Richard Lowndes was the elder son of Robert Lowndes of Winslow and the Grandson of William Lowndes, secretary to the Treasury.
RICHARD LOWNDES of HILLESDEN
Richard Lowndes was born in London on 16 September 1706 the second son of Robert Lowndes of Winslow and his wife Margaret and baptised at St. Martins in the Fields. His older brother William died at the age of 14. Richard was educated at Eton School together with his younger brother Robert, and Worcester College, Oxford,
He married a cousin Essex Shales in 1730 at St. Pauls Cathedral, Essex was a descendent of the Duke of Clarence and a sister of Ann Shales who married Charles of the Chesham branch of the Lowndes family. Charles Shales the girls father was a London banker. Richard and Essex had two daughters and 1 son named William who were all baptised in London where they always kept a town house.
Richard was High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire for 1738/1739 and then served for 33 years as Tory MP for Buckinghamshire from 1741 to 1774. He did not contest the 1775 Election, probably because of ill health or age and died in 1776.
During that time also serving as MP’s for Buckinghamshire were Richard Grenville, Sir William Stanhope & Earl Verney. Richrd apparently did not get on well with the Verney’s because he was a Tory and the Verney’s were Whigs.
Richard was now extremely wealthy because his grandfather William had in 1723 purchased Crawley Grange Estates with an agreement between William Temple of North Crawley and Alexander Denton of Hillesden by which £3376.5s was paid to Denton and £8123.15s to Sir Peter King Justice of the Court of Common Pleas making £11,500 purchase price for lands in North Crawley, Astwood, Chicheley & Newport Pagnell.
Grandfather William then immediately settled the Crawley Grange Estate on Richard and his descendents to keep it out of the hands of his spendthrift son Robert.
In 1727 Richard’s spendthrift father Robert died, the same year that Richard became 21, and left Winslow Hall and his Winslow Estates to his son. His father’s Estate was a mess and Richard inherited Lawsuits and in 1729 he brought a case in Chancery against the Executors and his Uncles and Brothers for non-payment of Legacies. In 1728 he went through a procedure of common recovery to break his grandfather William’s Entail and Mortgaged his estate to Shropshire relatives for £6,000 which took 50 years to pay off. His Cash flow was eased.
In December 1745 when Bonny Prince Charley and his army marched down to Derby, it was wrongly reported that he had reached Northampton, it was said Richard packed up his plate and his family were to have moved to Wotton as a more private place with the Grenvilles.
Richards only son William also came into good fortune because he was made heir to his friend Thomas James Selby of Whaddon. He inherited the Whaddon Estate in 1772 on condition that he changed his surname to Selby and went to live at Whaddon Hall. Subsequent generations of his family took the name Selby-Lowndes.
Richard Lowndes preferred to live at Hillesden in later life even though he had Winslow Hall & Crawley Grange at his disposal. In North Crawley he had always been an absentee landlord. It could have been the nostalgia of the Royalist Stronghold near Buckingham with its Cromwell musket balls still in the church door, or indeed for its rustic beauty and rural views from its high position in the countryside, and the former home of Alexander Denton the great royalist which inflenced his choice, but it was actually the more practical reason that he wished his son William to have the use of Winslow Hall and he lived at Hillesden with his two unmarried daughters Anne and Mary .
In the North Crawley Enclosure Award of 1773, Richard Lowndes was allocated 240 acres spread over 5 open Fields being Edensea, Fields End, Mathews, Mill Hill and the Moors Field.
He died in 1776, Richard Lowndes Will addressed him as Richard Lowndes of Hillesden although he was buried at St Lawrence Church Winslow.
There was a portrait of Richard Lowndes painted by Gainsborough in 1759 which sold at Sotheby’s in 2010 for £12,500.