HOWE, Richard Grobham (1621-1703), of Great Wishford, Wilts.

Howe’s parliamentary career went a fair way to match his long life, although he was never a particularly active Member of the House. Much about his activities outside it is also unknown. None the less, his relative wealth, his network of connections within and beyond the Wiltshire elite, his apparently accommodating temperament, and some evidence of local engagement, combine to raise the possibility that he exercised significant influence behind the scenes.

Howe’s paternal grandfather came from Somerset but in the decades before 1640 his father, John Howe senior, was established in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire by marriage to the heiress of Thomas Rich of Little Compton, by inheritance from his maternal uncle Sir Richard Grobham of Great Wishford and by his own consolidatory purchases. Although there is evidence of an early intention by Sir Richard to settle some land on John Howe, the principal heir named in the knight’s will of December 1628 and inquisition of March 1630 was his great-nephew George Grobham, son of John Grobham of Somerset and Anne Howe. The timing and process by which Anne’s brother John Howe senior came to acquire the bulk of the estates from George, still a minor in 1630, of age in December 1639 and dead by March 1643, is unclear. However, it was probably driven by Sir Richard’s executors – except George himself, who was too young to act immediately – namely, John Howe senior, his brother George Howe (who came to possess a share at Berwick St Leonard) and, perhaps above all, Sir Richard’s widow, Dame Margaret, who had a substantial life interest. That interest was not forfeited by her marriage in October 1630 to Sir John St John†, 1st bt. of Lydiard Tregoze.21Wilts. N and Q, v. 32-9; Wilts. IPMs Chas. I, 103-7; Great Wishford par. reg.; Vis. Wilts. 1623, 75; Vis. of England and Wales Notes, xiii. 95; s.v. ‘John Grobham Howe’. It may thus have been in realisation of a long-held and slowly unfolding plan that in the early 1640s John Howe’s eldest son Richard, this MP, married St John’s daughter Lucy; the young couple’s second daughter, also Lucy, was baptized in July 1646.22Great Wishford par. reg. It was not until after St John’s death in 1648 that John Howe senior conveyed all the former Grobham estates in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire to trustees and settled Great Wishford and other Wiltshire property on Richard and Lucy, in return for £3,000 paid to him and £1,000 paid to Richard by Lucy’s brother Walter St John*.23Add. 23682.

Having been entered at Oxford in 1640 simply under his birth name, it was as Richard Grobham Howe that the future MP was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in February 1641.24Al. Ox.; LI Admiss. i. 245. Thereafter, like his younger brother John Grobham Howe*, who was to inherit the Little Compton estates, he was more usually known by the double surname. The brothers managed to avoid visible involvement in the civil wars, but their father, who had acted as a commissioner for raising contributions for the royalist army, had to pay £120 in composition to the Wiltshire county committee in May 1645, while their uncle George Howe of Berwick St Leonard, who had apparently given to both sides, was fined £100 that December.25Waylen, 'Falstone Day Book', 346, 356. Both the latter soon rehabilitated themselves. George Howe was placed on the commission of the peace as early as May 1646 and attended quarter sessions at least twice before his death the following year, while his son George Grobham Howe† was nominated in June 1649 and February 1656, attending at least in July 1657.26C231/6, pp. 47, 160, 326; Wilts. RO, A160/1/1, ff. 54, 94; A160/1/2, p. 90; 'Diary of Anthony Ashley Cooper', Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxviii. 24. John Howe served as sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1650-1 and continued active as a justice of the peace in that county, leaving Wiltshire to his sons. John Grobham Howe was named as a magistrate there in November 1646 and may have been the ‘Mr Howe of Wishford’ present at Salisbury sessions in August 1647, but it was to be Richard Grobham Howe, whose date of appointment is unknown, who was to emerge as the most visibly active justice of the peace in the family.27C231/6, p. 69; 'Diary of Anthony Ashley Cooper', 24. From July 1648 to July 1651 he attended every sitting at Warminster and Salisbury.28Wilts. RO, A160/1/1, ff. 116, 128, 138, 151, 164, 175. In this context the fact that he had been omitted from the commission by October 1653 seems to be testament either to his own disillusionment with the commonwealth regime and conscious withdrawal or to a perception by local men close to the government that he lacked radical or loyalist credentials.29C193/13/4, f. 109v. However, in the aftermath of Penruddock’s rising in March 1655, he returned to the July sessions and attended again in January and July 1656.30Wilts. RO, A160/1/2, pp. 37, 47, 59.

Perhaps, like others, Howe had concluded that participation was the lesser of two evils. In 1656 he was elected to one of ten county seats in Parliament with other relative conservatives including his brother-in-law Walter St John and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*. His brother John Grobham Howe, who had sat for Gloucestershire in 1654, was returned again for that county. By this time evidence suggests John and their father’s loyalty to the government may have been somewhat strained, so it is notable that Richard’s contribution to Commons business was even smaller than his brother’s. The latter being almost certainly always the ‘Mr Howe’ referred to in the Journal, Richard thus did no visible service.

Howe was named as an assessment commissioner in June 1657 and was again at sessions in October, but thereafter he was not specifically recorded again until January 1660.31Wilts. RO, A160/1/2, pp. 97, 165. Notwithstanding his poor showing, however, he was elected to sit for Wilton in 1659, doubtless owing to the Herbert interest. He was no more active than before, although there was an assumption of tacit support for the return of the king. While his brother, once again in the chamber but surreptitiously engaged in plotting, was noted by royalist intelligence as ‘forward but not so able’ as the leading young troublemaker in the Commons, Henry Cary*, 4th viscount Falkland, ‘Dick Howe’ was put down as ‘honest but not as forward’.32CCSP iv. 177.

Agents’ assessments of his sympathies were probably accurate. Not only was he part of the Wiltshire/Oxfordshire axis of kin which included the St Johns, his brother-in-law and trustee John Ernle*, and Sir Henry Lee*, but he may also have been in contact with other royalists in the south and west by this time. Lucy Howe died in March 1658 and at a date unknown, definitely by 1671 but plausibly before May 1660, Howe took a second wife. Anne Dutton was the widow of former delinquent John Dutton*, a Gloucestershire gentleman probably well-acquainted with John Howe senior, but she had contacts of her own. Even after her first marriage in 1648 she had remained part of a community established in Berkshire around her brother Henry King, erstwhile bishop of Chichester, which had observed Prayer Book liturgy; the group survived King’s death in 1653. The scholar John Hales, the author Isaak Walton and the niece of former bishop Brian Duppa of Salisbury were among the many friends among whom Anne held a high reputation on account of her poetic and artistic talents.33‘Anne King’, Oxford DNB; Great Wishford par. reg.

Back in local administration by early 1660, in July Howe was made a gentleman of the privy chamber.34LC3/2, f. 10. That month he was also belatedly returned to the Convention. Before his death over 40 years later he served in five further Parliaments with characteristic quiet moderation, though he did not match the record of his elder surviving son, Richard Howe†. His brother, cousin George and other relatives were also Members after the Restoration.35HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.