CHAPTER I PERSONAL wwwwww ww the Lincolnshire coast, but though he took his turn as High Sheriff for the county he did not reside there, his life being spent in Government offices in London. In 1745 he was gazetted Secretary to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and he held that position for many years, till in 1768 he became Under-Secretary of State for the American Department, and eventually one of the Commissioners of the Board of Customs and a member of Parliament, representing St. Germans in Cornwall for a short time from 1774. John Pownall was a Deputy-Lieutenant for Lincoln, and in the Commission of the Peace for that county, and also for Middlesex, Kent and Surrey. An obituary notice of him in the Gentleman's Magazine says that "his character, for 1 Gentleman's Magazine, 1745, p. 389. B CHAPTER I PERSONAL THOMAS POWNALL, whose name is practically unknown to the present generation, was distinguished in the reign of George III. as a Colonial Governor, a man of affairs with a seat in Parliament; in his later life as an antiquary, and throughout his career as a writer on political questions. His book on the Administration of the Colonies, which first appeared in 1764 when the destiny of the Colonies in North America hung in the balance, passed through several editions in the next ten years, and on that work his claim to remembrance has, till now, chiefly rested. Chapter XII. of this book endeavours to prove that he was also the long-sought author of the famous Letters of Junius. He was born in 1722, the younger brother of John Pownall, Esq., who had a good estate at Saltfleetby on the Lincolnshire coast, but though he took his turn as High Sheriff for the county he did not reside there, his life being spent in Government offices in London. In 1745 he was gazetted Secretary to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and he held that position for many years, till in 1768 he became Under-Secretary of State for the American Department, and eventually one of the Commissioners of the Board of Customs and a member of Parliament, representing St. Germans in Cornwall for a short time from 1774. John Pownall was a Deputy-Lieutenant for Lincoln, and in the Commission of the Peace for that county, and also for Middlesex, Kent and Surrey. An obituary notice of him in the Gentleman's Magazine says that "his character, for 1 Gentleman's Magazine, 1745, p. 389. B 1 abilities, attention, integrity and knowledge of business is so universally known, and hath been so, both by Government and by all persons who have had business to transact with him, or occasion to apply to the offices where he served, that all praise on that head is superfluous." 1 He, Thomas the subject of this memoir, and two other brothers, Richard and Edward, who were in the Guards,2 were the sons of William Pownall, Esq., of Saltfleetby, by his wife Sarah the daughter of John Burniston, Deputy-Governor of Bombay. William Pownall died in 1735, and to his memory his eldest son erected a monument, first in St. Martin's, afterwards removed to St. Margaret's Church at Lincoln, on which he is described as "Armiger ex Stirpe antiqua in Agro Cestriae." That statement is traced to its origin at the end of this book, for to know from whom a man descends is helpful to the understanding of what kind of man he himself was. 3 Though some of his forefathers appear in the Lincolnshire pedigrees of the Harleian Society, their connection with that county was comparatively recent, for, as the Lincoln monument states, they originally came from Cheshire. Those interested in genealogical matters will find in the appendix some pages giving another instance of the well-known fact that the status of families varies through their generations in curves of good and ill fortune, sometimes rising, then falling, then perhaps rising again. It is sufficient to say here that Thomas Pownall, beginning life in the reign of George I., when an old Cheshire descent was claimed for him, did so as one of a family which had taken no share in public affairs since a very remote period. Having ranked for some generations, when at Witton and Barnton, among the yeomen of Cheshire, it had been quite apart from the Court with its influences and ambitions, which made the fortunes of some houses, especially in the reign of Henry VIII., but destroyed those of many others. In the Middle Ages the heads of the "taller poppies" were always cut off, sooner or later, as they rose above the crowd. But he came of pure 1 Gentleman's Magazine, 1795, p. 621. 2 Ibid., 1759, p. 94; 1763, p. 258; 1769, p. 168. |