English statesman, born at Durham on the 16th of May 1830. He became a prosperous solicitor in Wolverhampton, and coming of a Liberal nonconformist family took a prominent part in politics. In 1880 he was elected Liberal member of parliament for Wolverhampton, and was re-elected for the east division at successive contests. In 1884–1885 he was under-secretary for the Home Office, and in 1886 financial secretary to the treasury. In Mr. Gladstone’s 1892–1894 ministry he was president of the local government board, and in Lord Rosebery’s cabinet, 1894–1895, secretary of state for India. In these and the succeeding years of opposition he was recognized as a sound economist and a sober administrator, as well as a universally respected representative of nonconformist views. In Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet, 1905–1908, he was chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and he retained this office in Mr. Asquith’s ministry, but was transferred to the House of Lords with a viscountcy (April 1908). He retired in 1910. His daughter, Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, who married Mr. A. L. Felkin in 1903, became well known as a novelist with her Concerning Isabel Carnaby (1898) and other books.
He died at Woodthorne, Wolverhampton, on the 25th of February 1911.
