William Lowndes of Astwoodbury was the Elder son of William Lowndes, Secretary to the Treasury 1652 to 1724 by his 3rd wife Elizabeth Martin.
When he was 16 in 1703 he was placed by his father in the Treasury as an Under Clerk, he rose to be Chief Clerk in 1718, retiring in 1759. On his death news papers described him as one of The Auditors of his Majesty’s Exchequer.
His father highly approved of William, referring in his Will to “my esteem which he has merited by his conduct since his Childhood”
On 23rd August 1711 he married Margaret Layton at St Paul’s Cathedral and his father and father-in-law set up a marriage settlement for them which enabled the acquisition of Astwoodbury in 1715,described by Browne Willis as being one of the finest mansions in the country together with it’s estate of 360 acres.
Margaret bore him 9 sons, 3 dying in infancy, and 3 daughters. The youngest surviving son was Thomas, Rector of North Crawley from 1771 to 1794.
William lived to the ripe old age of 88 when on 15th March 1775 he died at his London Residence in Duke Street and outlived his Eldest Son William Lowndes Stone who died in December 1772 and left Astwoodbury to his Grandson another William Lowndes Stone. The Lowndes Stone family farmed the Bury for years.
In the Chancel of Astwood Church there are handsome memorials both to William and his Wife Margaret who died before him and includes a reference to William’s father, the only known memorial to him as there is no reference to him in Winslow Church.
