Isaac Hawkins Browne, FRS (7 December 1745 – 30 May 1818) was a British Tory politician, industrialist, essayist, and a lord of the manor of Badger, Shropshire.

[1] In 1774, Browne bought the manor of Badger from its absentee owner, Clement Kynnersley of Loxley, near Uttoxeter: the house was at that time rented to an ironmaster, William Ferriday.

[3] Between 1779 and 1783, Browne had Badger Hall greatly extended, to a design by James Wyatt, and commissioned paintings for it from Robert Smirke.

[5] Browne supported a Sunday School at Malinslee from 1799, and organised the building of a church there, St. Leonard, consecrated in 1805 and designed by Thomas Telford.

[8] Browne took great interest in the affairs of the parish of Badger, as he was bound to do, since he had the right to nominate the incumbent: he did not present, as the advowson strictly belonged to the Crown.

For most of that time he held two prebends of St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton: rural Hatherton, near Cannock, and Monmore, which included the growing town of Bilston.

Browne nominated in his place William Smith, who turned out to be an exemplary pastor, devoted solely to the parish and never absent for more than two weeks.

He served for six successive parliaments, until 1812, and supported the Tory ministries of William Pitt the younger, Henry Addington, the Duke of Portland, and Spencer Perceval.

He declared that Catholics already "had every thing they could wish for, excepting political power," and finished by saying: Browne was seldom a more than equivocal advocate of reform.

In 1809, commenting on a motion to re-establish a Finance Committee of the House, he delivered himself of a masterpiece of equivocation: Browne was generally a defender of the established order, in many ways a typical country member of the unreformed Parliament, which he accepted implicitly as legitimate.

Browne, according to his epitaph in the parish church, "in 1812 voluntarily retired from public life" and died "after a gradual decline," in London aged 72 on 30 May 1818.