Loftus, Adam (1568?–1643), 1st Viscount Loftus of Ely , lord chancellor of Ireland, was the second, but eldest surviving, son of Robert Loftus of Swineside in the parish of Coverham, Yorkshire. Adam matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating BA (1586) and MA (1589); he entered Lincoln's Inn in May 1592 having formerly been a member of Thavies Inn. The same year, he appears as archdeacon of Glendalough, this office being conferred upon him by his uncle Adam Loftus (qv) who was both archbishop of Dublin and lord chancellor of Ireland. Despite his lay status, he continued to hold the archdeaconry as a sinecure until his death. He probably continued his legal studies in London for a time becoming a bachelor of civil law by 1597 before coming to Dublin where he practised civil and ecclesiastical law in the royal courts. In 1597, he married Sarah Bathow, the widow of Richard Meredith (qv), bishop of Leighlin. They had four sons and two daughters.
Political and social ascent On 17 September 1597 he was appointed judge-martial for life and on 8 November 1598 he became a master of chancery, a post he held until 1619. The former post entailed onerous and dangerous responsibilities for the duration of the Nine Years War, which ended in 1603. Thereafter, it was a sinecure worth £162 a year. Up to his uncle's death in 1605, he often acted as his vicar-general for the diocese of Dublin and as his deputy in the court of chancery and in his uncle's office as judge of the faculties and of the prerogative court. In November 1604, he was confirmed as vicar general and principal officer of the consistorial court of the diocese of Dublin for life. He continued to exercise the latter role up to June 1612, probably surrendering it soon after. Loftus was knighted on 25 December 1604, purchased a life annuity worth £219 p.a. in June 1607, became a member of the Irish privy council in 1608, was made constable of Maryborough fort in Queen's County in 1611 and was appointed judge of the newly constituted Irish court of admiralty in 1612. His judgeship of the court of admiralty was potentially lucrative due to a marked rise in piracy at the time and he enjoyed initial success in expanding his authority both against his admiralty superiors in London and against the claims to admiralty jurisdiction of many towns and even some landowners in Ireland. He subsequently became vice-admiral of Leinster.
During the 1600s and 1610s, Loftus was legal adviser to a tightly knit group of Irish-based protestant officials and landowners who were able to capitalise on the lax supervision of Irish affairs from London to manipulate grants of land made by the king to courtiers for their own benefit. He was also able to use his political influence and his legal knowledge to manipulate evidence within the court of chancery to acquire property by disreputable means. From 1604, he held a lease of property in Drimnagh from one James Barnewall, later securing a 99-year lease of the same. However, Peter Barnewall, who was almost certainly the rightful owner of the property, later contested this lease in the court of chancery, but inevitably in 1618 this resulted in an injunction prohibiting Peter from disturbing Loftus's possession of Drimnagh. In 1613–14, he was also involved in a successful legal dispute with Sir Terence O'Dempsey over land at Portnahinch. These gambits were not always successful; an attempt to dupe the more politically influential 4th earl of Thomond (qv) out of a lease to land in county Carlow backfired and he was ordered to apologise to the earl in March 1610. By 1613, he held land in King's County, Queen's County, Kildare and Dublin. His main residence was Monasterevin, Co. Kildare. He was returned as MP for King's County in the 1613–15 parliament, but only after the sheriff overturned the election result. In 1621, his estate was worth about £1,145 a year. This figure does not include his sizeable income from public office and from lands he leased often for very long periods.
Financial worries, thwarted ambition and the lord chancellorship of Ireland From the late 1610s, Loftus became increasingly discontented at the manner in which George Villers, later duke of Buckingham, emerged as the king's chief favourite and came to monopolise control of Irish patronage until his death in 1628. Loftus was not close to Buckingham and suffered throughout his career from a lack of influential supporters at the royal court. Despite his years of service, he had not been granted any plantation land and was not as wealthy as some of his colleagues who had acquired massive estates with the aid of his legal expertise. On 13 May 1619 he fulfilled a long-held ambition and became lord chancellor of Ireland, but only after paying £1,000 to Buckingham, an inducement that put Loftus under considerable financial pressure. While this appointment made him the chief judicial officer in Ireland, he was denied the financial perquisites traditionally associated with the office and left with a comparatively modest salary of £300 a year; about the same time his salary as judge-martial was suspended. Worse still, Buckingham appointed Lawrence Parsons (qv) (d. 1628) as admiralty judge for Munster, thereby depriving Loftus of jurisdiction over the most lucrative province for captured or shipwrecked cargoes.
