LOWTHER, Henry (1694-1751)

Henry Lowther was still a minor when he inherited the viscountcy of Lonsdale on 1 Dec. 1713 after the unexpected death of his unmarried and childless elder brother Richard Lowther, 2nd Viscount Lowther. The new Viscount Lonsdale was travelling on the continent when he inherited the title. He attended the funeral in January 1714 and was still in England in May when he was visited by his family’s supporter, William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle. Nicolson London Diaries, 607-9. Much of the remainder of that year was spent travelling on the continent, particularly in the Netherlands. Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, suggested that he was sent to Holland, in part, so that he could escape the danger of infection from smallpox, which had already killed his elder brother and which for a time also threatened the life of his younger brother, Anthony Lowther. The duchess’s concern for the two remaining Lowther brothers suggests the Whig hopes that were placed on these young men: ‘I heartily wish he [Lonsdale], may not have the smallpox for his elder brother died of it, and these two that remain are very extraordinary good young men’. Add. 61463, ff. 135-6.

He was back in the English capital by 2 Apr. 1715 when he was visited by Bishop Nicolson. Nicolson London Diaries, 617. He first sat in the House on 2 Aug., most likely as soon after his twenty-first birthday as he could. However, he quickly showed that he preferred the country to life in Westminster. Having stayed only a few days in the House and registered his proxy with the Whig, Henry Clinton, 7th earl of Lincoln, he returned to his family’s base in Cumberland and Westmorland to direct the military defence against the Jacobite rebellion in the Scottish borders and Northumberland. When he was offered a post at court in July 1717 as a gentleman of the bedchamber, he took it up reluctantly, writing to his distant cousin, James Lowther^‡ of Whitehaven, that he was ‘afraid that a court employment will require more attendance than I (who am at present very fond of the country) can have inclination to give’. HMC Lonsdale, 121-2.

Despite his frequently stated preference for rural country, Lonsdale was a courtier in the capital for several years, where he was known as a compulsive gambler who ‘lives from morning till night in Exchange Alley and at South Sea’. Cheshire ALS, Cholomondeley mss DCH/X/8, Newburgh to Cholmondeley, 4 June [1720]. He engaged in the political life of the time and attended the House intermittently and with various degrees of commitment. Generally considered a Whig, he was not always predictable, and on a number of occasions in the early years of George I he voted against the court and with the ‘discontented Whigs’. HMC Lonsdale, 121-2; HMC Portland, v. 570-1. Lonsdale remained unmarried and at his death on 7 Mar. 1751 his titles became extinct. A fuller and more detailed account of his political career will appear in the 1715-90 volumes of this project.