Henry Hoyle Howorth

Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth (1 July 1842 – 15 July 1923) was a British Conservative politician, barrister and amateur historian and geologist.

Career

He was born in Lisbon, Portugal, the son of Henry Howorth, a merchant in that city. He was educated at Rossall School before studying law. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1867, and practised on the Northern Circuit. He was also a Member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and a Freemason.

Howorth was a controversialist, frequently airing his opinions on the letters page of The Times, sometimes under the pseudonym "A Manchester Conservative". He married Katherine Brierley in 1869 and they had three sons, one of whom was Sir Rupert Howorth. His wife predeceased him in 1921. Sir Henry Howorth died in July 1923 aged 81, and was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery.

He did not believe in a global flood and considered the biblical deluge just one of many flood myths to support his theory. He used geological evidence to support his theory in The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood (1893). In 1905, he wrote another book Ice or Water that attempted to refute the glacial theory in detail. Professional geologists were not convinced by his theory.

On the English Church: H.H. Howorth, The History of the Church in England to the Eighth Century (in three volumes, 1912–17): Saint Gregory the Great (1912); Saint Augustine of Canterbury (1913); and The Golden Days of the Early English Church (1917).

In his geological works, he attacked the theories of Charles Lyell, discounting the existence of Ice Ages in favour of great floods: H.H. Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood (1887); H.H. Howorth, The Glacial Nightmare (1893); and H.H. Howorth, Ice or Water? (1905).