But the office of lord chancellor did provide a holder who was dogged, ruthless and knowledgeable in the law with an undoubted opportunity to enrich himself. Being an equity jurisdiction, the court of chancery vested wide discretionary powers in its head; moreover, the Irish court of chancery operated in a more informal fashion than its English counterpart. Loftus often heard cases that were within the remit of the common law courts and even conducted hearings in his own house. He systematically exploited these advantages for the purposes of political patronage and self-enrichment, accepting bribes from litigants and manipulating legal proceedings to benefit himself and his relatives. That said, it is clear that under Loftus the court of chancery was the only legal recourse for the less well off, as common law cases tended to be longer and more time-consuming thereby favouring the wealthy. Loftus stressed that he provided swift, cheap, impartial and popular justice, and this was probably the case for most if not all, of the time. Nonetheless, judges in the other royal courts and wealthy landowners disliked the manner in which he aggressively and illegally pursued business.
He served as a lord justice from May to September 1622 and, after a payment to one of Buckingham's cronies, was created Viscount Loftus of Ely on 20 May 1622. As a lord justice, he played a key role in facilitating the efforts of an English parliamentary commission sent to Ireland that summer to investigate the corrupt manner in which Buckingham and his clients governed Ireland. The commissioners praised him for his efforts on their behalf. However, this may only have served to alienate Buckingham without doing enough to win the patronage of the duke's enemies. In 1623, reformers in England cut spending in Ireland, including the payment of Loftus's pension, and that summer his petition to the English privy council for financial compensation failed, mainly because he asked for too much. This denial proved the final straw.
Political controversies Previously, Loftus had been careful to avoid antagonising politically powerful figures in his court of chancery, but during 1624 he became embroiled in a bitter jurisdictional dispute with the lord deputy, Henry Cary (qv), Viscount Falkland, a Buckingham client. In January 1624 Falkland in the court of castle chamber overturned a ruling of the chancery court relating to a licence to sell alcohol. Castle chamber exercised a similar role to the court of chancery, which could lead to institutional rivalry between the courts, and this was now exacerbated by an increasingly bitter personal rivalry between the courts’ respective heads. Loftus simply ignored Falkland's ruling and continued his own proceedings in chancery without informing the lord deputy. Eventually, in June Falkland ordered Loftus to affix the great seal of chancery to the licence to sell alcohol. Loftus refused saying the matter should be referred to the royal judges and also declined to assent to a licence to tan leather, holding it to be contrary to statute law. The quarrel proceeded to widen in scope as Loftus refused to appoint Falkland's nominees as judges of the assize and claimed the authority to appoint justices of the peace.
In a bid to mollify him, the crown agreed in spring 1625 to increase his stipend as lord chancellor, to pay most of his arrears and to restore his pension. However, he continued to clash with government colleagues and entertained cases in chancery against some very powerful landowners including Richard Preston, earl of Desmond, an important Buckingham client, and most notably Richard Boyle (qv), earl of Cork. Loftus and Cork had been close during the 1610s, but fell out after Cork accused Loftus of bias in a chancery case. Eventually, on 31 March 1626, the English privy council brokered a compromise resolution to the Loftus–Falkland dispute and laid down detailed procedures for dealing with future disagreements.
