LOWTHER, Richard (1692-1713)

The brief life, and even briefer political career, of Richard Lowther, 2nd Viscount Lonsdale, is not significant for any of his actions in the House of Lords but does cast an interesting light on the intensity of partisan conflict in the years 1710-15. As the heir of a prominent Westmorland family, and the son of one of William III’s most respected and trusted courtiers, the young man had great hopes and expectations pinned on him. Politicians watched anxiously to determine, and try to affect, where he would place his partisan loyalties once he was of age and could take an active part in the House.

Lonsdale inherited his father’s title and estate in 1700 when he was only eight years old. His mother Katherine, Viscountess Lonsdale, was insistent on keeping her late husband’s political influence alive during the long years of her son’s minority. The first viscount even appears to have provided his wife with specific deathbed instructions to promote the candidacy of his uncle Richard Lowther^‡ in the by-election to find a replacement for the office holder William Fleming^‡, ‘in my opinion a very improper legacy to his country, for I never heard that knights of the shire were disposed of by will’ grumbled James Grahme^‡, father of Lowther’s opponent. HMC 10th Rep. pt. 4, p. 335. In January 1701 Lady Lonsdale claimed that she was ‘resolute to do as my Lord would have done had he been alive’. Throughout the many elections of the first decade of the eighteenth century she opposed the candidates in the interest of her husband’s old rivals the Musgraves and joined Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle, in promoting Whig candidates, even though her brother Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, was a prominent Tory. Cumbria RO, D/Lons/W2/2/4, J. Lowther to Sir J. Lowther of Whitehaven, 5 Apr. 1701. James Lowther^‡, Lonsdale’s second cousin, reported to his father, Sir John Lowther^‡ of Whitehaven, in December 1702 that ‘my Lady Lonsdale calls herself a Whig’. Ibid. J. Lowther to Sir J. Lowther of Whitehaven, 1 Dec. 1702. She was certainly vital in ensuring that James Lowther was returned as knight of the shire for Cumberland in every election after the death of his father (who had held the seat from 1665 to 1701) in 1706.

The young Viscount Lonsdale was already being involved in election campaigns at the age of nine. During the campaigning for the second election of 1701 a correspondent informed James Grahme, a supporter of the Musgrave interest, that the Lowther candidate, Sir Richard Sandford^‡ had come to Kirkby Lonsdale with Lonsdale and ‘complimented every man he met’. Together Sandford and Lonsdale spent £40 on treating the electors, and then they moved on to Kendal, where they were met by the mayor and aldermen, who informed ‘my Lord who had been for his father’s interest and who against it’. HMC 10th Rep. pt. 4, p. 336. On 6 Nov. 1705, now aged 13, Lonsdale was ‘brought in’ the House by Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, in a cannily staged piece of political theatre which effectively staked the Junto’s claim on the young man, or so William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, saw it. Nicolson suggested that Lonsdale’s uncle, Weymouth, was ignorant of Lonsdale’s intention to come to the House, even though Weymouth had supped with Lonsdale and his mother the previous evening. The following day Lonsdale came to the House again, this time accompanied by Nicolson himself, where he was ‘brought … to my Lord of [Canterbury Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury]’. Nicolson London Diaries, 298-9. Nicolson appears to have taken a particular interest in the young man, pinning on him, as so many others did, the Whig hopes of the county. Certainly Lonsdale’s visits are frequently recorded in the bishop’s diaries, both those he kept while attending Parliament and those maintained in his northern diocese. Ibid. 298-9, 309, 316, 330, 335, 360, 387, 477-9, 494, 496, 502, 602; Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Arch. and Antiq. Soc. n.s. iv. 1-70, passim. During the campaigning of early 1708 Lonsdale, not yet 16 years old, wrote letters to Cumberland electors, ‘with his own hand’, encouraging them to vote for James Lowther, his kinsman and the candidate ‘zealously’ supported by his mother the dowager viscountess, for the county seat. Cumbria RO, D/Lons/W2/1/41, J. Lowther to W. Gilpin, 14 Feb. 1708.

