king of Bavaria in 1812 and by the king of Württemberg in 1813; the head of the younger, or Roman Catholic line, was made a prince of the Empire in 1711. Both lines are flourishing, their present representatives being Ernst (b. 1854) prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, and Aloyse (b. 1871) prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. The lands of the family were mediatized after the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. The area of the county of Löwenstein was about 53 sq. m.
See C. Rommel, Grundzüge einer Chronik der Stadt Löwenstein (Löwenstein, 1893).
LOWESTOFT, a municipal borough, seaport and watering-place in the Lowestoft parliamentary division of Suffolk, England, 11712 m. N.E. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 29,850. It lies on either side of the formerly natural, now artificial outlet of the river Waveney to the North Sea, while to the west the river forms Oulton Broad and Lothing Lake. The northern bank is the original site. South Lowestoft arose on the completion of harbour improvements, begun in 1844, when the outlet of the Waveney, reopened in 1827, was deepened. The old town is picturesquely situated on a lofty declivity, which includes the most easterly point of land in England. The church of St Margaret is Decorated and Perpendicular. South Lowestoft has a fine esplanade, a park (Bellevue) and other adjuncts of a watering-place. Bathing facilities are good. There are two piers enclosing a harbour with a total area of 48 acres, having a depth of about 16 ft. at high tide. The fisheries are important and some 600 smacks belong to the port. Industries include ship and boat building and fitting, and motor engineering. The town is governed by a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area 2178 acres.
Lowestoft (Lothu Wistoft, Lowistoft, Loistoft) owes its origin to its fisheries. In 1086 it was a hamlet in the demesne of the royal manor of Lothingland. The men of Lowestoft as tenants on ancient demesne of the crown possessed many privileges, but had no definite burghal rights until 1885. For several centuries before 1740 the fisheries were the cause of constant dispute between Lowestoft and Yarmouth. During the last half of the 18th century the manufacture of china flourished in the town. A weekly market on Wednesdays was granted to John, earl of Richmond, in 1308 together with an eight days’ fair beginning on the vigil of St Margaret’s day, and in 1445 John de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, one of his successors as lord of the manor, received a further grant of the same market and also two yearly fairs, one on the feast of St Philip and St James and the other at Michaelmas. The market is still held on Wednesdays, and in 1792 the Michaelmas fair and another on May-day were in existence. Now two yearly fairs for small wares are held on the 13th of May and the 11th of October. In 1643 Cromwell performed one of his earlier exploits in taking Lowestoft, capturing large supplies and making prisoners of several influential royalists. In the war of 1665 the Dutch under Admiral Opdam were defeated off Lowestoft by the English fleet commanded by the duke of York.
See Victoria County History, Suffolk; E. Gillingwater, An Historical Account of the Town of Lowestoft (ed. 1790).
LOWIN, JOHN (1576–1659), English actor, was born in London, the son of a carpenter. His name frequently occurs in Henslowe’s Diary in 1602, when he was playing at the Rose Theatre in the earl of Worcester’s company, and he was at the Blackfriars in 1603, playing with Shakespeare, Burbage and the others, and owning—by 1608—a share and a half of the twenty shares in that theatre. About 1623 he was one of the managers. He lived in Southwark, and Edward Alleyn speaks of his dining with him in 1620. “Lowin in his latter days kept an inn (the Three Pigeons) at Brentford, where he deyed very old.” Two of his favourite parts were Falstaff, and Melanteus in The Maid’s Tragedy.
LOWLAND, in physical geography, any broad expanse of land with a general low level. The term is thus applied to the landward portion of the upward slope from oceanic depths to continental highlands, to a region of depression in the interior of a mountainous region, to a plain of denudation or to any region in contrast to a highland. The Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland are typical.
LOWNDES, THOMAS (1692–1748), founder of the Lowndean
professorship of astronomy at Cambridge university, England,
was born in 1692, both his father and mother being Cheshire
landowners. In 1725 he was appointed provost marshal of
South Carolina, a post he preferred to fill by deputy. In 1727
Lowndes claimed to have taken a prominent part in inducing
the British government to purchase Carolina, but he surrendered
his patent when the transfer of the colony to the crown was
completed. His patent was renewed in 1730, but he resigned
it in 1733. He then brought various impractical schemes before
the government to check the illicit trade in wool between Ireland
and France; to regulate the paper currency of New England;
and to supply the navy with salt from brine, &c. He died on the
12th of May 1748. By his will he left his inherited Cheshire
properties to the university of Cambridge for the foundation of
a chair of astronomy and geometry.
LOWNDES, WILLIAM THOMAS (1798–1843), English bibliographer,
was born about 1798, the son of a London bookseller.
His principal work, The Bibliographer’s Manual of English
Literature—the first systematic work of the kind—was published
in four volumes in 1834. It took Lowndes fourteen years to
compile, but, despite its merits, brought him neither fame nor
money. Lowndes, reduced to poverty, subsequently became
cataloguer to Henry George Bohn, the bookseller and publisher.
In 1839 he published the first parts of The British Librarian,
designed to supplement his early manual, but owing to failing
health did not complete the work. Lowndes died on the 31st of
July 1843.
LOW SUNDAY, the first Sunday after Easter, so called because
of its proximity to the “highest” of all feasts and Sundays,
Easter. It was also known formerly as White Sunday, being still
officially termed by the Roman Catholic Church Dominica in
albis, “Sunday in white garments,” in allusion to the white
garments anciently worn on this day by those who had been
baptized and received into the Church just before Easter. Alb
Sunday, Quasimodo and, in the Greek Church, Antipascha, and
ἡ δευτεροπρώτη Κυριακή (literally “second-first Sunday,” i.e.
the second Sunday after the first) were other names for the day.
LOWTH, ROBERT (1710–1787), English divine and Orientalist,
was born at Winchester on the 27th of November 1710. He was
the younger son of William Lowth (1661–1732), rector of Buriton,
Hampshire, a theologian of considerable ability. Robert was
educated on the foundation of Winchester College, and in 1729
was elected to a scholarship at New College, Oxford. He graduated
M.A. in 1737, and in 1741 he was appointed professor of
poetry at Oxford, in which capacity he delivered the Praelectiones
Academicae de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum. Bishop Hoadly appointed
him in 1744 to the rectory of Ovington, Hampshire,
and in 1750 to the archdeaconry of Winchester. In 1753 he was
collated to the rectory of East Woodhay, Hampshire, and in the
same year he published his lectures on Hebrew poetry. In 1754
he received the degree of doctor of divinity from his university,
and in 1755 he went to Ireland for a short time as first chaplain
to the lord-lieutenant, the 4th duke of Devonshire. He declined
a presentation to the see of Limerick, but accepted a prebendal
stall at Durham and the rectory of Sedgefield. In 1758 he
published his Life of William of Wykeham; this was followed
in 1762 by A Short Introduction to English Grammar. In 1765,
the year of his election into the Royal Societies of London and
Göttingen, he engaged in controversy with William Warburton
on the book of Job, in which he was held by Gibbon to have had
the advantage. In June 1766 Lowth was consecrated bishop of
St David’s, and about four months afterwards he was translated
to Oxford, where he remained till 1777, when he became bishop
of London and dean of the Chapel Royal. In 1778 appeared his
last work, Isaiah, a new Translation, with a Preliminary Dissertation,
and Notes, Critical, Philological, and Explanatory.
He declined the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1783, and died
at Fulham on the 3rd of November 1787.
The Praelectiones, translated in 1787 by G. Gregory as Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, exercised a great influence both in England and on the continent. Their chief importance lay in the
