Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/107

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Howe
101
Howe

liam Penn Curzon, born in 1796, succeeded his paternal grandfather as second Viscount Curzon in March 1820, assumed the name of Howe on 7 July 1821, and on 15 July 1821 was created Earl Howe. On the death of his mother, 3 Dec. 1835, he also succeeded to the barony. A portrait of Howe by Gainsborough is in the possession of the Trinity House; another, by Gainsborough, and a third, anonymous, belong to the family. A fourth, by Singleton, is in the National Portrait Gallery.

[The standard Life of Howe by Sir John Barrow is meagre and inaccurate; the most valuable part of it consists of extracts from Howe's correspondence, but these are given unsatisfactorily, generally without either date or name. A copy of Barrow's Life of Howe, enriched with manuscript notes by Sir Edward Codrington, is in the British Museum (C. 45, d. 27), bequeathed by Codrington's daughter, Lady Bourchier. As Codrington was acting as signal lieutenant on board the Queen Charlotte during May and June 1794, his personal evidence is of high authority; but some of the notes, written on second-hand information, are not to be depended on. An article in the Quarterly Review (lxii. 1), based on Barrow's Life, is, on the whole, very fair; better indeed than the book itself. The other memoirs of Howe are untrustworthy in details. They are: British Magazine and Review, June 1783; Naval Chronicle, i. 1; Charnock's Biog.Nav. v. 457; Ralfe's Nav. Biog. i. 83. Mason's Life of Howe, far from good, but written from personal,though not intimate, knowledge of Howe, does not altogether deserve Barrow's sneer (p.76); Bourchier's Life of Codrington (vol.i. chap,i.) reproduces the substance of many of the manuscript notes referred to above, with fuller details. Other sources of information are: official correspondence and other documents in the Public Record Office; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs; James's Naval History; Chevalier's Hist.de la Marine fraçaise (i.) pendant la guerre de l'Indépendance américaine, and (ii.) sous la première République. The pamphlets relating to the several periods of Howe's career are numerous;some of these have been mentioned in the text; another, hostile,though not so abusive, is A Letter to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount H—e on his naval conduct in the American War (1779),with which may be compared the more favourable Candid and Impartial Narrative of the Transactions of the Fleet under the Command of Lord Howe … by an Officer then serving in the Fleet (1779).]

J. K. L.

HOWE, SCROPE, first Viscount Howe (1648–1712), born in November 1648, was eldest son of John Grubham Howe of Langar, Nottinghamshire, by his wife Annabella, the natural daughter of Emanuel Scrope, earl of Sunderland (created 1627), to whom was granted the precedency of an earl's legitimate daughter 1 June 1663. John Grubham Howe [q. v.], Charles Howe [q. v.], and Emanuel Scrope Howe [q. v.] were his brothers. He was knighted on 11 March 1663, and was created M.A. of Christ Church, Oxford, on 8 Sept. 1665. From March 1673 to July 1698 he sat in parliament as M.P. for Nottinghamshire. Howe was a staunch and uncompromising whig. On 5 Dec. 1678 he carried up the impeachment of William Howard, lord Stafford [q. v.], to the House of Lords (Journals of the House of Lords, xiii. 403-4). In June 1680 Howe, Lord Russell, and others met together with a view to deliver a presentment to the grand jury of Middlesex against the Duke of York for being a papist, but the judges having had notice of their design dismissed the jury before the presentment could be made (Hist.MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. pt. i. p. 479). On 23 Jan. 1685 he appeared before the king's bench and pleaded not guilty to an information 'for speaking most reflecting words on the Duke of York.' Howe made a humble submission, and on the following day the indictment was withdrawn (Luttrell, i. 326). He took a part in bringing about the revolution, and with the Earl of Devonshire at Nottingham declared for William in November 1688 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. ii. p. 460). On 7 March 1689 he was made a groom of the bedchamber to William III, and held the post until the king's death. In 1693 he was made surveyor-general of the roads (Luttrell, iii. 60), and in the same year was appointed, in succession to Elias Ashmole [q. v.], comptroller of the accounts of the excise, an office which he appears to have afterwards sold, not to Lord Leicester's brother, as Luttrell states (vi. 606), but to Edward Pauncfort (Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1714-19, p. 29). Howe was created Baron Clenawley and Viscount Howe in the peerage of Ireland, by letters patent dated 16 May 1701, but does not appear to have taken his seat in the Irish House of Lords. At the general election in October 1710 he was once again returned for Nottinghamshire. He died on 16 Jan. 1712 at Langar, where he was buried.

Howe married: first, in 1674, Lady Anne Manners, sixth daughter of John, eighth earl of Rutland, by whom he had one son, John Scrope, who died young, and two daughters, Annabella and Margaret; secondly, in 1698, the Hon. Juliana Alington, daughter of William, first baron Alington of Wymondley, by whom he had four children: viz. (1) Emanuel Scrope, who succeeded him as the second viscount, and was appointed governor of Barbadoes, where he died on 29 March 1735; (2) Mary, who was appointed