{{short description|British politician}} {{Other uses|Lowther (disambiguation)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2022}} {{infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = Colonel | name = Claude Lowther | honorific_suffix = | office = Member of Parliament for Lonsdale | term_start = 1918 | term_end = 1922 | predecessor = ''New constituency'' | successor = Nigel Kennedy | office1 = Member of Parliament for Eskdale | term_start1 = 1910 | term_end1 = 1918 | predecessor1 = Geoffrey Howard | successor1 = ''Constituency abolished'' | term_start2 = 1900 | term_end2 = 1906 | predecessor2 = Robert Andrew Allison | successor2 = Geoffrey Howard | birth_name = Claude William Henry Lowther | birth_date = {{Circa|1870}} | birth_place = | death_date = {{death date and age|1929|06|16|1870|||df=yes}} | death_place = | education = Rugby School | parents = Francis William Lowther<br>Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque | relations = William Lowther, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale (grandfather)<br> Toupie Lowther (sister) }} Colonel '''Claude William Henry Lowther''' ({{circa}} 1870 – 16 June 1929) was an English Conservative politician.

==Early life== Lowther was the only son of Capt. Francis William Lowther and Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque;<ref name="RS1904"/> Francis William was the illegitimate son of William Lowther, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale and Emilia Cressotti, an Italian opera singer, and received £125,000 on the Earl's death.<ref name="odnb">{{cite book | first=Keith | last=Grieves | chapter=Lowther, Claude William Henry (1870–1929) | title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=2004 | chapter-url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39465 | access-date=14 January 2007}}</ref> His sister was the tennis player Toupie Lowther, whom he encouraged to form an all-female unit supporting the French Army during the First World War.<ref name="times1919">{{cite news |title= Englishwomen with the French Army – Miss Toupie Lowther's Unit |work=The Times |page= 13 |date=5 August 1919 }}</ref>

He was educated at Rugby School and had a brief diplomatic career as honorary attaché at Madrid from 1894.<ref name="RS1904">{{cite book |last1=School |first1=Rugby |title=Rugby School Register: From May 1874 to May 1904 |date=1904 |publisher=Rugby School |page=118 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OoxBAAAAYAAJ |access-date=17 June 2022 |language=en}}</ref>

==Career== He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry of the British Army on 17 May 1899. Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War later that year, he signed up for service with the Imperial Yeomanry, where on 3 February 1900 he was appointed a Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion.<ref>{{London Gazette| issue=27160|page=692| date=2 February 1900}}</ref> During a skirmish at Faber's Put on 30 March 1900, he and two troopers rescued two wounded men while under heavy Boer Fire, an act for which he was unsuccessfully recommended for the Victoria Cross (VC) by Sir Charles Warren.<ref name="odnb" />

In September 1914, a month after the outbreak of the Great War, he raised and equipped the 11th, 12th, and 13th (Service) Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment, who became known as "Lowther's Lambs", and, together with the 14th (Service) Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, formed the 116th Brigade of the 39th Division. His recruiting was highly successful, enlisting men who were volunteering for Kitchener's Army from the South Downs already bound to one another by community ties. However, Lowther, like most who raised service battalions, was not to command them in action. He returned to Herstmonceux,<ref name="odnb" /> while his "Lambs", after arriving on the Western Front earlier in the year, were terribly damaged in their first attack on 30 June 1916, intended to divert attention from the offensive on the Somme.

===Political career=== In October 1900, at the "Khaki Election", he was elected Unionist member of parliament for Eskdale. During the last months of the Boer War on 10 July 1901, Lowther made a speech advocating extracting reparations from the Transvaal, using mineral deposits to compensate for high British taxes needed to pay for the war.<ref>R. B. McCallum, ''[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.52967/page/n5/mode/2up Public Opinion and the Last Peace]'' (Oxford University Press, 1945), p. 45.</ref>

He was defeated in 1906 by the Liberal candidate, Geoffrey Howard. After his defeat, he became a vigorous campaigner against socialism and for the preservation of Empire. Lowther favoured tariff reform and "national efficiency", including state welfare. From 1908 until 1911, he was chairman of the Anti-Socialist Union. Defeated again in Eskdale at the January 1910 election, he regained the seat in December 1910.<ref name="odnb" />

In Parliament, he called for both military and industrial conscription, and for the creation of a volunteer army of veterans past the age of service. Lowther followed the philosophy of Milner in admiring the patriotic dedication of the working class.<ref name="odnb" />

Having announced that he would not stand again in North Cumberland, which was won unopposed in 1918 by the distantly related Christopher Lowther, he became MP for Lonsdale. He favoured large indemnity payments from Germany, and supported the Anti-Waste League, and, less fortunately, Horatio Bottomley. He was among the MPs who voted to end the coalition with David Lloyd George at the Carlton Club meeting brought on by the Chanak Crisis.

In the 1922 General Election he did not stand for re-election in Lonsdale on health grounds, but was a last minute nominee for Carlisle. In 1918 the Conservatives had not contested this traditionally Liberal seat, to ensure Labour did not win. The local party proposed to do the same again, but an internal coup led to Lowther's selection. In a brief but vigorous campaign he pushed the sitting Liberal into third place, and the Labour candidate took the seat. This proved to be the end of Claude Lowther's political career.<ref name="Cook1977">{{cite book |last1=Cook |first1=C. |last2=Jones |first2=P. |last3=Sinclair |first3=J. |last4=Weeks |first4=Jeffrey |title=Sources in British Political History 1900–1951: Volume 4: A Guide to the Private Papers of Members of Parliament: L–Z |date=20 April 1977 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-15762-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6DuvCwAAQBAJ |access-date=17 June 2022 |language=en}}</ref>

==Personal life== Aside from his political career, Lowther was also a connoisseur and a student of the theatre, and a friend of Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Lowther's play ''The Gordian Knot'' was presented at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1903, but was not at all successful. The episode, however, did not bring about a breach between Lowther and Tree.<ref name="odnb" /> He bought Herstmonceux Castle in 1911 and began restoring it in 1912.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/herstmonceux_castle.htm | title=Herstmonceux Castle | access-date=14 January 2007}}</ref> The inhabitable parts were refurnished and stocked with ''objets d'art''.

His health gradually failed, and Lowther died at his London home in 1929. After his death, the collection he had assembled at Herstmonceux was sold off, and the castle itself sold to Reginald Lawson.<ref name="odnb" />

==References== {{reflist}} *{{Rayment-hc|date=March 2012}}

==External links== * {{Hansard-contribs | colonel-claude-lowther | Claude Lowther }} *{{NPG name|name=Claude William Henry Lowther}} * [http://royalsussex-southdowns.co.uk/history A Brief History of the Southdown Battalions]

{{S-start}} {{s-par|uk}} {{succession box | title = Member of Parliament for Eskdale | before = Robert Andrew Allison | after = Geoffrey Howard | years = 1900–1906 }} {{s-bef | before=Geoffrey Howard}} {{s-ttl | title=Member of Parliament for Eskdale | years = December 1910 – 1918 }} {{s-non | reason=Constituency abolished}} {{s-new | constituency}} {{s-ttl | title=Member of Parliament for Lonsdale | years=1918–1922 }} {{s-aft | after=Capt. Nigel Kennedy}} {{S-end}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowther, Claude}} Category:1870s births Category:1929 deaths Claude Category:Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Category:UK MPs 1900–1906 Category:UK MPs 1910–1918 Category:UK MPs 1918–1922 Category:British Army personnel of the Second Boer War Category:Imperial Yeomanry officers Category:Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry officers Category:Volunteer Force officers Category:British Army colonels Category:People educated at Rugby School