Sir James Lowther

Sir James Lowther, 1st Lord Lonsdale (d1802), was known as ‘Wicked Jimmy’. He fell in love with the daughter of one of his tenant farmers, and kept her in style at a manor house in Hampshire. When she grew ill and died, he refused to accept her death, leaving her body lying in bed until the stench of her rotting flesh became too much to endure. He then had her placed in a glass lidded coffin, which he left in a cupboard so that he could return to look at her. When finally she was buried in Paddington Cemetery in London, he had a company of Cumberland militia stand guard over her tomb for several weeks.

He was also responsible for blocking payment of the debt he owed to John Wordsworth, William's father, on his death in 1783. It was not until Lowther himself died in 1802 that the Wordsworth family finally received payment.

Alexander Carlyle characterises him as: more detested than any man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependents ..... He goes on: Ferguson, who had seen him often, said he thought him a very stupid man. Bob Hume, who lived nine months in his house in London ... thought him a capricious, and sometimes a brutal, head of a family. Robert Adam told me many stories of him, which made me conclude that he was truly a madman, though too rich to be confined. It has to be said, however, that these opinions come in large part from his political opponents.

Sir William Lowther, 2nd Lord Lonsdale, was the cousin of Sir James, and succeeded him in May 1802.

Quotations from : The Autobiography of Dr Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, Chapter 11.