Summary of the life of William Lowndes 1652 to 1724
William Lowndes was born on 1 November 1652 in Winslow, the son of a yeoman farmer Robert who farmed perhaps 100 acres and ran a pub called the Angel on the corner opposite the Bell. He was educated at The Royal Latin School in Buckingham where he had a good grounding in Latin. Winslow at the time never had any houses above 1.5 storeys high and was mainly Wattle and Daub with a thatched roof. It was a time when Winslow was recovering from the Civil War and it was known that different people in the town supported both sides.
When he was 15 in 1667 he went to London, it was also the year when his father Robert had a Court Judgement against him for debt and the Bailiff came and seized his goods. He must have had a sponsor of some kind, the owner of the Bell, Peter Jackson and others were known to have London Livery Companies, but it could also have been the Duke of Buckingham who was the absent Lord of the Manor and may have known him for his outstanding scholarship in Latin at school, he attended St Johns Royal Latin School in Buckingham. The sending away of Robert’s son was rather and act of desperation to get him out of the way while his father’s financial affairs were rapidly deteriorating, and he was probably drinking the profits of the pub.
In 1675 at the age of 23 he was working as an under-clerk at the Treasury in Whitehall, again his sponsorship was unknown although there was a Thomas Lowndes already working there as an excise clerk. In 1669 he recorded New Year Gifts that he had given in his notebook:
£5 for Mr Kingdom (Lemuel Kingdom, Deputy Paymaster of the Forces
£1 for Nell Gwynn
£2.10s for The Duchess of Portsmouth.
As under-clerk in 1675 he received a salary of £50, later raised to £100 and then with additional fees of between £30-£300’
He came to the attention of Charles 11 in 1676 through an investigation into the handling of Coffee Duties and in 1677 received a reward from him of £100.
Henry Guy of Tring Park who became Secretary to the Treasury in 1679 made William his deputy and in 1686 Chief Clerk with and annual income with salary and fees of £700. In April 1695 Guy nominated him as his successor with a salary of £1000 rising to £1200 which post Lowndes held for 29 years, the rest of his life.
William became MP for Seaford in 1695 and St Mawes in 1715. Throughout his Parliamentary career he avoided being labelled a Tory or a Whig and by presenting the Treasuries financial measures each year to “The Ways and Means Committee” acquired the nickname of “Old Ways and Means”. He became MP for East Looe in 1722 and his last appearance in The House of Commons was on 20 January 1724 4 days before he died.
He is credited with inventing the saying “Take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”
He first started buying land in Winslow in 1676 when he bought 29 acres of copyhold land from William Retchford the Rector of Addington for £296 and then in 1678 he bought from Edward Palmer 72 acres of land which his father had previously mortgaged to Palmer in 1668. William was described as A Scrivener of the Parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Westminster and paid £513 for this land so in 2 years he had bought as much land as his Grandfather and Father had ever owned. It is noticeable though that he never bought back The Angel Inn where his father had drunk away his profits and lost his land in the first place.
On 26th October 1679 William married Elizabeth the daughter of Sir Roger Harsnett of Dulwich at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Westminster. William became involved in the management of his father in laws property in Dulwich and was made Executor of his Will in which he left William and Robert his elder son by Elizabeth £10 each even though Elizabeth had died earlier on 6 November 1680. This was only 12 days after Robert had been born on 25 October 1680.
Back in Winslow on 3 February 1680 he had bought 180 acres or freehold called Berry Lands from the Duke of Buckingham jointly with a William Gyles and they then divided it up between them. At age 27 he had become the largest landowner in Winslow, from people who were not Winslow residents. He then bought up lands from Winslow residents various owner occupiers for the next 20 years. When the Duke of Buckingham’s Trustees put the Whaddon Chase and the Manor of Whaddon up for sale in 1689 he bid £17000 but was outbid by a Mr Selby who paid £20000. He would have had it but could not raise the money in time.
On 25th November 1683 he married Jane, daughter of Simon Hopper of Richmond. Jane unfortunately died of smallpox in 1685 leaving a daughter Anne born in 1684. He now had two motherless children. Anne was brought up by her Grandmother Mrs Hopper.
In 1686 married for a third time Elizabeth, the daughter of a Reverend John Martyn. They had two children William in 1687 (William of Astwood Bury) and Elizabeth born in 1688, but his wife died of smallpox in 1689.
By 1687 Lowndes was living with his family in Princes Court near St James’s Park in Westminster, with “The Bury” at Chesham as their country house. In 1692 he bought a permanent base for himself in Winslow and moved to a larger house in Broad Sanctuary, outside Westminster Abbey in 1695.
In 1691 Lowndes married for the fourth time to Rebecca Shales. She came from a prominent banking family claiming descent from the Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward 1V. Rebecca’s brother Charles was appointed Royal Goldsmith in 1694 and also became Trustee and executor for William Lowndes himself. Rebecca produced 14 children between 1693 and 1710 including one set of twins, 3 were baptised at Edmonton because of the Shales connections there and the others at Westminster.
In 1692 as a result of his fourth marriage he developed a bigger plan for Winslow and by 1697 had bought Winslow Manor for £4900, built Winslow Hall and established a family vault in the St Lawrence church.
He transferred the lordship of the Manor to his eldest son Robert in 1703 as a marriage settlement although he was still paying for the repair of Winslow Hall.
In North Crawley and Astwood-
Lowndes first bought in 1715 after marriage of his second son William of Astwoodbury to Margaret Layton, the Estate of Astwoodbury including the Mansion House which was described as one of the finest mansions in the country by the historian Browne Willis. The 360 acres and 17 acres of woods was entailed to his second son William’s children but because the eldest grandchild William Lowndes Stone predeceased his father the Estate went to the next generation William Lowndes Stone who was born at Brightwell Baldwin in Oxfordshire.
In 1718 he brought Broughtons Manor which consisted of The Manor House, a Cottage, a Mill and 154 Acres (15 of which were in Open Fields) and distributed in North Crawley, Filgrave, Tyringham, Emberton and Hardmead. About 90 of those acres were in North Crawley- Moat Farm.
In 1720 he purchased Hollows Manor and Broadmead Farm including 170acres in North Crawley and Moulsoe. Mostly all enclosed but 66 acres in the common fields of North Crawley and Thursey Wood.
In 1720 he also purchased a house and 3 fields totalling 15 acres at Ringtail or Broadmead.
In 1723 the year before his death he bought Crawley Grange Estate including the largest house in the parish built by Roger Hackett. 10 days before his death he entailed the Crawley Grange Estate to his grandson Richard by his eldest son Robert.