Lowther was from one of the most ancient gentry families in the north-west, with a tradition of parliamentary service dating back to 1305 and providing MPs for Cumberland, Westmorland and Appleby.
What associations came with this early match is a matter for speculation. It has been suggested, on the grounds that Hugh and his sons are occasionally described as ‘of High Head’, that Mary was a Restwold of High Head in Ivegill, a few miles to the north of Newton Reigny. If this is correct, the bride must have been the daughter of Richard Restwold† (1364-c.1423) by his unidentified first wife, and there is a clear context for such a match: our MP’s half-sister, Isabel (daughter of his mother by her first husband, Sir John Derwentwater), was, at the time the match appears to have been made, Restwold’s second wife. There are, however, difficulties in accepting this identification. The Lowthers’ interest in High Head could have arisen out of a lease from a neighbour, who need not have been a kinsman by marriage. The Restwolds would certainly have been ready to make such a lease – after his father’s death in about 1423, Restwold’s son, another Richard*, resided at his estates in the Thames valley – and the Lowthers, as their neighbours, would have been obvious candidates to occupy the castle at High Head. Further, a later visitation pedigree, which correctly identifies the wives of the other fifteenth-century heads of the Lowther family, describes our MP’s wife as a ‘Damnwater’. This raises the possibility that she was the stepdaughter of Hugh’s mother, in other words, the daughter of Sir John Derwentwater by his first wife, although, if so, the bride would have been several years older than the groom.
Of greater value to the young Hugh than his wife’s relations were the connexions of his successful uncle, Geoffrey Lowther, who had left the north-west for a legal education at Lincoln’s Inn and a prominent place in the service of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Geoffrey was presumably responsible for enrolling his young nephew in the duke’s retinue for the campaign that culminated in the victory at Agincourt.
Lowther’s election may have had something to do with his earlier service to the duke of Gloucester. The duke was anxious for the support of the Commons in his continued campaign against Cardinal Beaufort, a consideration that helps to explain the election of Geoffrey for Kent. But Hugh and Geoffrey may have had a more immediate family concern in the Commons’ proceedings, for Hugh’s father joined the other executors of the earl of Westmorland in petitioning the Lower House against demands made against them by the Exchequer.
The death of his father Sir Robert on 9 Apr. 1430 increased Hugh’s wealth, although it did not bring the acres it would have done in more favourable circumstances. His mother’s survival until 1449 kept him out, not only of her (admittedly modest) inheritance, but also of the manor of Lowther assigned to her in dower.
None the less, whatever the limitations of the material benefits of his father’s death, it did make Hugh the head of the family, and, as such, a more important man. On 19 Dec. 1430 he again attested his own election to Parliament for Cumberland, a return also attested by his younger brother, William, and his brother-in-law de la More, and late in 1432 he took his father’s place on the bench in that county.
Shortly before becoming sheriff Lowther had acted in his capacity as j.p. in support of another of his brothers-in-law, Sir William Leigh*. On 4 Dec. 1438, acting on a commission from the King, he came to Leigh’s home at Isel, near Cockermouth, to restore him to possession of weirs at nearby Bassenthwaite and Blindcrake and to take an indictment against the disseisor, Alexander Heighmore.
This intervention was, no doubt, unwelcome to Lowther, and probably inclined him to sympathize with the ambitious Dacre’s many local opponents. By 1443 this rift between Dacre, on the one hand, and several Cumberland gentry on the other, had become serious enough to prompt the intervention of the royal council. On 20 May in that year Dacre was obliged, in the presence of the council, to undertake on hefty penalty of 1,000 marks to abide the award of Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle, and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, in his dispute with the bishop himself, Lowther, his son William and widowed sister Isabel Leigh, and several other local gentry. The principal point at issue here may have been Dacre’s attempt to secure the wardenship of the west narch from the bishop, but the involvement of the Lowthers implies that the Leigh wardship was also a factor.
This raises the question of whether Lowther was also involved here as a follower of the other arbiter, the earl of Salisbury. His father, Sir Robert, had been close enough to the earl’s father, the earl of Westmorland, to be named as one of his executors; and in February 1432 our MP had conveyed to Salisbury the Cumberland manors of Blennerhasset and Ukmanby, in which Sir Robert had had joint estate with the deceased earl. In these circumstances, it is likely that Hugh maintained the connexion begun by his father, and there is some indications that he did. In successive days in December 1440 he troubled to travel to Penrith and Brougham, on either side of the border between Cumberland and Westmorland, to serve as a juror on inquisitions taken on the death of Salisbury’s mother, Joan, countess of Westmorland.
