William Lowndes was Richard Lowndes only son, his childhood is not documented mainly because of the loss of documents at Whaddon Hall. We do know that he was baptised at St Martin in the fields on 31st March 1735 and that he did not attend Eton or Oxford like his father. In 1756 he recovered from smallpox.
In January 1766 he married Mary, the daughter of Thomas Goostrey of Missenden Abbey and from that date took over his father’s estate in Winslow. Mary brought a marriage portion of £10,000 that was used to pay off a mortgage on the Lowndes property.
William’s main interest was the Buckinghamshire Militia. In 1759 he was a Captain of a company drawn from the Cottesloe Hundred, and is recorded as a Major in 1765 and Lieutenant-Colonel in 1774. He was a deputy lieutenant for Buckinghamshire from 1759 to 1774.
William’s other major interest was hunting and he hunted with the Whaddon Chase Hunt which he had in common with Thomas James Selby the owner of Whaddon Hall. James actually left the Hall to William in his Will but it was rather complicated. His great grandfather William had once tried to buy Whaddon Hall when it was up for sale for £20,000 but could not raise the cash in time so the Selby family acquired it. There is a quote from another hunting acquaintance the Earl of Jersey who wrote:
Mr Selby you hear is dead, and being always, I believe, a very strange man , has shewn himself to be so by his Will and cruelly so for he has left Whaddon Chase and his Estate to Major Lowndes “if his heir at law cannot be found”. Did you ever hear anything so hard, it is leaving him a lawsuit or nothing at all.
Although his immediate beneficiaries were Selby’s cousin Temperance Bedford and Elizabeth Hone, William made good his claim and was appointed receiver of the Estate and kept accounts for it from 1775 where it produced £2,500 per annum. Thereafter he and his descendants changed their name to Selby Lowndes and lived at Whaddon Hall.
This was not to be the end of the legal proceedings however because his eldest son William, born in 1767 a year after his marriage to Mary, faced another legal challenge to the Estate in 1838 but again it was found in favour of his son.
William Selby Lowndes owned the site of the old Manor House of Haudlo Manor in North Crawley opposite the Chicheley Road Junction and in 1799 the Bishop of Lincoln launched an enquiry into the Old Rectory at Broadmead which was a mile from the village and in a ruinous and dilapidated state and a mutual exchange of land was agreed with William in order to site the new vicarage which was built with materials from the old vicarage within the village. This second vicarage was used until 1933 when financial circumstances warranted a smaller rectory and the second rectory was sold to Major AJB Chester.