POWNEY, Peniston (?1699-1757), of Ives Place, Maidenhead, Berks.

Powney was a large landowner in Berkshire, which he represented as a Tory without opposition for nearly twenty years, consistently voting against the Government. His only reported speech was against the Hanoverians, 18 Jan. 1744.Yorke’s parl. jnl. Parl. Hist. xiii. 463. One of the prominent Tories who agreed to support the Prince of Wales’s programme in 1747,Add. 35870, ff. 129-30. he was put down by the 2nd Lord Egmont for a seat on the Admiralty board on Frederick’s accession. The connexion proved expensive. In 1784 his son, Peniston Portlock Powney, M.P., told the younger Pitt:

I estimate myself a loser of 20,000 pounds by my father’s connection with the late Prince of Wales to whom he was a friend and great assistant. The honours and emoluments promised to my father sank as well as the money with him.

This represented ‘a large loan undischarged by Frederick, Prince of Wales, who incurred this debt during his residence at Cliveden’.Chatham Pprs. PRO.

He died 8 Mar. 1757.