LOWTHER, Hugh

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.4 Oxf. DNB, ‘Lowther fam.’; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 639-43. Their main estates – at Lowther and Newton Reigny – lay either side of the border between Cumberland and Westmorland in the neighbourhood of Penrith, and they held another manor, 20 miles to the west, at Wythop near Cockermouth. Hugh’s father made an unusual marriage in that his wife was the legitimate daughter of a priest who rose to a bishopric. In about 1393, Robert espoused the daughter of William Strickland, who had entered holy orders after his wife’s death and was consecrated as bishop of Carlisle in 1400. In addition to this connexion with the bishop of Carlisle, Hugh’s father was a close associate of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and he enjoyed a career of great prominence, representing Cumberland in as many as seven Parliaments between 1391 and 1417.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 639-41. His career was also a long one, and our MP established an independent place in local affairs some years before his father’s death. That he was able to do so was the result of the settlement made upon him at his marriage: on 9 Aug. 1412 his father’s feoffees, Guy Lowther, vicar of Edenhall, and Robert de Ellergill, rector of nearby Ousby, granted him and Mary, his wife, the site and demesne lands of the manor of Newton Reigny to hold to them and their male issue.6 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. xvi. 153-5.

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.7 ibid. xxxix. 122; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 199; Vis. Cumb. (Harl. Soc. vii), 3. In short, on the available evidence, no firm conclusion is possible, although we need not doubt that Lowther’s wife was from one of the principal gentry families of the north-west.

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.8 E101/45/13, m. 3. But despite this positive beginning to a military career, Hugh seems not to have fought abroad again. Instead, he began a career in local administration before his father’s death, as not infrequently happened in the case of the eldest sons of leading gentry families. Between November 1420 and October 1423 he attested three parliamentary elections in Cumberland and two in Westmorland, doing so, contrary to electoral statute, in both counties in respect of the first of these assemblies; and in the autumn of 1424 he travelled to Penrith to sit as a juror in the inquisition held on the death of Elizabeth, widow of Thomas, Lord Clifford, in recognition, perhaps, that the Lowthers were tenants of the Cliffords in respect of their manor of Lowther.9 C219/12/4, 6; 13/1, 2; CIPM, xxii. 305. More importantly, in the same autumn he was pricked as escheator of Cumberland, and, on 5 Feb. 1426, very shortly after surrendering that office, he was elected to Parliament.10 CFR, xv. 85; C219/13/4.

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.11 RP, iv. 469 (cf. PROME, x. 15). But, whatever the reason for Hugh’s election, the gathering which returned him was an impressive one; five knights, one of whom was his father, were among the attestors, who also included his brother-in-law, Thomas de la More*. Unusually, Hugh and his fellow MP, Sir Peter Tilliol*, were also named among the attestors, although there is no reason to suspect electoral irregularity.12 C219/13/4. De la More’s wife is identified as our MP’s sis. in CP40/715, rot. 122; 771, rot. 430. The Lowthers had a close connexion with Sir Peter Tilliol. Hugh’s uncle, Geoffrey, and bro. William were later named among his executors: CP40/700, rot. 58d.

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.13 CIPM, xxiii. 345; C139/133/2; CFR, xv. 326. The disparity in the wealth of widow and heir is reflected in the subsidy returns of 1436: Margaret was assessed at an income of £40 p.a. and our MP at only 40 marks.14 C139/133/2; E179/90/26. Part of Margaret’s income may have been derived from property to which our MP had no claim, namely the Derwentwater lands she held from her first marriage, but these lands do not appear in his inq. post mortem. Moreover, the Lowther estate was also burdened by provision made for Hugh’s four younger brothers. By a final concord levied in the Hilary term before Sir Robert’s death, 24 messuages and a couple of hundred acres in Soulby, Warcop and Ormside, just to the south of Appleby, had been settled in successive life estates on these sons. Hugh, or his issue, would have to wait until all were dead before inheriting the property. Further settlements on our MP’s younger brothers probably went unrecorded, for in the subsidy returns of 1436 two of them, William and John, were assessed on a combined income of £13 13s. 4d.15 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. xvi. 155-7; E179/90/26. His estate was additionally burdened by provision made for yr. sons in previous generations, for Richard Lowther was assessed at £10 in Cumb. and Hugh Lowther of Askham at £6 in Westmld.: E179/90/26; 195/32. As compensation, Hugh had the minor consolation of a bequest to him in his father’s will of £20 in cash, eight oxen, 20 cows and a flock of sheep, but even here he may have had cause for dissatisfaction since as much as 100 marks was bequeathed to endow prayers for the souls of his maternal grandfather, Bishop Strikland, and father. His omission from his father’s executors might be taken as an indication that he had legitimate expectations of better treatment.16 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. xvi. 158-9.

