William Cowper, 1st Earl, lord chancellor of England. He was grandfather of William Cowper, the poet.
Background
William Cowper was born in about 1665. He
was the son of Sir William Cowper, 2nd Baronet, of Ratling Court, Kent. , a Whig member of parliament of some mark in the two last Stuart reigns. His younger brother, Spencer Cowper (1669 - 1728), was tried for the murder of Sarah Stout in 1699, but was acquitted; the lady, who had fallen in love with Cowper, having in fact committed suicide on account of his inattention.
Career
Cowper enjoyed a large practice at the bar, and had the reputation of being one of the most effective parliamentary orators of his generation. He lost his seat in parliament in 1702 owing to the unpopularity caused by the trial of his brother Spencer on a charge of murder. In 1705 he was appointed lord keeper of the great seal, and took his seat on the woolsack without a peerage. In the following year he conducted the negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners for arranging the union with Scotland. In November of the same year (1706) he succeeded to his father's baronetcy; and on the 14th of December he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cowper of Wingham, Kent. When the union with Scotland came into operation in May 1707 the queen in council named Cowper lord high chancellor of Great Britain, he being the first to hold this office. He presided at the trial of Dr Sacheverell in 1710, but resigned the seat when Harley and Bolingbroke took office in the same year. It was published by Lord Campbell in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors. Reappointed lord chancellor by George I in 1714, he promoted the Riot and Septennial Acts. By 1718, however, he was voting increasingly with the Tories, disgusted by the power-lust of some of his colleagues, and resigned a month after receiving an earldom. He continued to lead the opposition in the Lords until his death in 1724. Cowper supported the impeachment of Lord Oxford for high treason in 1715, and in 1716 presided as lord high steward at the trials of the peers charged with complicity in the Jacobite rising, his sentences on whom have been censured as unnecessarily severe. He warmly supported the septennial bill in the same year. In his last years he was accused, but probably without reason, of active sympathy with the Jacobites.
Politics
Despite being a court Whig, he kept a cautious distance from the Junto.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Burnet says that "he managed the court of chancery with impartial justice and great despatch the most eminent of his contemporaries agreed in extolling his oratory and his virtues. "
Connections
He was twice married - first, about 1686, to Judith, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Booth, a London merchant; and secondly, in 1706, to Mary, daughter of John Clavering, of Chopwell, Durham. The 1st earl left two sons and two daughters by his second wife. The eldest son, William (1709 - 1764), who succeeded to the title, assumed the name of Clavering in addition to that of Cowper on the death of his maternal uncle. His wife was a daughter of the earl of Grantham, and grand-daughter of the earl of Ossory. On the death of his mother he also inherited the barony of Lucas of Cradwell. The son of this marriage, George Nassau, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738 - 1789), inherited the estates of the earl of Grantham; and in 1778 he was created by the emperor Josepha prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The 5th earl (1778- 1837) married a daughter of Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, by whom he had two sons; and his widow married as her second husband Lord Palmerston, who devised his property of Broadlands to her second son, William Francis Cowper-Temple who was created Baron Mount Temple in 1880. The elder son, George Augustus Frederick (1806 - 1856), 6th EarlCowper, married Anne Florence, daughter of Thomas Philip, earl de Grey; and this lady at her father's death became suo jure baroness Lucas of Cradwell. On the death without issue in 1905 of the 7th earl, who was lord lieutenant of Ireland 1880-1882, the earldom and barony of Cowper, together with the viscountcy of Fordwich, became extinct; the barony of Butler fell into abeyance among his sisters and their heirs, and the baronies of Lucas and Dingwall devolved on his nephew, Auberon Thomas Herbert (b. 1876).