The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

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.

Strickland of Sizergh.

Descended from Walter de Stirkland, Knight, so called from the pasture-ground of the young cattle, called stirks or steers, in the parish of Morland, in this county; who was living in the reign of Henry III. A good account of this family, derived from original evidences, is given by Burn.

Sizergh, in the parish of Helsington, appears to have belonged to the Stricklands in the reign of Edward I. Sir Walter de Strickland had licence to empark there in the ninth of Edward III. During the civil wars of the seventeenth century the head of this house was loyal, while Walter, son of Sir William Strickland, of Boynton, Baronet 1641, was one of Cromwell's pretended House of Peers. The Stricklands of Boynton are supposed to be a younger branch of the house of Sizergh. The Stricklands called Standish, of Standish, in the county of Lancaster, represent the elder line, the present Mr. Standish being the eldest son of the late Thomas Strickland, of Sizergh, Esq.