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.17 C219/14/2; CPR, 1429-36, p. 615. There was also another significant change in his life, either at this time or before. By the early 1430s he had remarried. He is described in a Chancery suit as the brother-in-law of his near-neighbour, William Stapleton*, and, since Stapleton was not married to one of Lowther’s sisters, Lowther must have been husband of one of Stapleton’s several sisters. It was as a result of this match that he became involved in efforts to deny proper dower to Stapleton’s stepmother, Mary. On 25 Sept. 1432 he sat on the jury at Appleby which falsely returned that Stapleton’s father had died seised of only small parcels of land. At the same time, he acted in the dispute in another guise: both while Stapleton’s father’s writs of diem clausit extremum were awaiting execution and soon thereafter, the matter was twice submitted to the arbitration of Stapleton’s four brothers-in-law, our MP, Henry Fenwick*, Robert Claxton and Thomas Salkeld, but Stapleton refused to abide their award.18 C139/59/41; C1/9/68, 307; 70/85. This is Lowther’s last recorded involvement in this protracted quarrel, but there are grounds for believing that he continued to support his brother-in-law. On 8 Jan. 1437, when Stapleton was elected to Parliament for Cumberland at hustings conducted by Fenwick as sheriff, Lowther and Salkeld were present as attestors. It may be that the dispute was a factor in our MP’s pricking as sheriff in 1439, as coincidence is unlikely to explain why three of six sheriffs between 1436 and 1442 – Fenwick, Lowther and Stapleton himself – had an interest in the matter.19 C1/70/85; C219/15/1; PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 27.

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.20 KB9/230B/90-94. Leigh’s death on the following 14 Aug., leaving a son and heir, William*, of only 15, gave Lowther a concern of another sort in that family’s affairs. A few days later, on 23 Aug., he shared with James Kelom a royal grant of his young nephew’s wardship, the two men probably acting here as agents of the boy’s mother, our MP’s sister, Isabel. A similar desire to protect his sister’s family probably also explains why, in the middle of the following month, he attended, as a juror, the inquisitions taken on Sir William’s death in both Cumberland and Westmorland.21 CFR, xvii. 100-1; C139/93/50. In 1428 he had been a juror in the inq. held at Penrith on the death of Sir William’s father: CIPM, xxiii. 41. His efforts were, however, wasted. At the end of the year a leading local magnate, Thomas, Lord Dacre, feudal overlord in respect of Sir William Leigh’s manor of Surlingham in Norfolk, prevailed upon the Crown to grant the wardship to him.22 CFR, xvii. 113-16.

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.23 CCR, 1441-7, p. 138.

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.24 E326/474; CIPM, xxii. 653; C139/104/42. Her death brought the lordship of Penrith into Salisbury’s hands, and so provided an additional reason for the earl to employ our MP and for our MP to serve him. If, however, Lowther did number among the Neville affinity, he was, as far as the available evidence goes, only on its periphery. On the one hand, the history of his appointment to public office and commissions is consistent with membership of that affinity; on the other, there is no direct evidence of his attachment to the earl of Salisbury.25 R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 123. Further, to balance the pull of Neville lordship from Penrith, he had family connexions with members of the Percy affinity: both his brother-in-law, Thomas Curwen*, and his nephew, William Leigh, were loyal Percy retainers. Lowther enjoyed the same close relationship with the latter as he had with Leigh’s father. On 18 May 1445 he headed the witnesses at Leigh’s proof of age, testifying that he had been present at his baptism in the church of Skelton near Newton Reigny, and soon after coming into his estates Leigh named Hugh and other Lowthers among his feoffees.26 C139/120/37; CP40/743, rot. 478d. Less is known of Lowther’s relationship with Curwen, but the two men were together elected to Parliament at the Cumberland hustings held on 21 Jan. 1449, and earlier on our MP’s brother, Robert, had offered surety in a royal grant to Curwen.27 C219/15/6; CFR, xvii. 213. Of the 18 attestors at these hustings, six had ties of kinship with our MP, namely Leigh, Stapleton, de la More, William and John Lowther, and Sir Nicholas Radcliffe*, who, if our MP’s first wife was a Derwentwater, was the husband of her niece.

