LEVESON GOWER, John (1694-1754)

As head of the Staffordshire Tories and that rare exhibit, a Tory official in the Pelhamite (Whig) administration of the 1740s and 1750s, Gower was successful in maintaining and developing his interest during his career in and out of Parliament. Gower succeeded to the peerage as a minor following the death of his father from what appears to have been a genetic urinary problem. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 46, f. 105. Reported by the Post Boy to be ‘a very hopeful and promising youth’, with the peerage he also inherited a claim to the Bath inheritance as well as a considerable interest in the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme and in the counties of Staffordshire and Yorkshire. Post Boy, 6-8 Oct. 1709. It is probably testament to his mother’s strength of character that her son’s minority did not significantly alter the family’s standing in these areas. In the election of 1710, for instance, William Burslem^‡ was returned for Newcastle on the Gower interest in spite of previous allegations of bribery that had been levelled against him by his Whig opponents. HP Commons 1715-54, i. 320; 1690-1715, ii. 536; Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers, 371/14/02/100.

Noted a minor in an assessment of support for Henry Sacheverell in March 1710, in June of the following year Gower was marked as a Tory in a list of the patriots of the previous year’s session. By October 1711 he had begun to attempt to exert his interest by joining with a kinsman, Peyton, in offering his support for Mr Herbert for a living on part of the Bath estate disputed between several competitors, of which Gower was one. Thynne Pprs. 26, f. 195. In the winter of 1711 he also had early experience of the House, when he petitioned for permission to bring in a bill to enable him to make a settlement for his forthcoming marriage to Lady Evelyn Pierrepont. The petition was referred to the judges for their opinion on 10 Dec. and then committed just under a fortnight later following the judges’ favourable report. On 17 Jan. the House ordered that the committee should be revived and two days later Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, reported that the committee had proposed a few amendments but otherwise found the bill fit to pass. On 9 Feb. 1712 it received the royal assent.

Although he was still underage at the time of the queen’s death, Gower soon found himself the subject of several requests for his interest in the forthcoming elections. In October 1714 Gower was applied to for his interest on behalf of Thomas Paget^‡, styled Lord Paget, in the elections for Staffordshire, Paget’s father Henry Paget, 8th Baron Paget (later earl of Uxbridge) entreating that Gower would prove ‘merciful to the young man at first setting out,’ and the same month, Henry Dawnay^‡, Viscount Downe [I], also sought Gower’s support for his candidature for Yorkshire in partnership with Sir Arthur Kaye^‡. It was not until February 1716 that Gower eventually took his place in the House, following a concerned appeal to his mother from his father-in-law, Kingston, in the autumn of 1715 urging that the young man should assure the new king of his allegiance and quash the suspicions that he, like other members of his Granville kindred, harboured Jacobite sympathies. HMC 5th Rep. 188, 189. Although Gower subsequently took his seat in the House and kept clear of overt Jacobite plotting, such suspicions continued to dog him for much of his career. His second wife, Penelope Atkins, was daughter of a member of the Commons who also seems to have flirted with Jacobitism half-heartedly. Gower threw in his lot with the Pelhams following the fall of Walpole (Robert Walpole^†, later earl of Orford), was brought into the administration as lord privy seal in 1745 and was then rewarded for his steadfastness with promotion in the peerage to an earldom. His career will be further considered in the next part of this work.

Gower succumbed at the age of 60 and was succeeded in the peerage by his eldest surviving son, Granville Leveson Gower* [1746], then serving as Member for Lichfield, as 2nd Earl Gower (later marquess of Stafford).