bart., of Kempsford, Gloucestershire (Collect. Topog. et Geneal. vii. 165). The eldest son Richard died in 1713, and was succeeded as third viscount by his only brother Henry Lowther (d. 1751). The latter was a lord of the bedchamber, constable of the Tower (1726), lord privy seal (1733–5), and died unmarried on 6 March 1751 (Gent. Mag. 1751, p. 140). Walpole describes him as ‘a great disputant, a great refiner and no great genius’ (Memoirs of George II). Thomas Story [q. v.], the quaker, visited him at Lowther Hall in 1739, and had ‘agreeable conversation’ with him ‘on a People of late appearing in this nation to which the name of Methodists is given’ (Story, Life, 1747, fol. p. 741). He bequeathed his real estate to Sir James [q. v.], who also succeeded to the baronetcy but not to the viscountcy, which thus became extinct; Sir James was, however, afterwards created first Earl Lonsdale.
Lonsdale left some brief memoirs of his time, which were printed in 1808 for private circulation under the title of ‘Memoirs of the Reign of James II.’ Macaulay made frequent reference to them in his ‘History,’ and in 1857 they were reprinted in Bohn's ‘Standard Library,’ together with ‘Carrel's History of the Counter-Revolution,’ and Fox's ‘James II.’
[Ferguson's Cumberland and Westmoreland M.P.'s, 1871, pp. 54–78, 401; Sanford and Townsend's Governing Families of England, i. 54–65; Nicholson and Burn's Westmoreland and Cumberland, i. 432–7; Ord's Hist. of Cleveland, 1846, p. 387; Luttrell's Brief Relation, vols. i. ii. iii. passim; Burnet's Own Time, iv. 86; Fleming Papers, Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. vii. passim; Ranke's Hist. of England, iv. 236, v. 34, vi. 256; Cartwright's Diary (Camd. Soc.); Jewitt and Hall's Stately Homes of England, ii. 295.]
LOWTHER, Sir RICHARD (1529–1607), lord warden of the west marches, a member of an old Westmoreland family, traced his descent to Sir Hugh Lowther, attorney-general of Edward I in 1292, and justice itinerant on the north side of Trent, who in 1300 and 1305 represented the shire of Westmoreland in parliament. The first Sir Hugh's successor, also Sir Hugh (d. 1371), married the heiress of Lucie, lord Egremont, and obtained license to make a park in his manor of Lowther. The second Sir Hugh's eldest son, Robert (d. 1430), who contributed in 1401 to the building of the choir of Carlisle Cathedral, was father of Sir Hugh, sheriff of Cumberland, who took part in the battle of Agincourt, and whose grandson, also Sir Hugh, married Anne Threlkeld, half-sister of John, ninth baron Clifford. His son John, captain of Carlisle Castle in 1545, and twice sheriff of Cumberland during the reign of Henry VIII, married Lucy, daughter of Sir Christopher Curwen of Workington, through whom the Lowthers owned some kinship to William Camden the antiquary.
Richard, born in 1529, was grandson of the last-mentioned John, and eldest son of Hugh Lowther (d. 1546?), by his wife Dorothy, daughter of Henry, tenth baron Clifford, the ‘Shepherd Earl’ of Wordsworth's ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.’ He succeeded to the family estates at Lowther and elsewhere in Westmoreland on his grandfather's death in 1552; was created deputy-warden of the west marches early in Elizabeth's reign, and was knighted and appointed high sheriff of Cumberland in 1565. In the course of her desperate flight to the Solway, after her defeat at Langside, in May 1568, Mary Queen of Scots caused a letter to be despatched to Lowther asking whether he could insure her safety. He returned an evasive answer, promising to learn the pleasure of his sovereign, but he added that if in the meanwhile the Queen of Scots were forced to enter England he would protect her. Sir Walter Scott, in ‘The Abbot,’ sends Lowther to Dundrennan, and makes him accompany the queen in her adventurous voyage across the firth; but this is a deviation from historic accuracy. On the evening of 16 May Mary landed in an open fishing-boat at Workington. The news spread rapidly, and on the next evening Lowther, with an escort of neighbouring gentry, conveyed her to Carlisle Castle. There she held for several days in succession a little court, and received, among others, the Earl of Northumberland, who claimed the custody of her person in right of his office as lord warden, and by authority of the council of York. Lowther refused to resign her, and a violent altercation ensued. Lowther, however, had a band of soldiers to back him, and Mary remained in his hands (Strickland, ii. 93; Cotton. MS. Calig. i. f. 76). A few days later he injudiciously permitted the Duke of Norfolk to hold an interview with the queen. It was probably this indulgence which prompted Mary to make in a letter to Elizabeth (dated from Carlisle 28 May 1568) a grateful mention of the courtesy shown her by Lowther (Labanoff, Recueil des Lettres, ii. 83). But Lowther was heavily fined in the Star-chamber for allowing Norfolk and Mary to meet, and before the end of May he was relieved of the charge of the fugitive by Sir Francis Knollys [q. v.] and Lord Scrope. When, however, the Queen of Scots left Carlisle on 13 July for Bolton Castle, Lowther Hall was chosen by Knollys as her first
