# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dowdeswell, William (1761-1828)

​DOWDESWELL, WILLIAM (1761–1828), general and print collector, was the third son of the Right Hon. William Dowdeswell [q. v.], by Bridget, youngest daughter of Sir William Codrington, bart., of Dodington, Gloucestershire, and aunt of the admiral. He entered the army as ensign in the 1st or Grenadier guards on 6 May 1780, acted as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Portland, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, in 1782, was promoted lieutenant and captain on 4 May 1785, and was elected M.P. for Tewkesbury, where the Dowdeswells had long possessed great parliamentary influence, on 19 March 1792. In the following year at the close of the session he joined the brigade of guards, under the command of Gerard Lake, at Tournay, and served throughout the campaign of 1793, being present at the affair of Lincelles, at the siege of Valenciennes, and the battles before Dunkirk, and returned to England in the winter. He was promoted captain and lieutenant-colonel on 8 Feb. 1794, but did not again go to the Netherlands, and remained occupied with his parliamentary duties until 1797, when he was appointed governor of the Bahamas. He was promoted colonel on 25 June 1797, and after acting for a short time in command of a battalion of the 60th regiment, he proceeded to India in 1802 as private secretary to Lord William Bentinck, governor of Madras. On 25 Sept. 1803 he was promoted major-general, and in 1804 he was requested to take command of a division of Lord Lake's army, then engaged in a trying campaign with the Maráthá chieftain, Jeswant Ráo Holkar. He joined the army on 31 Dec. 1804, and commanded a division during Lake's unsuccessful operations against Bhurtpore, and in the field until the setting in of the hot weather. In October 1805, on the opening of the new campaign, Dowdeswell was detached with a division of eight thousand men to protect the Doab, and remained there until Lord Cornwallis made peace with Holkar. He then took command ​of the Cawnpore division, where he remained until February 1807, when he temporarily succeeded Lake as commander-in-chief in India, but was soon after compelled to leave that country on account of his health. He received the thanks of the government and of the directors of the East India Company for his services, and was promoted lieutenant-general on 25 July 1810; but in the following year he retired from the service, on inheriting the family estates, with full rank, but no pay. He then devoted himself to collecting prints, and especially prints by old English engravers, and his collection was sold by auction in 1820 and 1821. He was one of the first collectors who made a speciality of what is called ‘grangerising,’ and the most important item in the 1820 sale was his copy of Gough's ‘British Topography,’ enlarged by him from two to fourteen volumes by the insertion of more than four thousand views and portraits. In 1821 his unequalled collection of Hollars was sold, and realised 505l. 16s. 6d. He died at his residence, Pull Court, Worcestershire, on 1 Dec. 1828, when, as he was never married, his Worcestershire estates devolved upon his brother, J. E. Dowdeswell, M.P. and master in chancery, and his Lincolnshire estates upon the Rev. Canon Dowdeswell of Christ Church, Oxford.
[Royal Military Calendar; Gent. Mag. February 1829; Bennett's History of Tewkesbury, Appendix 38, pp. 439–45.]
H. M. S.