One of Sir Christopher’s descendants was Sir John Lowther, Bart. (d. 1706), the founder of the trade of Whitehaven, and another was John Lowther (1655-1700), who was created Viscount Lonsdale in 1696. Before this creation John had succeeded his grandfather, another Sir John Lowther (d. 1675), as a baronet, and had been member of parliament for Westmorland from 1675 to 1696. In 1688 he was serviceable in securing Cumberland and Westmorland for William of Orange; in 1690 he was first lord of the treasury, and he was lord privy seal from March 1699 until his death in July 1700. Lonsdale wrote: Memoirs of the Reign of James II., which were printed in 1808 and again in 1857. His family became extinct when his son Henry, the 3rd viscount (1694-1751), died unmarried in March 1751.
James Lowther, 1st earl of Lonsdale (1736-1802), was a son of Robert Lowther (d. 1745) of Maulds Meaburn, Westmorland, who was for some time governor of Barbados, and was descended from Sir Christopher Lowther; through his mother Catherine Pennington, James was a great-grandson of the 1st viscount Lonsdale. He inherited one of the family baronetcies in 1751, and from three sources he obtained immense wealth, being the heir of the 3rd viscount Lonsdale, of Sir James Lowther, Bart. (d. 1755) of Whitehaven, and of Sir William Lowther, Bart. (d. 1756). From 1757 to 1784 he was a member of parliament, exercising enormous influence on elections in the north of England and usually controlling nine seats in the House of Commons, where his nominees were known as “Sir James’s ninepins.” He secured the election of William Pitt as member for his borough of Appleby in 1781, and his dispute with the 3rd duke of Portland over the possession of the socage manor of Carlisle and the forest of Inglewood gave rise to lengthy proceedings, both in parliament and in the law courts. In 1784 Lowther was created earl of Lonsdale and in 1797 Viscount Lowther with an extended remainder. The earl’s enormous wealth enabled him to gratify his political ambitions. Sir N. W. Wraxall (Historical and Posthumous Memoirs, ed. H. B. Wheatley, 1884), who gives interesting glimpses of his life, speaks of his “prodigious property” and quotes Junius, who called him “the little contemptible tyrant of the north.” He was known as the “bad earl,” and Horace Walpole and others speak slightingly of him; he was, however, a benefactor to Whitehaven, where he boasted he owned the “land, fire and water.”
He married Mary (1768-1824) daughter of George III.’s favourite, John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, but died childless on the 24th of May 1802, when the earldom became extinct; but a kinsman, Sir William Lowther, Bart. (1757-1844), of Swillington, became 2nd viscount Lowther. This viscount, who was created earl of Lonsdale in 1807, is chiefly famous as the friend of Wordsworth and the builder of Lowther Castle, Penrith. His son, William Lowther, 3rd earl of Lonsdale (1787-1872), held several subordinate positions in various Tory ministries, and was lord president of the council in 1852. He died unmarried, and was succeeded by his nephew Henry (1818-1876), whose son Hugh Cecil (b. 1857) succeeded his brother as 6th earl of Lonsdale in 1882.
Other prominent members of the Lowther family are the Right Hon. James William Lowther (b. 1855), who became speaker of the House of Commons in 1905; Sir Gerard Augustus Lowther (b. 1858), who became British ambassador at Constantinople in 1908; and the Right Hon. James Lowther (1840-1904), who was a well-known Conservative member of parliament from 1865, onwards, and chief secretary for Ireland from 1878 to 1880.
LONSDALE, WILLIAM (1794-1871), English geologist and palaeontologist, was born at Bath on the 9th of September 1794. He was educated for the army and in 1810 obtained a commission as ensign in the 4th (King’s Own) regiment. He served in the Peninsular War at the battles of Salamanca and Waterloo, for both of which he received medals; and he retired as lieutenant. Residing afterwards for some years at Batheaston he collected a series of rocks and fossils which he presented to the Literary and Scientific Institution of Bath. He became the first honorary curator of the natural history department of the museum, and worked until 1829 when he was appointed assistant secretary and curator of the Geological Society of London at Somerset House. There he held office until 1842, when ill-health led him to resign. The ability with which he edited the publications of the society and advised the council “on every obscure and difficult point” was commented on by Murchison in his presidential address (1843). In 1829 Lonsdale read before the society an important paper “On the Oolitic District of Bath” (Trans. Geol. Soc. ser. 2, vol. iii.), the results of a survey begun in 1827; later he was engaged in a survey of the Oolitic strata of Gloucestershire (1832), at the instigation of the Geological Society, and he laid down on the one-inch ordnance maps the boundaries of the various geological formations. He gave particular attention to the study of corals, becoming the highest authority in England on the subject, and he described fossil forms from the Tertiary and Cretaceous strata of North America and from the older strata of Britain and Russia. In 1837 he suggested from a study of the fossils of the South Devon limestones that they would prove to be of an age intermediate between the Carboniferous and Silurian systems. This suggestion was adopted by Sedgwick and Murchison in 1839, and may be regarded as the basis on which they founded the Devonian system. Lonsdale’s paper, “Notes on the Age of the Limestones of South Devonshire” (read 1840), was published in the same volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society (ser. 2, vol. v.) with Sedgwick and Murchison’s famous paper “On the Physical Structure of Devonshire,” and these authors observe that “the conclusion arrived at by Mr Lonsdale, we now apply without reserve both to the five groups of our North Devon section, and to the fossiliferous slates of Cornwall.” The later years of Lonsdale’s life were spent in retirement, and he died at Bristol on the 11th of November 1871.
(H. B. Wo.)
LONS-LE-SAUNIER, a town of eastern France, capital of the department of Jura, 76 m. N.N.E. of Lyons on the Paris-Lyons railway, on which it is a junction for Chalon-sur-Saône, Dôle, Besançon and Champagnole. Pop. (1906) 10,648. The town is built on both sides of the river Vallière and is surrounded by the vine-clad hills of the western Jura. It owes its name to the salt mines of Montmorot, its western suburb, which have been used from a very remote period. The church of St Désiré, a building of the 12th and 15th centuries, preserves a huge Romanesque crypt. The town is the seat of a prefects and of a court of assizes, and there are tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, lycées and training-colleges for both sexes, and a branch of the Bank of France. There is an establishment for the use of the mineral waters, which are sodio-chlorinated and have strengthening properties. The principal industry of the place is the manufacture of sparkling wines, the Étoile growth being the best for this purpose. Trade is in cheese, cereals, horses, cattle, wood, &c.
Lons-le-Saunier, known as Ledo in the time of the Gauls, was fortified by the Romans, who added the surname Salinarius to the Gallic name. An object of contention owing to the value of its salt, it belonged for a long time during the medieval period to the powerful house of Chalon, a younger branch of that of Burgundy. It was burned in 1364 by the English, and again in 1637, when it was seized by the duke of Longueville for Louis XIII. It became definitively French in 1674. It was here that the meeting between Ney and Napoleon took place, on the return of the latter from Elba in 1815. Rouget de l’Isle, the author of the Marseillaise, was born at Montaigu near this town, where there is a statue erected to him.