[2] 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.
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.
[4] 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.
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.
He returned to Herstmonceux,[2] 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.
[2] 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 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.