# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Howe, Scrope

​HOWE, SCROPE, first Viscount Howe (1648–1712), born in November 1648, was eldest son of John Grubham Howe of Langar, Nottinghamshire, by his wife Annabella, the natural daughter of Emanuel Scrope, earl of Sunderland (created 1627), to whom was granted the precedency of an earl's legitimate daughter 1 June 1663. John Grubham Howe [q. v.], Charles Howe [q. v.], and Emanuel Scrope Howe [q. v.] were his brothers. He was knighted on 11 March 1663, and was created M.A. of Christ Church, Oxford, on 8 Sept. 1665. From March 1673 to July 1698 he sat in parliament as M.P. for Nottinghamshire. Howe was a staunch and uncompromising whig. On 5 Dec. 1678 he carried up the impeachment of William Howard, lord Stafford [q. v.], to the House of Lords (Journals of the House of Lords, xiii. 403-4). In June 1680 Howe, Lord Russell, and others met together with a view to deliver a presentment to the grand jury of Middlesex against the Duke of York for being a papist, but the judges having had notice of their design dismissed the jury before the presentment could be made (Hist.MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. pt. i. p. 479). On 23 Jan. 1685 he appeared before the king's bench and pleaded not guilty to an information 'for speaking most reflecting words on the Duke of York.' Howe made a humble submission, and on the following day the indictment was withdrawn (Luttrell, i. 326). He took a part in bringing about the revolution, and with the Earl of Devonshire at Nottingham declared for William in November 1688 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. ii. p. 460). On 7 March 1689 he was made a groom of the bedchamber to William III, and held the post until the king's death. In 1693 he was made surveyor-general of the roads (Luttrell, iii. 60), and in the same year was appointed, in succession to Elias Ashmole [q. v.], comptroller of the accounts of the excise, an office which he appears to have afterwards sold, not to Lord Leicester's brother, as Luttrell states (vi. 606), but to Edward Pauncfort (Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1714-19, p. 29). Howe was created Baron Clenawley and Viscount Howe in the peerage of Ireland, by letters patent dated 16 May 1701, but does not appear to have taken his seat in the Irish House of Lords. At the general election in October 1710 he was once again returned for Nottinghamshire. He died on 16 Jan. 1712 at Langar, where he was buried.
Howe married: first, in 1674, Lady Anne Manners, sixth daughter of John, eighth earl of Rutland, by whom he had one son, John Scrope, who died young, and two daughters, Annabella and Margaret; secondly, in 1698, the Hon. Juliana Alington, daughter of William, first baron Alington of Wymondley, by whom he had four children: viz. (1) Emanuel Scrope, who succeeded him as the second viscount, and was appointed governor of Barbadoes, where he died on 29 March 1735; (2) Mary, who was appointed ​in 1720 a maid of honour to Caroline, princess of Wales, and married first, on 14 June 1725, Thomas, eighth earl of Pembroke and fifth of Montgomery, and secondly, in October 1735, the Hon. John Mordaunt, brother of Charles, fourth earl of Peterborough, and died 12 Sept. 1749; (3) Judith, who became the wife of Thomas Page of Battlesden, Bedfordshire, and died 2 July 1780; and (4) Anne, who married on 8 May 1728 Colonel Charles Mordaunt. Howe's widow survived him many years, and died on 10 Sept. 1747. The Irish titles became extinct upon the death of his grandson William, fifth viscount Howe [q. v.], in 1814.
G. F. R. B.