He adopted the name Howard in 1807 upon marrying the heiress of Elford Hall, Staffordshire and Castle Rising, Norfolk.
Howard was born at Geneva, the younger son of Clotworthy Upton, 1st Baron Templetown, of Temple Patrick, County Antrim, and educated at Westminster School (1786–1791), Christ Church, Oxford 1791 and the Military Academy in Berlin.
Reduced to half-pay, he commanded the Irish 9th garrison battalion (July 1807), was brevet colonel in 1813 and fully retired in 1825.
He took part in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1799, losing the sight of one eye in the Helder Expedition.
[2] On 7 July 1807, at St James's Church, Piccadilly, Upton married Mary Howard, the daughter and heiress of Hon.