John Brownlow, 1st Viscount Tyrconnel


John Brownlow, 1st Viscount Tyrconnel, KB, known as Sir John Brownlow, 5th Baronet, from 1701 to 1718, of Belton House near Grantham in Lincolnshire, was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1713 to 1741.

Origins

He was the only son of Sir William Brownlow, 4th Baronet of Belton by his first wife Dorothy Mason, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Sir Richard Mason, MP, of Sutton in Surrey.

Career

Both his parents died before he was 11 and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, Lady Mason, who had assumed administration of his father's affairs. When he came of age at 21, he found great fault with the management of his property, and the resulting coolness between himself and his grandmother was exacerbated by his possession of the Mason manor of Sutton in Surrey, which he had inherited from his mother, but which Lady Mason believed belonged rightly to the children of her other daughter, Anna Mason, the notorious Countess of Macclesfield, the divorced former wife of Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield.
In 1713 Brownlow was elected as a Member of Parliament for Grantham. In 1715 he was returned unopposed as an MP for Lincolnshire instead. In 1718 he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Charleville in the County of Cork, and as Viscount Tyrconnel. He was re-elected as MP for Grantham in 1722 and was returned there unopposed in 1727 and 1734. He did not stand in 1741.

Marriages

He married twice, but produced no progeny:
He died without progeny in February 1754, aged 63, whereupon both the baronetcy and the two peerages became extinct. The Brownlow estates, including Belton House, were inherited by his nephew Sir John Cust, 3rd Baronet , whose son later in 1776 was raised to the peerage as Baron Brownlow.