When war with Spain (and later France) forced the crown to consider making certain concessions to Irish catholics in return for money to maintain the royal army, most royal officials in Ireland opposed this process; this allowed Loftus, who supported concessions, to emerge as the key intermediary between the crown and the catholic nobility and gentry. During talks in November 1626 the catholic representative specifically requested that they negotiate with Loftus. The dangers of this strategy for Loftus became apparent in spring 1627 when negotiations collapsed and Falkland accused him of urging the catholics to refuse to pay for the army. This claim was untrue but led to Loftus's summons to London in May to face charges of abusing his position in the court of chancery. There he remained until Charles I agreed in May 1628 to make a series of legal and political concessions to his Irish catholic subjects that became known as the Graces. Loftus was duly cleared of all charges against him in July, authorised to prosecute those who slandered him in the court of star chamber, and restored as judge of the admiralty in Munster. His case was dispatched so speedily that royal officials complained they were not given enough time to locate and prepare all the relevant evidence.
He followed up this victory by securing Falkland's dismissal in early 1629 over the crude methods used by the lord deputy to find the crown's title to O’ Byrne country. Loftus became a lord justice for four years, serving with his bitter enemy the earl of Cork. The two men feigned a reconciliation for the king's benefit and Loftus agreed not to sit in at chancery proceedings involving Cork. However, a bitter factionalism had become endemic within the Dublin administration and the two lords justices and their respective partisans were soon feuding in a very public manner. In December 1630, Loftus's most important ally Francis Annesley (qv), Lord Mountnorris, was suspended as vice-treasurer of Ireland, enabling Cork to emerge as the dominant figure in the administration. Thereafter, Loftus played little part in the daily running of the government, concentrating instead on his duties in chancery. Nonetheless, he enjoyed control over church affairs and Cork's attempts to remove him as lord justice and to resurrect charges of misconduct failed miserably.
Wentworth and the Loftus family In 1632, Thomas Wentworth (qv) was appointed lord deputy, but did not travel to Ireland until July 1633. During this interim, Cork attempted to push the crown into a policy of fining catholics for failing to attend protestant church services. Wentworth wished to continue negotiations with the catholics and turned to Loftus who had long-standing links with the catholic nobility of Ireland. In November 1632 Loftus compelled Cork to desist from his persecution of catholics after a heated debate and a close vote at the Irish privy council. After his arrival in Ireland in summer 1633, Wentworth dismissed charges against Loftus and later procured the payment of £3,000 in arrears to him. Since the late 1620s, Loftus had become increasingly angry at the manner in which the lords of the admiralty had requisitioned cargo seized in Ireland. This culminated in a fierce dispute during 1633–35 over the right to nominate candidates to the position of marshall of the Irish admiralty. Again, Wentworth defended Loftus and arranged for Loftus to pass his post as vice-admiral of Leinster to his son Sir Robert in 1635. When Wentworth visited England in summer 1636, Loftus became lord justice for the third time, serving this time with Christopher Wandesforde (qv).
The Gifford case In early 1637 Sir John Gifford petitioned the king that Loftus fulfil certain promises he had allegedly made prior to the marriage between Loftus's eldest son, Sir Robert, and Gifford's half-sister Eleanor Rush. Loftus was accused of failing adequately to provide for Sir Robert and of showing favouritism towards his other children. He appears to have declined to settle his estate on Robert because he had failed to produce a male heir. Robert accepted this, but it appears as if Eleanor and her family were deeply discontented. For long, Loftus's political power rendered this discontent irrelevant, but this changed when Eleanor and Wentworth struck up such a close friendship that many began to suspect they were having an affair. In April 1636 Wentworth had privately lamented Loftus's failure to provide Eleanor with an adequate income. Interestingly, c.1636–7, Robert and Eleanor separated for a time before reconciling. There can be no doubt that Wentworth rather than Gifford was the real root of the petition. The case was referred to the lord deputy and council in March 1637.
Within a month, Wentworth signalled his true intent by clashing with Loftus over the appointment of judges to the assize and challenging his hitherto autonomous control of chancery. After long delays due to Loftus's stalling and to Wentworth's preoccupations elsewhere, the Gifford case was heard by the lord deputy and council in January 1638, which ordered Loftus on 1 February to settle an estate worth £1,200 a year upon Robert and his heirs. In vain, he pointed out that the council had based its ruling on the testimony of a single witness regarding an alleged verbal agreement Loftus had made with the by-then deceased Sir Francis Rush some sixteen years earlier and that Robert himself declined to have anything to do with the judicial proceedings.
