[350] In the Gent.  Mag. for 1755, p. 42, among the deaths is entered ’Sir James Lowther, Bart., reckoned the richest commoner in Great Britain, and worth above a million.’  According to Lord Shelburne, Lord Sunderland, who had been advised ’to nominate Lowther one of his Treasury on account of his great property,’ appointed him to call on him.  After waiting for some time he rang to ask whether he had come, ’The servants answered that nobody had called; upon his repeating the inquiry they said that there was an old man, somewhat wet, sitting by the fireside in the hall, who they supposed had some petition to deliver to his lordship.  When he went out it proved to be Sir James Lowther.  Lord Sunderland desired him to be sent about his business, saying that no such mean fellow should sit at his Treasury.’  Fitzmaurice’s Shelburne, i. 34.

[351] I do not know what was at this time the state of the parliamentary interest of the ancient family of Lowther; a family before the Conquest; but all the nation knows it to be very extensive at present.  A due mixture of severity and kindness, oeconomy and munificence, characterises its present Representative.  BOSWELL.  Boswell, most unhappily not clearly seeing where his own genius lay, too often sought to obtain fame and position by the favour of some great man.  For some years he courted in a very gross manner ‘the present Representative,’ the first Earl of Lonsdale, who treated him with great brutality. Letters of Boswell, pp. 271, 294, 324, and ante, iv.  May 15, 1783.  In the Ann.  Reg. 1771, p. 56, it is shewn how by this bad man ’the whole county of Cumberland was thrown into a state of the greatest terror and confusion; four hundred ejectments were served in one day.’  Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 418) says that ’he was more detested than any man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependants.’  Lord Albemarle (Memoirs of Rockingham, ii. 70) describes the ’bad Lord Lonsdale.  He exacted a serf-like submission from his poor and abject dependants.  He professed a thorough contempt for modern refinements.  Grass grew in the neglected approaches to his mansion....  Awe and silence pervaded the inhabitants [of Penrith] when the gloomy despot traversed their streets.  He might have been taken for a Judge Jefferies about to open a royal commission to try them as state criminals...  In some years of his life he resisted the payment of all bills.’  Among his creditors was Wordsworth’s father, ’who died leaving the poet and four other helpless children.  The executors of the will, foreseeing the result of a legal contest with a millionaire, withdrew opposition, trusting to Lord Lonsdale’s sense of justice for payment.  They leaned on a broken reed, the wealthy debtor “Died and made no sign."’ [2 Henry VI, act iii. sc. 3.] See De Quincey’s Works, iii. 151.