by the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) earlier that year. When the dispute over the oath was raised in the Commons in 1645, the investigation proceeded in parallel with the passage of the bill to complete Manchester’s reforms.

The initial decision by the Commons on 4 August 1645 to refer the matter to the Eastern Association committee at Cambridge was soon reversed, for, as an MP, Lowry was entitled to have his case heard by a committee of the Commons itself. The committee to which it was then referred seems to have been the one appointed two years before to hear the university’s petition. As Lowry had been named to it when it was first convened in June 1643, the decision to add him, along with Cromwell, to it on 8 October 1645 may simply have reflected the fact that he could now sit in judgement on the case, having just been succeeded as mayor by Richard Timbs*.56CJ iv. 229a-b, 241a, 301a; Add. 31116, pp. 447-8, 451. Timbs proved equally keen to continue the dispute. In Lowry’s mind, these challenges by the corporation to the university doubtless connected to his support for further reform of the university. Later in October 1645 he was included on the committee to decide how fellowships still vacant after the great purge of the Cambridge academics should be filled and then the following month he sat on the committee which considered the bill to regulate the university’s affairs.57CJ iv. 312a, 350b. His appointment in June 1648 to the committee to judge scandalous offences confirms that he supported the view that Parliament should actively assert its powers to uphold the highest standards among the clergy.58CJ iv. 563a.

Lowry’s attitude towards the events of 1647 and 1648 is unclear. Indeed, whether he was then attending Parliament at all is uncertain, as the Commons appears only to have used him when it needed someone to encourage better tax collection in the Cambridge area. In January 1648 he again substituted for Sir Dudley North when he and Nathaniel Bacon* were ordered to make sure that the assessments due from Cambridgeshire were delivered to London. He and Francis Russell* were instructed to perform a similar task in November 1648, when Parliament was anxious that the army be paid on time.59CJ v. 419b, vi. 87b; Worden, Rump Parliament, 62. It may be that Lowry felt he could be of more use in Cambridge than at Westminster.

Lowry survived the purge of the Commons on 6 December 1648 and a month later was named as one of the judges to try the king.60A. and O. He refused to attend the trial and did not sign the death warrant, but this was not held against him. Three weeks after the king’s execution the Commons heard, via Thomas Grey*, Lord Grey of Groby, that Lowry was willing to signal his adherence to the new regime by dissenting from the vote of 5 December.61CJ vi. 148a. Such compliance was rewarded later that year when he applied to the Commons for compensation for money he had spent in the service of Parliament. His petition in July 1649 had the crucial advantage of having Cromwell’s backing, for Cromwell wrote to Speaker Lenthall recommending ‘justice and charity’, for one whose ‘sufferings for the public have been great, besides the loss of his calling by his attendance here. His affections have been true and constant; and, I believe, his decay great in his estate.’62Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 91. The result was that the Commons voted him £300 on 17 July to make up for his losses.63CJ vi. 263a.

Lowry had continued to serve on all the existing local commissions and in May 1649 had also been appointed to the new commission for the draining of the fens.64A. and O. Other local offices followed for him and his relatives. In March 1650 he wrote to the chairman of the Compounding Committee, John Ashe*, recommending John Jenkinson, ‘who is very honest and able, a good lawyer’, for the job as steward of the local sequestrations committee. What Lowry did not mention was his personal interest in the appointment, for Jenkinson married his granddaughter Hannah Lowry the following month.65CCC 189; St Clement’s, Cambridge par. reg. f. 44. An attempt by Thomas French to get the office for himself came to nothing: French deferred to Lowry’s wishes.66CCC 233. As it happened, Lowry and French’s father, Thomas French*, were at this time working together to secure for the Cambridge corporation the purchase of the local fee farm rents formerly due to the king.67Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, ff. 21, 26, 30. In July 1650 Lowry himself was appointed colonel of one of Cambridgeshire militia companies by the council of state.68CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 508, 509; SP28/223: Cambs. militia warrants, 1650-1. (His captains included John Lindsey, the man who had reported Tabor’s slanderous remarks to the Commons in 1641, and Thomas French junior.69CJ, ii. 252a; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 512.) Although he only held the position for about a year, Lowry’s tenure proved controversial. As early as August 1651 the council of state was ordering him to account for the money which he had received for his unit and to return any sums remaining in his hands.70CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 367, 371. Before long, several of his men had complained to Timbs and another member of the Cambridgeshire county committee that he had failed to hand over any of the money due to them. The matter was still unresolved in 1664 when the attorney-general took legal action to recover the money he had allegedly embezzled. Those questioned by the commissioners sent by the exchequer to investigate either did not know or gave evidence favourable to Lowry.71E134/16ChasII/Mich22; Bodl. Rawl. C.948, p. 24. In the meantime, Lowry had continued to attend meetings of the Rump, being occasionally named to committees, such as those for Plundered Ministers (4 July 1650) or that to determine Lord Grey’s expenses claim from the Scottish campaign (7 Aug. 1651).72CJ vi. 437a, 618b, vii. 93a. His appointment to the commission for the Great Level in 1649 may have seemed little more than a courtesy to him as one of the local MPs, but he is known to have attended at least one of its meetings in 1653.73S. Wells, The Hist. of the Drainage of the Great Level (1830), 276. In September 1652 the Cambridge corporation agreed to pay the arrears due to him for his wages as their MP.74Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives. common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 338, 419; common day bk. 1647-81, f. 41.

