g 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 o