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Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley

British politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5481256 ↗
Source-derived summary

Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley (c. 1673 – 30 May 1743), was a British landowner and politician.

Hawley was the son of the Honourable Francis Hawley by Gertrude Gethin, daughter of Sir Richard Gethin, 1st Baronet. He succeeded his grandfather Lord Hawley in the barony in 1684, also inheriting large estates in Berkshire, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. The barony was an Irish peerage and did not entitle him to a seat in the English House of Lords. He instead stood for election to the English House of Commons for Somerset in 1705 but was unsuccessful. However, in 1713 he was returned for Bramber, a seat he held until 1715. He did not stand for Parliament after 1715.

Lord Hawley married firstly Lady Elizabeth Ramsay, daughter of William Ramsay, 3rd Earl of Dalhousie, in 1697. After her death in 1713 he married secondly Elizabeth Hayes in 1718.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley” is british politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Francis, Hawley and Baron, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1673, 1743, 1684, 1705—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1673-01-01. For this dossier, Francis, Hawley and Baron is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5481256. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1673, 1743, 1684 and 1705.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley primary sources, Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley archive and Francis research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Francis Hawley, 2nd Baron Hawley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.