biography text
Rowney succeeded his father at Oxford as a Tory, voting against the Administration in every recorded division. The second Lord Egmont wrote of him in his electoral survey, c.1749-50:
It is remarkable of this man, who is a rough clownish country gentleman, always reputed a rank Jacobite, and has drunk the Pretender’s health 500 times, that when the Pretender’s son came into England he was frightened out of his wits, and ordered his chaplain to pray for King George which he had never suffered him to do in his life before.
He was one of the Tory gentlemen who refused to join the county association in defence of the Hanoverian succession during the 1745 rebellion.1R. J. Robson, Oxfordshire Election of 1754, p. 2. He died 27 Oct. 1759.