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‘Wicked Jimmy’, James, 1st Earl of Lonsdale - and Wordsworth

On his death of in 1751, the viscounty became extinct so the estates were inherited by a cousin, Sir James Lowther of Maulds Meaburn (right). He married Lady Mary Stuart, daughter of George III's unpopular prime minister, the Earl of Bute, whose Tory politics he supported and patron of the younger William Pitt whose first parliamentary seat was the Lowther borough of Appleby. Sir James was created 1st Earl of Lonsdale. He inherited three fortunes, making him one of the richest men in eighteenth century England. From his father, the Governor of Barbados, he inherited the Maulds Meaburn estate and a West Indian fortune, from his cousin, the 3rd Viscount, he inherited Lowther and large estates in Cumberland and Westmorland, but the key inheritance was from another cousin, Sir James Lowther of Whitehaven, who left to him that town, its harbour and trade, coal mines, minerals and two million pounds (about a quarter of annual British exports at that time). He used his wealth and devious means to control his nine parliamentary boroughs in the North West - the 'Lowther Ninepins'. He was also notoriously mean. He employed Wordsworth’s father who died being owed almost £5,000 in earnings.

Bullied as a child, James Lowther became known as 'Wicked Jimmy' and was described by Alexander Carlyle as a ‘madman too influential to lock up’. He would gallop from London to Lowther (300 miles) in 36 hours. He drove through his villages at headlong speed.  There is a story that his ghost reappears when the moon is full on the anniversary of his burial (9 June), seated high in a carriage riding maniacally through the parkland whipping his horses into a frenzy. Another story says that at the death of a mistress he wouldn’t allow his servants to say that she was dead, dressing her himself and seating her at the dining table with him, then having her body placed in a glass-lidded coffin before her burial seven weeks after her death.

But with an astute eye for business, he almost monopolised iron-ore mining in Cumberland, making the west Cumberland field one of the most technically advanced in Britain. He also commissioned various unexecuted designs for a vast new palace at Lowther but died age 65, without legitimate children.

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