Loftus refused to obey the decree at which Wentworth suborned aggrieved former suitors at the court of chancery to make complaints against Loftus. In February Wentworth ruled that Loftus had proceeded illegally in imprisoning a man for non-payment of debt and ordered his release. After Loftus continued to defy Wentworth, he was summoned before the lord deputy and council on 19 April and accused of encroaching on other courts’ jurisdictions. The council ruled that Loftus was at fault, that the matter would be referred to the king and that Loftus must surrender the great seal of the court of chancery the next day. This he refused to do, leading Wentworth to forbid him to attend privy council meetings and to execute his office. Throughout these escalating confrontations, Loftus repeatedly refused either to hand over the great seal or to kneel before the council, which culminated in his imprisonment in Dublin castle on 21 April for contempt towards the lord deputy.
Downfall Neither party was willing to back down. During the summer Wentworth gathered evidence against Loftus of misconduct and corruption in office and also began proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts to strip him of his archdeaconry of Glendalough. He also decided that Loftus's requests to be allowed present his case in person to the king could not be granted until he complied with the decree regarding Robert's marriage settlement. This settlement was to include the payment of maintenance arrears of £3,179 to Robert. For his part, Loftus remained unyielding and formed contacts with Wentworth's many enemies at the royal court who raised hue and cry about the lord deputy's treatment of an eminent and long serving royal official. Eventually in March 1639, Loftus was committed to a stricter form of imprisonment and his income from his lands were sequestered along with his government pension and salaries in order to pay his maintenance arrears. At this point Loftus capitulated and formally conveyed the relevant estates to Robert during the summer. Due to poor health he was allowed to leave Dublin Castle in May but remained under house arrest until August.
Once freed, Loftus travelled to the royal court to prosecute his appeal. During the first half of 1639 Wentworth's enemies were momentarily ascendant at court and Loftus’ rehabilitation looked likely. In September, however, the king effectively made Wentworth his chief minister thereby dooming Loftus. On 19 November 1639 the king dismissed his appeal against the decree in the Gifford case and then, after considering Wentworth's charges of misconduct, found Loftus unfit to hold office, formally dismissing him as lord chancellor on 6 December. Utterly defeated, Loftus threw himself upon the mercy of Wentworth, who agreed in early 1640 to drop a case against him (for abuse of political office) in the court of star chamber. In 1640, his debt to Robert having been paid off, he was allowed to receive rents from his land again. As both Robert and Eleanor had died by then, the lands he had been compelled to convey to Robert remained in the hands of a trust on behalf of their sole child Anne. The loss of income and property left Loftus facing financial ruin.
Pyrrhic victory He remained in England, probably residing in Yorkshire. During Wentworth's trial in spring 1641, his treatment of Loftus was used as evidence of tyrannical conduct and Loftus testified on behalf of the prosecution. Wentworth was executed for treason in May but his son George was permitted to succeed to his estates. Loftus claimed that his granddaughter was engaged to George Wentworth and tried to seize the Wentworth properties in Yokshire, but this audacious attempt to recoup his losses failed. That summer he also petitioned the English parliament for the overturning of the 1638 decree against him. The case was due to come before the house of lords in November, but the outbreak of the catholic rising in Ireland that autumn prevented this. Rebels overran most of the Loftus estate, but a small garrison maintained at Loftus's expense held out at Monasterevin for a time. In May 1642, the house of lords formally quashed the 1638 decree and ordered the reconveyance of his lands and the repayment of his sequestered revenues. However, the continuance of the rebellion in Ireland meant he received no rents from his Irish estates, while attempts to wring financial compensation from Wentworth's cronies came to nothing.
He died at the beginning of 1643 at Middleham in Yorkshire and was buried in Coverham church. He was succeeded by his son Edward, who eventually took possession of his father's estates in the 1650s. However, he faced further legal opposition in the form first of his niece Anne and then her son Dacre Barrett who sought to uphold the validity of the 1638 decree in Gifford v. Loftus. The matter was finally resolved in 1678 when the English house of Lords confirmed its 1642 ruling in favour of Edward's father.
There is a portrait of Adam Loftus in NGI.