Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/220

 [q. v.], and a daughter, Delvalle, who married [q. v.] the landscape-painter, and was the author of ‘Engineer's Manual of Mineralogy and Geology,’ 1846, and ‘Rudiments of Geology,’ 1848.

A portrait of Lowry, drawn by John Linnell and engraved by Linnell and William Blake, was published soon after his death, and another, drawn by his daughter, Mrs. Heming, was engraved by J. Thomson for the ‘European Magazine,’ August 1824, and by H. Meyer for the ‘Imperial Magazine,’ February 1825.



LOWTH or LOUTH, ROBERT (1710–1787), bishop of London, second son of [q. v.], divine, and Margaret, daughter of Robert Pitt of Blandford, Dorset, was born at Winchester on 27 Nov. 1710, was admitted scholar at the college, Winchester, in 1722, and proceeded to New College, Oxford, where he was elected in 1729. He graduated B.A. in 1733, proceeding M.A. in 1737. While at Winchester he wrote a poem on the genealogy of Christ as displayed in the east window of the college chapel, published in Pearch's ‘Collection of Poems,’ and in 1729 another poem on the view from Catherine Hill, Winchester. Having taken orders he was instituted to the vicarage of Overton, Hampshire, in 1735. In 1741 he was appointed professor of poetry at Oxford, and during his professorship delivered a remarkably learned course of lectures on Hebrew poetry. He accompanied [q. v.] on his embassy to Berlin in 1748, and having been appointed tutor to Lords George and Frederick Cavendish, sons of the Duke of Devonshire, travelled with them on the continent in 1749. On his return he was appointed archdeacon of Winchester in 1750 by [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, vacated his fellowship at New College, and about the same time resigned the professorship of poetry. In 1753, having married the previous year, he was collated to the rectory of Woodhay, Hampshire, and published his lectures on Hebrew poetry, for which the university of Oxford created him D.D. by diploma the following year. Being first chaplain to Lord Hartington [see, fourth ], then lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he was in 1755 offered the bishopric of Limerick, but being unwilling to reside in Ireland, he obtained permission to transfer the offer to Dr. James Leslie, receiving in exchange Leslie's preferments, a prebend in Durham and the rectory of Sedgefield in that county. A sentence in the dedication of his ‘Life of William of Wykeham’ to Bishop Hoadly, commending the bishop's action with reference to the election of Dr. Christopher Golding as warden of Winchester College, involved him in a controversy carried on by pamphlets in 1758. In 1765 he was elected fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Göttingen. In this year he was involved in a controversy with William Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, who attacked him insolently for an argument used in his ‘Lectures on Hebrew Poetry’ (see below). He was offered the bishopric of St. Davids in 1766, and was consecrated on 15 June. Before the end of the year he was translated to the see of Oxford. In 1777 he was translated to the see of London, and appointed dean of the chapel royal and a privy councillor. In the same year he met John Wesley at dinner and refused to sit above him. Wesley spoke of Lowth in his ‘Journal’ as in his ‘whole behaviour worthy of a Christian bishop.’ On the death of Frederick Cornwallis [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, in 1783, Dr. [q. v.], bishop of Worcester, recommended Lowth to the king for the primacy; the king offered it to him, but he declined it and joined Bishop Hurd in recommending Dr. John Moore, bishop of Bangor (, Historical Memoirs, iii. 32, 33). The reason of his refusal seems to have been the declining state of his health, which was broken by the disease of the stone and by family affliction. In 1786 he was appointed a member of the committee of the privy council for trade and foreign plantations. His administration of his diocese is perhaps chiefly memorable for his attack on the corrupt custom of giving bonds of resignation. Finding in 1783 that a clergyman named Eyre had given one of these bonds to a Mr. Ffytche, patron of Woodham Walter, he refused to institute him to the living. Ffytche brought the case before the court of common pleas and gained it there, and at the court of king's bench, whither the bishop carried it. Finally, on appeal to the lords, the bishop obtained the decision that such bonds were illegal. Lowth died on 3 Nov. 1787, and was buried on the 12th at Fulham.

By his wife Mary (d. 1803), daughter of Lawrence Jackson of Christchurch, Hampshire, whom he married in 1752 (, in Literary Anecdotes, ii. 419), he had seven children. Thomas Henry, fellow of New College, Oxford, and rector of Thorley, Isle of Wight, died in 1778. A second son,