William Selby Lowndes - Public Career

Public Career

William Selby Lowndes served as a knight of the shire representing Buckinghamshire in the United Kingdom House of Commons from 1810-1820.

He was known as a High Church Anglican and became a supporter of Viscount Sidmouth's policy of limiting the number of dissenting ministers given official toleration. He came into conflict with the Nonconformist minority of the local population in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Selby Lowndes, who was Chairman of the county Quarter Sessions (at this period a body of magistrates with both judicial and administrative responsibilities), had refused registration as a dissenting minister to the Reverend Peter Tyler who had a congregation at Haddenham, Buckinghamshire. Tyler was to become a major figure in the political campaigns of the Bucks dissenters and a leading local Liberal. His case was one of those raised by opponents to Sidmouth's bill on the issue.

The conservative religious views of Selby Lowndes, which balanced the comparative liberalism of the Grenville family who normally filled one of the two county seats in Parliament, made him an attractive candidate to hold the other seat. However in the 1820 election, when he unexpectedly did not seek re-election, his seat was gained unopposed by the Hon. Robert Smith an advocate of the Whig policy of religious liberty.