## Notes The stories of him in [["Boswell’s Presumptuous Task" by Adam Sisman]] are so bad that they almost sound like a joke. He was very much an Ebenezer Scrooge figure. He owned Britain’s largest collier but yet heated his homes with ‘green’ wood. He seemed so like embarrassing people and having power over them. When he went to or hosted a dinner he basically wouldn’t let anyone else speak. Literally. He would be the only one who would speak. If anyone else tried to he would shut them down. He would eat oysters and drink wine and not give any to his guests. They would be given water. ## Mentions ### [["Boswell’s Presumptuous Task" by Adam Sisman]] > A week later, Boswell returned home after dining at Courtenay's with Wilkes and Malone, and found to his surprise a card from Lord Lonsdale, asking him to dinner the following Monday. The dish was to be a turtle, a special luxury. Boswell 'strutted' and said to himself, 'Well, it is right to be in this metropolis. Things at last come forward unexpectedly. The great LOWTHER himself has now taken me up. I may be raised to eminence in the state. "The great LOWTHER' was the tyrant Lord Lonsdale, formerly Sir James Lowther. One of the richest men in England, Lonsdale controlled nine seats in the House of Commons, which in the chaotic politics of the eighteenth century was sufficient to give him considerable leverage. Pitt himself (the reigning Prime Minister, not his father) had been one of Lowther's 'ninepins'; and, in return, Pitt had elevated Lowther to the peerage. From his base in the north-west of England, close to the Scots border, Lonsdale exercised power on an almost feudal scale. Brutal and ruthless, he liked to control everything within his fiefdom; and would brook no opposition. He was a bully, who boasted of his prowess at duelling, and who met any serious show of defiance with a challenge. p161