Once elevated to the protectorate in 1653, Oliver Cromwell did not altogether forget his friendship with Lowry. In June 1654 he personally appointed him as one of the four comptrollers of the inward customs of the port of London.75Bodl. Rawl. A.328, p. 81. A potentially valuable office, officially worth £250 a year, this was probably Cromwell’s attempt to alleviate the poverty Lowry had claimed in 1649. But no further advancement materialised and Lowry spent the rest of this decade as no more than one of the civic leaders of Cambridge. Cromwell had left him far behind. As the town’s veteran Member from the Long Parliament, he may have hoped to be re-elected as MP in 1654, but the Instrument of Government had limited the town to only one MP and this time it was another of their number, Richard Timbs, whom the Cambridge freemen selected for that honour. This does not mean that Lowry was out of favour with his colleagues. In August 1657 the corporation agreed to appoint him for a second term as mayor. On hearing the news, Lowry, who was then visiting London, immediately wrote back declining the offer.76Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, ff. 90, 92v. Throughout the 1650s he was still being named to the major local commissions, most notably the commissions for scandalous ministers in 1654 and for securing the peace of the commonwealth in 1655, and it is likely that he was one of the more active figures in the enforcement of the policies of the protectoral government in and around Cambridge.77A. and O.; Bodl. Rawl. C.948, p. 24. If, as has been claimed, he issued a trade token of his own in 1657 decorated with a portrait of the lord protector, that would serve as powerful confirmation of his loyalty to his former colleague, although it would seem that no actual examples of these tokens have survived.78C.C. Babington, ‘A cat. of the tradesmen’s tokens known to have been issued in the co. of Cambridge’, Communications Camb. Antiq. Soc. i. 20.

Lowry’s election to the 1659 Parliament was probably dependent on the restoration of the old franchises and thus of the second Cambridge seat. This allowed the corporation to elect him with Timbs, the favoured candidate in the two previous Parliaments.79Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 109v. No record survives of any activity by Lowry in this Parliament. Its dissolution in April 1659 only briefly interrupted Lowry’s service at Westminster, for he resumed his seat the following month when the Rump was recalled. On 20 May he was added to the committee to release prisoners held on grounds of conscience, after the petition from St Botolph’s Aldgate (a London parish with which he had no known connection) was referred to it, and on 22 July he was included on the committee to consider whether the officials of the Westminster law courts should lend their annual salary to Parliament.80CJ vii. 659b, 691a. Otherwise, his main interest seems to have been in customs affairs. Twice, on 22 July and 26 September, the Rump confirmed his appointment as cheque of the inward customs. On the latter occasion, this confirmation followed the decision to proceed with the bill to authorise the continued collection of the customs revenues beyond 1 October and, unsurprisingly, Lowry had already been named to the committee on that bill. The following day (27 Sept.) he and Robert Atkyns* were tellers for the minority who wanted George Foxcroft appointed as one of the customs commissioners.81CJ vii. 727b, 786b, 787a. When the House was called three days later, Lowry was discovered to be absent, but a motion that he be fined £20 was rejected.82CJ vii. 789b. One satire, published after the sittings were again interrupted that autumn, implied that Lowry was a lightweight unsuited to represent Cambridge on his own.83A proper new ballad on the Old Parliament [1659, 669.f.22.7]. He had resumed his seat by January 1660, when he was named to the committee on the bill concerning the Engagement (10 Jan.) and when the council of state granted him the use of lodgings in Scotland Yard which had once been occupied by the keeper of the bird cages.84CJ vii. 806b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 184, 315.

Lowry probably had few reasons to welcome the Restoration and he was certainly at odds with the resulting political climate. From July 1660 he ceased to be included on the commission of the peace for Cambridge and it was probably at about the same time that he was also removed from the county bench.85C181/7, p. 50. The new government seemed equally reluctant to continue him on other local commissions. He seems not to have stood in either the 1660 or 1661 elections. For the time being, he retained his position on the Cambridge corporation, but, with the passage of the Corporations Act in 1662, even that could not be considered secure. When the commissioners empowered by this Act to purge the Cambridge corporation arrived in July 1662 to begin their proceedings, Lowry was probably one of their prime targets. Ordered to appear before them on 18 July, he failed to obey the summons, sending a message to say that he was ‘weary’. (One of the commissioners, (Sir) Thomas Sclater*, thought it suspicious that Lowry was well enough for the two of them to meet in the market place at Cambridge 11 days later.) In the face of his refusal to attend, the commissioners stripped him of his place on the corporation.86Bodl. Rawl. C.948, p. 30; W.M. Palmer, ‘The reformation of the corp. of Cambridge, July 1662’, Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xvii. 106. This ended Lowry’s political career. The attempt in 1664 to recover from him the militia arrears may have added financial ruin to his political eclipse.87E134/16ChasII/Mich22. It has been suggested, on the basis of the local hearth tax return, that by 1664 he had been reduced to living in a cottage.88E. Powell, ‘Notes on the hearth taxes for the town of Cambridge’, Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. n.s. xiii. 94n. This may explain why he seems to have left no will when he died in 1669. He was buried in the churchyard of the Holy Sepulchre church.89Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge par. reg.; F. Blomefield, Collectanea Cantabrigiensia (Norwich, 1750), 80. Beyond the fact that his grandson, John Lowry, a clergyman who had conformed to the Church of England, was curate in the Cambridgeshire parish of Doddington, nothing is known of the subsequent history of the Lowry family.90The Eton College Reg. 1441-1698 ed. W. Sterry (Eton, 1943), 218-19, Al. Cant.