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 1430.28 The taking of her inqs. post mortem were abnormally delayed, implying that the findings may have been a matter of dispute. Writs of diem clausit extremum issued on 22 July 1449 were ignored, and new writs issued in the following Dec. were not acted upon until Oct. 1450: CFR, xviii. 97, 149; C139/133/2. She followed his father in not naming him as an executor, choosing instead three of her younger sons, and her only bequest to Hugh was a silver cup with a cover decorated with his father’s arms. Additionally, she left a meagre one mark each to five of his children. Just as at his father’s death he may have felt less than well treated than his siblings, particularly as she bequeathed to his brother, William, a tenement in Carlisle and unspecified lands in the barony of Dalston, probably the last part of her paternal inheritance.29 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. xvi. 160-2; CP40/757, rot. 194d. None the less, the manor of Lowther was an important acquisition, giving Hugh for the first time a significant landholding in Westmorland, and he now began to play a part in the public affairs of that county. In the autumn of 1450 he attested a parliamentary election there for the first time since 1433, even though in doing so he put himself in technical breach of electoral statute when he attested the Cumberland election 12 days later; and in August 1451 and 1452 he broke new ground by sitting on the grand jury of gaol delivery at Appleby.30 C219/16/1; JUST3/70/21, 22.

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.31 C219/16/2, 3; CPR, 1452-61, p. 203.

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’.32 PPC, vi. 271-2. All this serves to add to the impression that his commitment to the Nevilles was less than whole-hearted.

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.33 As it transpired, her inheritance proved to be modest, for, even though her father had no further issue, her title was successfully contested by the heir male of the Lancasters of Hartsop. The rival claims were finally put to rest in 1499, when the heir male, William, son of Christopher Lancaster, was married to Elizabeth, da. of our MP’s gds.: Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. xvi. 163-5.

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.34 CPR, 1441-6, p. 73; 1461-7, p. 61; CFR, xx. 50.

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.35 E199/7/39; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxxix. 122-3; C219/17/1; CPR, 1467-77, p. 29. The only interesting reference to him is another marriage contract. On 11 Apr. 1468, again in company with his son and heir, he entered into a contract with another of the leading local gentry, Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, for the marriage of the younger Hugh’s son, another Hugh (a boy of seven), to Threlkeld’s daughter by Margaret, widow of John, Lord Clifford. The terms of the contract are the best evidence of the wealth and standing of the Lowthers. The younger Hugh agreed to settle a jointure worth 20 marks p.a. on the couple in return for 160 marks; and our MP undertook to match this settlement in return for 260 marks. Few other gentry families in the north-west could have afforded to settle so large a jointure.36 Bodl. Dodsworth mss, 74, f. 113.

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.37 CPR, 1467-77, p. 610. No doubt by this date he was too old to care much about such things, and he died, at about the age of 80, on 4 Aug. 1475. His Westmorland and Cumberland inquisitions post mortem were taken on the same day, 5 Sept., and his property significantly undervalued at only £22 5s. 8d. p.a.38 C140/51/20. His manor of Lowther was extented at only £9 10s. p.a. compared with its valuation of £42 in 1510: C142/25/149. On 20 Sept. the Crown ordered the relevant escheators to deliver seisin to his eldest son, but the order was a dead letter even before its issue, for the latter, who had waited so long for his inheritance, had died three days before, leaving as the Lowther heir his own son, Hugh (1461-1510).39 CFR, xxi. 281, 286; C142/25/149. It is curious that our MP should have had so young a gds., and, to resolve this apparent chronological difficulty, it has been argued, contrary to the established pedigrees, that four, rather than three, Hugh Lowthers headed the family between 1430 and 1510: Cumb. and Westld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxxix. 118. There can, however, be no doubt that the pedigrees are correct. Exchequer records show that Hugh Lowther, escheator in 1446-7, died on 17 Sept. 1475 and was thus the father of the Hugh who was 14 in that year: E199/46/18. It is straining chronological probability to argue that the escheator of 1446-7 was our MP’s grandson rather than his son. The Lowthers were tenants-in-chief with respect to their manor of Newton Reigny, but as this Hugh had reached the age of canonical consent, the contract of 1468 kept his marriage out of royal hands. His wardship was committed to Sir Thomas Strickland of Sizergh.40 C140/85/58.