| The Right Honourable The Viscount Wolverhampton PC |
|
|---|---|
| Secretary of State for India | |
| In office 10 March 1894 – 21 June 1895 |
|
| Monarch | Victoria |
| Prime Minister | The Earl of Rosebery |
| Preceded by | The Earl of Kimberley |
| Succeeded by | Lord George Hamilton |
| Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster | |
| In office 10 December 1905 – 13 October 1908 |
|
| Monarch | Edward VII |
| Prime Minister | Henry Campbell-Bannerman Herbert Henry Asquith |
| Preceded by | Sir William Walrond, Bt |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Fitzmaurice |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 16 May 1830 |
| Died | 25 February 1911 |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Liberal |
Henry Hartley Fowler, 1st Viscount Wolverhampton PC (16 May 1830 – 25 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.[1]
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Fowler was born in Sunderland, the son of Rev, Joseph Fowler. He moved to Wolverhampton and was 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 J.P. for Wolverhampton.[2]
At the 1880 general election Fowler was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough Wolverhampton,[3] a seat he held until the borough was divided under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.[4] He then was then returned at the 1885 general election as the MP for Wolverhampton East,[5] and held that seat until he was ennobled in 1908.[6] 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. He was widely thought of as a future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but his ill health prevented this.
Lord Wolverhampton died in February 1911, aged 80.
Fowler married Ellen Thorneycroft in 1857. Their son Henry succeeded to the viscountcy. Their daughters were the authors the Hon. Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler and the Hon. Edith Henrietta Fowler.