Life

Born 22 August 1754, he was son of Thomas Howe (died 1776), rector of Great Wishford

Great Wishford

Great Wishford is a village in the Wylye Valley in Wiltshire, 3 miles north of Wilton, Wiltshire and approximately 5 miles northwest of Salisbury. It is situated at a curve in the Wylye river, and has a triangular street layout comprising South Street, West Street and Station Road.-History:The...

 and Kingston Deverill

Kingston Deverill

Kingston Deverill is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. Its nearest towns are Mere, about away, and Warminster about to the north east.The Church of England parish church is called St Mary's.-External links:* at genuki.org.uk...

, Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

. His mother was Frances, daughter of Thomas White of Tattingstone

Tattingstone

Tattingstone is a village in Babergh district in Suffolk, about south of Ipswich with a population over 500. It is the location of Tattingstone Place and also of the folly known as the Tattingstone Wonder...

, near Ipswich

Ipswich

Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...

, Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

. His paternal grandfather was John Howe, 1st Baron Chedworth

John Howe, 1st Baron Chedworth

John Howe, 1st Baron Chedworth was a British peer and politician, the son of John Grubham Howe.In 1712, he succeeded his father as Vice-Admiral of Gloucestershire, but was removed from office in 1715....

.

Howe was educated first at Harrow School

Harrow School

Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...

, where he gave early signs of what was to be a lifelong interest in the stage and the turf. He matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford

The Queen's College, Oxford

The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...

, on 29 Oct. 1772, but left without a degree after three years' residence, and took up residence at his mother's house at Ipswich. His mother died in 1778. In 1781 he succeeded his uncle, Henry Frederick Howe, 3rd Baron Chedworth, in his title and estates, but he continued to live in comparative seclusion, and seldom visited his properties in Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

 and Wiltshire.

Late in life he lived in the house of a surgeon named Penrice at Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth, often known to locals as Yarmouth, is a coastal town in Norfolk, England. It is at the mouth of the River Yare, east of Norwich.It has been a seaside resort since 1760, and is the gateway from the Norfolk Broads to the sea...

, and devoted himself to a study of Shakespeare. He died unmarried on 29 October 1804, and the barony became extinct. He was buried, as he had directed, beside his mother in St. Matthew's churchyard, Ipswich, on the fifth day after his death. The inscription on his monument in St. Matthew's Church describes him as a man of cultivated tastes and of Whig sympathies.

He left much money to his friend Penrice. Charles James Fox

Charles James Fox

Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...

received a legacy of £3,000; many theatrical and other friends were liberally remembered; and large legacies were left to his executors and trustees, by whom the Howe estates in Gloucestershire were divided and sold in 1811 for £268,635. Chedworth's relatives unsuccessfully disputed his will on the ground of insanity.

Works

Chedworth published two pamphlets, Two Actions between John Howe, Esq., and G. L. Dive, Esq., tried by a Special Jury before Lord Mansfield at the Assizes holden at Croydon, August 1781, 2nd edit., London, 1781; and A Charge delivered to the Grand Jury at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the County of Suffolk, Ipswich [1793].

To prove his sanity, Penrice edited for publication Chedworth's Notes upon some of the Obscure Passages in Shakespeare's Plays; with Remarks upon the Explanations and Amendments of the Commentators in the Editions of 1785, 1790, 1793, London, 1805. A friend, Thomas Crompton, published Letters from the late Lord Chedworth to the Rev. Thomas Crompton, written from January 1780 to May 1795, London, 1828.