Francis Mowatt

Sir Francis Mowatt[1] GCB PC (28 April 1837 – 20 November 1919) was a British civil servant.

On 9 June 1864, aged 27, Mowatt, on a salary of £430, married Lucy Sophia, daughter of John Andrew Freriche of Thirlestaine Hall, Cheltenham, and a widow of Count Stenbock, of Kolk, Estonia.

He rose to deputy head of department in July 1889 and Assistant Secretary and Auditor of the civil list, on a yearly salary of £1500.

Haldane required Mowatt and John Morley to join him on his trip to Ireland in 1898 to sort out the Catholic universities.

A crisis hit the Conservatives in 1902-3 when Joseph Chamberlain decided to split the cabinet by proposing the Tariff Reform League, giving preferential trading terms to the colonies, particularly in Canadian North America.

[3] The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Thomson Ritchie wanted to repeal the Corn Duty that had been imposed for the first time since 1846 by his predecessor Michael Hicks Beach.

He trained Winston Churchill at the Board of Trade to be a free trader stimulating a defection to the Liberal party in 1904.