After his education, probably at the school established by his father at Lowther Hall, Lonsdale embarked on a tour across friendly Europe (he by-passed France entirely) in 1710. He was accompanied by Alexander Cunningham, a diplomat and ‘active agent of the Whig party’, who had previously been the tutor of John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] (later duke of Greenwich). HMC Portland, iv. 70. Cunningham was later to be British ambassador in Venice and author of the History of Great Britain from the Revolution in 1688 to the Accession of George I (originally written in Latin). Despite his Whiggish sympathies, Cunningham’s friendships were non-partisan (as he constantly emphasized in his letters), and he wrote frequently to the lord treasurer Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, during the course of the two-year tour telling him of his travels and antiquarian discoveries and enthusing about the progress of his young charge. HMC Portland, iv. 546-7, 566-8, 670-3; HMC Portland, v. 70-71, 99-100, 146-7, 169. ‘He’ll make a pretty gentleman, and as good a subject as he is a dutiful son; I have great pleasure in his company’ he informed Oxford from Rome. HMC Portland, v. 70. He also kept Horatio Walpole^‡, secretary to the embassy at The Hague, informed, to whom he commented that ‘my Lord Lonsdale is a might hopeful youth, so that ’tis a pleasure to me to be abroad at this time’ and that ‘he travels with reputation wherever he goes and I must say he’s one of the hopefulest young gentlemen I have ever known’. HMC Townshend, 76, 84. With these glowing reports Lonsdale returned to England in 1712, and was back at Lowther Hall by 18 Sept. 1712, when bishop Nicolson recorded his impressions on seeing him for the first time since his return: ‘His Lordship staunch and good’. Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Arch. and Antiq. Soc. n.s. vi. 59.

Lonsdale reached his majority in March 1713, shortly after the death in January of his influential mother. He took his seat in the House at the first opportunity, when Parliament reconvened on 9 Apr. 1713 after a long prorogation. He attended just over half of the meetings of the brief session of April-July 1713 and was infrequently named to committees. On at least one occasion he made his partisan loyalties known; on 8 June 1713 he was one of the four English Whig peers who joined 15 Scottish representative peers in signing the protest against the passage of the Malt Tax. By June there was talk that he would marry a sister of Richard Boyle, 3rd earl of Burlington, ‘not the eldest, but the prettiest’. Wentworth Pprs. 339. A northern correspondent of Oxford’s reported from a visit to Westmorland in October 1713 that,

I have several times waited upon my Lord Lonsdale, who is a great hunter and a good natured, courteous gentleman, but I fear in ill hands … My Lord Lonsdale usually drinks first the Queen, then every man in course toasts his lady; for the church, nor no man’s health, is in fashion amongst the great ones hereabout … [even though] … this country of all ranks (except the justices of the peace and lieutenancy) are five in six High Church.

The writer went on to recount how, finding Lonsdale amongst a party of Whigs, he dared to dispute with them their political principles and while some were offended, Lonsdale himself treated him generously and invited him to Lowther Hall, where ‘I have gone several times, and upon all occasions have acted as before, and always toasting (when my toast) High Church ladies’. He concluded by advising Oxford that ‘I verily believe that with good management he might be brought off from the Whigs, which would be a public good and a great happiness to this country, for his Lordship’s interest and Musgrave’s jointly would lead these two counties which way they would’. HMC Portland, v. 343.

Obviously seen as a desirable ‘catch’ by both parties, this young man’s promising future was abruptly cut short when he died of smallpox on 1 Dec. 1713, three months before his twenty-second birthday. Nicolson, when he heard ‘the surprising news’ was shocked, as ‘this sudden snatching away of a young nobleman (of so promising goodness) [is], a heavy affliction to the whole country’. The funeral at Lowther church on 8 Jan. 1714 was ‘attended by a great number of true mourners’. Lonsdale died unmarried, and the title passed to his younger brother Henry, 3rd Viscount Lonsdale, who was on his own continental travels at this point; Nicolson recorded that an express had to be sent ‘to the new lord at Utrecht’. Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Arch. and Antiq. Soc. n.s. iv. 70. The 3rd viscount was still a minor, and Nicolson and other north-western Whigs had to wait another two years, until 1715, before they could see the participation of a Viscount Lonsdale in the business of the House.