+Knightly.+
LOWTHER OF LOWTHER-CASTLE, EARL OF LONSDALE 1807; BARON 1797;
BARONET 1764.
[Illustration] Eminently a knightly family, traced by Brydges to Sir
Gervase de Lowther, living in the reign of Henry III. Other
authorities make Sir Hugh de Lowther, knight of the shire for this
county, in the 28th of Edward I., the first recorded ancestor; his
great-grandson was at Agincourt in 1415. There have been three
principal branches of this family, the first descended from Sir John
Lowther, created a Baronet of Nova Scotia in 1640, who was
grandfather of the first Viscount Lonsdale (1696), extinct on the
death of the third Viscount in 1750. The second family sprung from
Richard, third son of Sir John Lowther; and the third and present
family descended from William, third son of a former Sir John
Lowther, of Lowther, who died in 1637.
Younger Branch. Lowther of Swillington, in the county of York,
Baronet 1824, descended from John, second son of Sir William
Lowther, who died in 1788.
See Brydges's Collins, vol. v. p. 695; Burn's Westmorland, vol. i.
p. 428; Whitaker's Leeds, vol. i. p. 281; and Wotton's Baronetage,
vol. ii. p. 302.
ARMS.--_Or, six annulets sable_, and borne by Monsire Louther, in
the reign of Edward III. (Roll )
Present Representative, William Lowther, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale.