TOWNSEND, Joseph (by 1704-63), of Honington, Warws.

Townsend, whose father by ‘long experience of his temper and behaviour’ left him only an annuity of £200, a ‘very reasonable provision ... for a person of no trade or employment’, was through his younger brother’s death enabled to marry and to buy the Honington estate in 1737.3VCH Warws. v. 94. Chauncy Townsend was his cousin, James Oswald his brother-in-law, and, through his wife’s family, he had other important parliamentary connexions. He entered Parliament for Wallingford at a contested by-election in 1740, apparently as a last minute nominee of Walpole’s;4Robt. Hucks to Walpole, 5 Feb. 1741, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. in 1741 transferred to Westbury, where Chauncy Townsend had an interest; and went back to Wallingford in 1747, when Chauncy replaced him at Westbury. Voting with the Administration in all recorded divisions, he was classed as an Old Whig in 1746 and a government supporter in 1747.

After 1747 Townsend’s health declined.5Add. 32735, f. 573. He did not stand again, and died 8 July 1763.