Henry Fowler, 1st Viscount Wolverhampton

Henry Hartley Fowler, 1st Viscount Wolverhampton, (16 May 183025 February 1911) was a British solicitor and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 until 1908 when he was raised to the peerage. A member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, he was the first solicitor and the first Methodist to enter the Cabinet or to be raised to the peerage.

Early life Fowler was born in Sunderland, the son of Rev. Joseph Fowler (1791-1851) and his second wife Elizabeth Macneil nee Laing (stepdaughter of John Hartley 1775-1833). He was educated at Woodhouse Grove School, Apperley Bridge, Bradford (1840–42) and later at St. Saviour's Grammar School, Southwark.

He moved from London to Wolverhampton in 1855 having been admitted as a solicitor in 1852. He served as a local councillor and was Mayor of Wolverhampton in 1866. He was chairman of Wolverhampton School Board in 1870, and was a deputy lieutenant for Staffordshire and JP for Wolverhampton.

Political career At the 1880 general election Fowler was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of Wolverhampton, a seat he held until the borough was divided under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. He then was then returned at the 1885 general election as the MP for Wolverhampton East. In the 1895 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours he was appointed GCSI. He remained in Parliament until he was ennobled in 1908. He served under William Ewart Gladstone as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1884 to 1885, as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1886 and as President of the Local Government Board from 1892 to 1894 and under Lord Rosebery as Secretary of State for India from 1894 to 1895. In 1886, he was sworn of the Privy Council.

Fowler later held office under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1905 and 1908. The latter year he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Wolverhampton, of Wolverhampton in the County of Stafford, and served under Asquith as Lord President of the Council until 1910. An example of his support for progressive social reform can also be found in a 1908 address he made, in which Fowler proclaimed (as noted by one journal) that "Proposals must be made to ameliorate the condition of the workers-those prevented by age or infirmity or by bad trade from obtaining work". According to his private secretary, however, he did not have "the patience to suffer Radical and Labour members gladly."

He was an elected President of The Law Society 1901–02.

Lord Wolverhampton died on 25 February 1911, aged 80.

Family Fowler married Ellen Thorneycroft, daughter of ironmaster and first Mayor of Wolverhampton, George Benjamin Thorneycroft, in 1857. They had a son and two daughters.

Their son Henry succeeded to the viscountcy. Their daughters were the authors the Hon. Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler and the Hon. Edith Henrietta Fowler (who wrote a biography of her father).

Viscountess Wolverhampton's great nephew was Peter Thorneycroft.

Arms