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 sleeping-place, ‘for that the house is twenty miles in the land from Carlisle, and standeth farther from the rescue of the Scots than any other house we could have chosen,’ and Mary was deeply touched by the affectionate reverence with which she was treated by the deputy and his family. In the following year Lowther took part in the attempt to place Mary at the head of the ‘rising of the North,’ and orders were consequently issued for the apprehension of his younger brother Gerard. The latter escaped, and in 1570 was the ardent advocate of a scheme for the forcible deliverance of Mary from Tutbury Castle, in which he counted upon Sir Richard's assistance. But the project was not approved by the Duke of Norfolk, under whose perilous guidance the brothers appear to have been working in Mary's behalf. On Norfolk's execution in June 1572, Gerard succeeded in extricating himself, very probably through the influence of his wife, Lucy Dudley, widow of Albany Fetherstonhaugh, and second cousin once removed to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. This Gerard, who was a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, was sheriff of Cumberland in 1592, and erected in 1585 a house, now the ‘Two Lions Inn,’ at Penrith.

Sir Richard was sheriff of Cumberland for the second time in 1587, and succeeded Scrope as lord warden in 1591 (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, p. 702). He died on 27 Jan. 1607 at Lowther, where he had kept ‘plentiful hospitality for fifty-seven years together,’ and was buried in the parish church, where there is a monument to him with a full-length effigy (for epitaph see, Monum. Anglic. i. 16).

Lowther married Frances, daughter of John Middleton of Middleton, Westmoreland, and had a large family. His eldest surviving son, Christopher (d. 1617), attended James I at Newcastle with ‘a gallant companie from the Scottish border,’ and was knighted on 13 April 1603. By his second wife, Eleanor, daughter of William Musgrave of Hayton Castle, Sir Christopher had issue Sir John, M.P. for Westmoreland in four parliaments (1623–30), who was knighted by Charles I in 1627, and appointed to the council of the north in 1629. This Sir John was great-grandfather of Sir John Lowther, first viscount Lonsdale [q. v.], and was also ancestor of the Lowthers of Swillington [see, third ] and of the Lowthers of Whitehaven.

Sir Richard's fourth son, (d. 1624), was a judge of the common pleas in Ireland (12 Oct. 1610), and was knighted 3 May 1618. His godson, also (1589–1660), apparently natural son of his brother Christopher, matriculated from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1605, was called to the bar from Gray's Inn in 1614, and was admitted to King's Inns, Dublin, in 1619. Appointed a baron of the exchequer in Ireland by Charles I in 1628, he was knighted in 1631 and promoted chief justice of common pleas in 1634, and was, with Lord-chancellor Bolton, impeached in 1640 for conspiring to subvert the laws and parliament of Ireland. The impeachment was abandoned by order of the king. Lowther subsequently went over to the parliament, presided at the trial of Sir Phelim O'Neill in Feb. 1652 (, Ireland in the Seventeenth Century), and was in 1654 one of three commissioners of the great seal in Ireland. He died shortly before the Restoration, having acquired a ‘large landed property,’ says Smyth (Law Officers of Ireland, p. 292). He was buried at St. Michans, April 1660. Though twice married he left no issue (. Alumni Oxon.; Household Books of Lord William Howard, Surtees Soc., lxviii. 371, 372, 380;, Irish Chancellors, pp. 347–8; , Irish Parl. i. 347–54, ii. 43 and 75). 

LOWTHER, WILLIAM, third (1787–1872), was the eldest son of Sir William Lowther, by Augusta, daughter of John Fane, ninth earl of Westmoreland. His father, Sir William, was eldest son of the Rev. William Lowther (1707–1788), rector of Swillington, who was a great-grandson of Sir John Lowther, the grandson of Sir Richard Lowther [q. v.], sheriff of Cumberland. On the death of Sir James Lowther, first earl of Lonsdale [q. v.], in 1802, the father, Sir William, succeeded by special patent to his viscounty, but the earldom became dormant until he was created Earl of Lonsdale on 7 April 1807. Wordsworth dedicated his ‘Excursion’ to the second earl in 1814, subsequently inscribed to him a sonnet upon the Lowther motto—‘magistratus indicat virum’—and constantly wrote of him to Samuel Rogers and other friends in terms of the highest regard. He is also remembered as a munificent patron of the arts, who in the years following 1808 pulled down Lowther Hall and built the ‘majestic pile’