Background
Thomas Pownall was born at Saltfleetby, Lincolnshire, England, in 1722.
(Sabin 64815. Howes 539. Dedicated to the Right Honourable...)
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military politician Soldier statesman
Thomas Pownall was born at Saltfleetby, Lincolnshire, England, in 1722.
He was educated at Lincoln and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1743.
He entered the office of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations, of which his brother John was then secretary, and in 1753 he went to America as private secretary to Sir Danvers Osborn, just appointed governor of New York. Osborn committed suicide soon after reaching New York (Oct. 6), but Pownall remained in America, devoting himself to studying the condition of the American colonies. At the Albany Congress, in 1754, he met Benjamin Franklin.
In 1756 he returned to England, and presented to Pitt a plan for a campaign against the French in Canada, to begin with the investment of Quebec. In 1757 Pitt appointed him governor of Massachusetts in which office he heartily supported Pitt's policy during the Seven Years' War, and in 1758 encouraged the equipment of a force of 7000 men, to be recruited and armed in New England, but the French power in America once broken, Pownall came more directly under the influence of the lords of trade, and his unwillingness to carry out the repressive policies of that body caused his transfer to the governorship of South Carolina in February 1760. This office he held nominally for about a year, but he never went to South Carolina, and in June 1760 he returned to England.
In 1762-1763 he was commissary-general of the British troops in Germany.
In 1764 he published (at first anonymously) his famous Administration of the Colonies (other editions appeared in 1765, 1766, 1768 and 1774), in which he advocated a union of all British possessions upon the basis of community of commercial interests.
(Sabin 64815. Howes 539. Dedicated to the Right Honourable...)
As member of parliament for Tregony in 1768-1774 and for Minehead in 1774-1780, he at first sided with the Whigs in opposing all plans to tax the American colonists, but he supported North's administration after the outbreak of the War of Independence.
Quotes from others about the person
"Pownall was the most constitutional and national Governor, in my opinion, who ever represented the crown in this province. " - John Adams
Pownall married twice. His first wife was Harriet Churchill, widow of Sir Everard Fawkener and illegitimate daughter of Lieutenant General Charles Churchill. In 1784 Pownall married Hannah (Kennet) Astell, acquiring in the process significant estates and the trappings of landed gentry.