At the end of this Parliament Lowther’s resources were augmented: his mother died on its last day, 16 July, bringing him the manor of Lowther and a few tenements in Penrith, part of her paternal inheritance not settled on her younger sons by the fine of 1430.
Thereafter, the pattern of Lowther’s career was shaped, as were those of the rest of the leading northern gentry, by the escalating tensions between the great houses of Neville and Percy. His part, as suggested above, appears to have been that of a reluctant or distant supporter of Neville. On 20 Jan. 1453, at what appears to have been a contested parliamentary election for Cumberland, he and five of his sons and brothers were among attestors headed by the earl of Salisbury’s younger son, Sir Thomas Neville, who returned clients of the earl. Soon after, in November 1454, during the first protectorate of the Nevilles’ ally, the duke of York, he and his brother, William, were commissioned to collect what they could of the shrieval revenues lost to the Crown due to the failure to find a willing sheriff in the previous November. In the following July, after the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans, he headed the attestors to the return for Cumberland of two Neville servants – his brother-in-law, de la More, and Thomas Colt* – and in the following November he himself was pricked as sheriff.
This appointment may have been a vote of confidence in Lowther by the Nevilles, but it was not one that he was likely to receive happily. Recent disturbances in the county had made the shrieval farm even more than usually difficult to collect, and de la More had found in 1452-3 that the office was one of both financial and physical risk. The royal council dominated by York and the Nevilles clearly feared he would refuse to act. To make it easier for him to accept, Sir Thomas Neville was commissioned to receive his oath of office, but on 9 Dec. stronger measures were taken, presumably because he had evinced continued reluctance. He was ordered to serve, on the ruinous penalty of £2,000, and warned that no excuse would be accepted. In return, he was offered the promise that he would be shown, ‘alle favour resonnable for your noon hurte in [th]e said office’.
The records do not show whether, as sheriff, Lowther suffered the same difficulties as had confronted de la More, but he did find time in his year of office to advance an important matter of his own. On 18 Aug. 1456, in an indenture drawn up at Penrith, he entered into an agreement for the marriage of his eldest son to Mabel, daughter of William Lancaster of Hartsop, about 12 miles to the south-west of Lowther. The match had dynastic implications as Mabel was then her father’s only child, and it was no doubt this that prompted our MP in the settlement of a generous jointure. He undertook to settle lands worth annually 20 marks on the couple immediately after the wedding, which was to take place before the following Michaelmas. In return, Lancaster agreed to give them lands worth half that sum in joint tail general. The payment of the traditional portion was suspended until the bride’s prospects of inheritance should become clearer: if she were to have a sibling or siblings alive at her father’s death, Lowther was to be paid £100; if, on the other hand, she was to fall sole heiress, Lancaster’s executors were to receive the same sum from the Lowthers.
Nothing is known directly of Lowther’s activities during the civil war of 1459-61. In December 1459, in the wake of the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge, he was omitted from the Cumberland bench, along with several gentry clearly identified with the Nevilles, and excluded from a commission of array for the county dominated by active Lancastrians. Similarly indicative is his restoration to the bench early in the new reign. However, there is nothing to suggest that he fought in any of the battles of these years, nor did he receive any reward from the new regime. If any of the Lowthers were active in the Neville cause, it was his son William, who at the beginning of Edward IV’s reign was re-granted the forestership of the upper ward of the royal forest of Inglewood, which he had held since 1442, and was also entrusted with the keeping of a moiety of the manor of Rickerby, near Carlisle, in royal hands pending the determination of its ownership.
Very little is known of the last part of Lowther’s life, probably because advancing age militated against him taking much of a role in local affairs. His recorded activities are sporadic. On 1 May 1462 he sued out a general pardon as a former sheriff and escheator; on 9 Apr. 1463 he headed the jury of inquiry into the lands of the Percy earl of Northumberland; and in 1466 he joined his eldest son, Hugh, in entering bonds to the heirs male of the Lancasters of Hartsop, no doubt arising from rival claims stemming from the younger Hugh’s marriage to the heir general of that family. In the following year he made his last appearance as an attestor and was appointed to the last of his ad hoc commissions.
Continued association with the Nevilles explains Lowther’s appointment to the Readeption commission of the peace and his removal when the commission was almost wholly revised after Edward IV’s restoration.