On the break-up of his father's estates (which had been left to his mother and subsequently to his sister Lady Mary, wife of Gilbert Murray), he was allocated Castle Howard.[4]
Political career
Howard was selected as Liberal candidate for the Eskdale division of Cumberland at the 1906 General Election. As part of the Liberal landslide victory he gained the seat for the party, ousting the sitting Conservative Claude Lowther with a swing of 6%.
[5]
Another General Election followed 11 months later but this time Howard lost his Eskdale seat to Claude Lowther.[5]
Out of Parliament, he was keen to make a return as soon as possible. In 1911 a vacancy occurred in the Westbury division of Wiltshire when the sitting Liberal MP resigned to take up a diplomatic appointment. Howard was chosen as the Liberal candidate for the resulting by-election and retained the seat with a slightly reduced majority.[6]
In 1911 Asquith appointed him Vice-Chamberlain of the Household,[7] a post he held until 1915.[8] He then served as a Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1915[9] to 1916.[1] In 1916 Asquith was replaced as Prime Minister by Lloyd George and went into opposition to the Coalition Government. Howard followed Asquith into opposition. As a result, when the Coalition was endorsing candidates for the 1918 General election, at Westbury, endorsement was given to his Unionist opponent George Palmer, who defeated Howard by a margin of 17%.[10]
At the 1922 general election, he sought a return to Parliament in his old stomping ground of Cumberland when he contested the unionist-held North Cumberland. However, he lost narrowly, by a margin of 1.6%.[11]
The next year, at the 1923 general election, Howard fought the Luton division of Bedfordshire. The Liberals were experiencing something of a revival nationally, which helped him win the seat from the sitting Unionist Sir John Prescott Hewett.
Another general election followed a year later in 1924, and with the Unionists in the ascendency, he lost his seat. This effectively ended Howard's parliamentary career as he did not contest another parliamentary seat.