passing a bill for ‘explaining the powers of juries in prosecution for libels,’ but his motion, though supported by many distinguished senators, was vehemently condemned by Lord Chatham and rejected. ‘A Letter from a Member of Parliament to one of his Constituents on the late Proceedings of the House of Commons in the Middlesex Elections’ (1769) has been attributed to Dowdeswell (Grenville Papers, iv. 450), and when, through the troubles arising from these proceedings, the lord mayor and Alderman Oliver were committed to the Tower, they were visited there by Dowdeswell and the leading whigs. Next year (March 1772) he led the opposition to the Royal Marriage Bill, but he separated from the majority of his political associates in their desire to modify the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles.
In the spring of 1774 he went to Bath for his health, and later in the summer visited Bristol on the same fruitless errand. He broke a blood-vessel, and in September the physicians recommended a change of climate. He went to Nice in November 1774. His weakness continued to increase, and he died, ‘totally exhausted,’ at Nice, on 6 Feb. 1775; when the body was brought to England and buried in a vault in Bushley Church, on 9 April 1775. His widow, who died at Sunbury, Middlesex, on 27 March 1818, and was placed in the same vault with her husband, requested Burke to ‘ commemorate the loss of his friend,’ who thereupon wrote the long and highly eulogistic epitaph on the monument erected at Bushley to Dowdeswell's memory in 1777. ‘The inscription,’ said Burke, ‘was so perfectly true that every word of it may be deposed upon oath,’ and in it Dowdeswell is described as ‘a senator for twenty years, a minister for one, a virtuous citizen for his whole life,’ and deservedly lauded for his knowledge of his country's finances and of parliamentary procedure. His inflexible honesty in refusing all emoluments ‘contrary to his engagements with his party’ was universally acknowledged. Numerous letters and extracts of letters from Lord Rockingham to him are printed in Albemarle's ‘Rockingham,’ he corresponded with George Grenville, and Burke wrote him several long and important communications. Many of his speeches are reported in ‘Cavendish's Debates,’ and in i. 575–90 of that work are notices of his life from a manuscript memoir written by his son, John Edmund Dowdeswell, one of the masters in chancery and formerly member for Tewkesbury. Dowdeswell left issue five sons and six daughters, several of whom died young. His library was sold in 1775.
[Walpole's Letters (Cunningham), v. 6, 73; Walpole's George III, i. 354–5, ii. 46, 196, 309, 356, 420, iv. 90, 284, 316; Walpole's Journals, 1771–83, i. 13, 49, 55, 63, 468; Burke's Works (1852 ed.), i. 126, 170–82, 234; Grenville Papers, iii. 281–94, iv. 211, 411–12, 450; Albemarle's Rockingham, i. 225–6, ii. passim; Chatham Correspondence, ii. 282–3, iii. 22–4, 224–5, iv. 95–115, 203–4; Satirical Prints at Brit. Mus. iv. 364; Prior's Malone, p. 443; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iii. 620; Burke's Commoners (1837), i. 376–7; Bennett's Tewkesbury, pp. 442–3; Nash's Worcestershire, i. 181–3; Welch's Alumni Westmon. (1852), p. 556; Alex. Carlyle's Autobiography, pp. 167, 176.]
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
