now styled Lowther Castle. He died, aged 86, at York House, Twickenham, 19 March 1844 (Carlisle Patriot, 23 March 1844; Clayden, Rogers and his Contemporaries, passim). A portrait by Lawrence was engraved by T. Adean.
The son was born at Uffington, near Stamford, Lincolnshire, on 21 July 1787, and educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he graduated M.A. in 1808. In that year he entered parliament as M.P. for Cockermouth, but in 1813 preferred to represent the county of Westmoreland, for which, however, he had severe contests with Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham in 1818, 1820, and 1826. As an opponent of reform he was in 1831 reduced to sit for the pocket borough of Dunwich, but returned to the representation of his county in 1832.
Lowther entered upon official life under Perceval's administration, succeeding Palmerston as junior lord of the admiralty in 1809; from 1813 to 1826, with a short interval, he was on the treasury board, and was made first commissioner of woods and forests by the Duke of Wellington in 1828. He was president of the board of trade under Peel's short-lived administration in 1834–5, and was postmaster-general with a seat in the cabinet in 1841. He was summoned to the House of Lords in his father's barony on 6 Sept. 1841; succeeded to the earldom on his father's death in 1844, and held the office of president of council in 1852, when he is said to have refused the offer of a Garter from Lord Derby. Though a good business man, Lonsdale was no orator, and took no real initiative in politics. His great wealth, however, and the influence of his family gave him importance in his party, and extra-parliamentary meetings of the tories were frequently held at his house in Carlton Terrace.
Lonsdale was a good landlord, and spent vast sums in drainage; he had been in his earlier days a patron of Macadam, the road-maker, and was at his death chairman of the Metropolitan Roads Commission. He was something of a sportsman, his horse Spaniel having won the Derby in 1831, paid large subsidies for the maintenance of Italian opera in London, and was an enthusiastic collector of porcelain. He was the distant original of Lord Eskdale in Disraeli's ‘Tancred,’ ‘a man with every ability, except the ability to make his powers useful to mankind.’
Lonsdale died at his house in Carlton Terrace on 4 March 1872, and being unmarried was succeeded by his nephew, Henry Lowther (1818–1876), father of the present earl. A good portrait was engraved for the ‘Illustrated London News,’ 16 March 1872.
[Ferguson's Cumberland and Westmoreland M.P.'s; Greville Memoirs; Ann. Reg. 1872, p. 145; Times, 7 March 1872; Carlisle Express, 9 March 1872; Doyle's Official Baronage, ii. 415; Burke's Peerage; Black's Jockey Club, p. 206; Irving's Annals, p. 1048.]
LOYD. [See also Lhuyd, Lloyd and Llwyd.]
LOYD, SAMUEL JONES, first Baron Overstone (1796–1883), only son of the Rev. Lewis Loyd, a Welsh dissenting minister, by his wife Sarah, only daughter of John Jones, banker, of Manchester, was born 25 Sept. 1796. He was educated first at Eton, where his name occurs in the school lists in 1811, then for a year by Blomfield, afterwards bishop of London, under whom he became a good classical scholar, and finally at Trinity College, Cambridge, where, without reading for honours, he graduated B.A. in 1818 as captain of the poll, or first among the passmen. He proceeded M.A. in 1822. His father had given up his ministry to accept a partnership in Jones's Manchester bank, and had then founded the London branch of Jones, Loyd, & Co., which was afterwards merged in the London and Westminster Bank, founded in 1834. (For an account of the foundation and early history of the London and Westminster Bank see J. Francis's ‘History of the Bank of England,’ ii. 94; J. W. Gilbert's ‘Proceedings of the London and Westminster Bank,’ privately printed, 1847; J. W. Gilbert and A. S. Michie's ‘History of Banking,’ 1852). On his retirement in 1844, Samuel Jones Loyd succeeded him, and inheriting thus both wealth and a lucrative business, he pursued the course of legitimate banking so successfully that he died one of the richest men in England. He had already taken some part in politics. He sat as liberal member for Hythe from 1819 to 1826, and in 1832 he had unsuccessfully contested Manchester as a liberal. Though a persuasive speaker he never again stood for any constituency, or engaged in mere party politics. In 1833 he first came forward as a pre-eminent authority on banking and finance. He was examined at great length and with some hostility before a parliamentary committee in that year on the working of the Bank Act, and expressed a strong opinion against multiplying the issue of paper money and permitting more than one bank of issue, and in favour of the regular publication of the accounts of the bank reserve. He subsequently republished his evidence, and in 1837 produced his ‘Reflections on the State of the Currency.’ In 1840 he maintained the same views before the committee of the House of Commons upon banks of issue (Report of Committee on Banks of Issue,
