424 mnQB' ot tbe fbunting^jfielt) 



tribute of affection and reverence to his dearest friend.' 

 Even Horace Walpole, who was not greatly enamoured 

 of goodness, describes him as ' a man of very conscien- 

 tious and disinterested honour, though no great genius.' 



But, whilst the ' good Lord Lowther ' is forgotten, 

 tradition still preserves many stories of the ' bad earl,' 

 for it is a lamentable fact that the world usually takes 

 more interest in bad than in good men. Sir James 

 Lowther, Baronet, afterwards first Earl of Lonsdale, was 

 a feudal baron of the old mediaeval type, haughty, 

 imperious, tyrannical. None durst withstand his will. 

 Those who had the hardihood to do so suffered for it. 

 One Whitehaven tradesman, who showed an English- 

 man's stubborn resistance to tyranny, was, by the * bad 

 earl's' orders, kidnapped by a press-gang, and did not 

 set foot on English soil again for ten years. James Lowther 

 would fight any man on the slightest possible provocation. 

 That he was a dare-devil fire-eater is indisputable, and 

 perhaps that was the least discreditable feature of his 

 character. He held no less than nine parliamentary seats 

 absolutely at his disposal. One of his nominees was young 

 William Pitt, then just one and twenty years of age, who 

 in a letter to his mother thus refers to the offer of a seat 

 made him by Lord Lonsdale. ' Appleby is the place I am 

 to represent, and the election will be made (probably in 

 a week or ten days) without my having any trouble or 

 even visiting my constituents.' 



But the hereditary ' goodness ' of the Lowthers 

 cropped up again in William the second Earl (or, 

 strictly speaking, the first Earl of the second creation, 

 for the ' bad Earl's ' title died with him), the intimate 

 friend of Wordsworth, who dedicated to him ' The 

 Excursion ' and sang his praises in more than one 



