George Lowe

Who is George Lowe?

George Lowe was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1679. He was an equivocal supporter of the Royalist cause in the English Civil War.

Lowe was the second surviving son of Richard Lowe, a barrister of Shrewsbury and Calne and his second wife Mary Wootton, daughter of Charles Wotton, merchant, of Salisbury, Wiltshire and widow of John Vennard of Salisbury. His father was MP for Calne in 1614 and his uncle George Lowe, a London merchant, represented the town from 1625 to 1629. He came into his mother's property at Calne in 1640.

In November 1640, Lowe was elected Member of Parliament for Calne in the Long Parliament. During the Civil War he supported the Royalist cause and sat at the parliament in Oxford. He later claimed that he acted under duress, and that he was not party to the vote declaring the Parliamentarian members at Westminster to be traitors. He was disabled from sitting at Westminster on 5 February 1644, but as a result of his voluntary and early surrender to Edward Massey, he was treated leniently by the committee for compounding and was fined at a tenth instead of a third of his estate. On release in 1646 he became a J.P. for Oxfordshire until 1653. He was commissioner for assessment for Oxfordshire from 1649 to 1652.