The room was thus sealed up for many years. Part of the wax was to be seen on the door not many years ago, and tradition speaks of curious people going to the window of this mysterious room, through which were to be seen the chairs, tables, and open secretary, just as when left by the estranged brothers. [15] The owner of Whitehaven was Sir James, his father's second cousin, son of Sir John, the great maker of the town. Sir William Lowther was his fourth cousin, and left him Marske. Lowther came to him from his second cousin. His eventual heir, Sir William Lowther, was the son of his third cousin; the latter also inherited the title of Viscount Lonsdale under a special and remarkable limitation; this had been conferred on "Sir Jammy" when it was seen that his earldom was going to die out. The new peer was created Earl of Lonsdale in 1807; it was reported in 1828, correctly or otherwise, that he had the offer of a dukedom. [16] A sketch of Shap Stones, made by her in 1775, is reproduced in Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society's _Transactions_, vol. xv., article 4. [17] Few men have been more bitterly attacked than James Lowther has been, both during his life, and after his death. He was masterful and capricious, a combination of qualities which does not make for popularity; he was devoted to electioneering, which earned him enemies; and it is worth noting that his chief detractors have a distinct political bias. They include Horace Walpole; Boswell, whose Parliamentary ambitions he disappointed, and above all, Rev. Alex. Carlyle, who devotes a page of his memoirs to a compilation of the worst epithets and opinions permissible to a Doctor of Divinity. Some of this is quoted in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ article, omitting, however, the fact that the passage begins by showing the writer's sympathy with his great rival, the Duke of Portland. Sir James was a benefactor to the town of Whitehaven, and it was he who secured the first return to Parliament of the younger Pitt--from Appleby. An amusing tale is told of him that he once fought a duel with a learned serjeant-at-law, who had made free with his character in a case. At the meeting, the learned serjeant is said to have shot his own toe! It is hard to believe that he would have been called "Sir Jammy" till his death, though he had long been a peer, had he really been "more detested than any man living" as Carlyle asserts he was; or the suggestion that he was a tyrant over his dependents and tenants in view of the fact that his funeral, which was, by his direction, strictly private and unannounced, "a large crowd of people from the neighbourhood were assembled, and behaved with the greatest respect, decency and decorum," as the _Gentleman's Magazine_ quaintly puts it. CRAIK TREES.