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[[File:The Irish House of Commons in 1780 by Francis Wheatley.jpg|thumb|The Irish House of Commons in 1780 by Francis Wheatley, which would feature Loftus’ likeness (unknown)]]Townshend [[prorogued]] Parliament in 1767 having failed to get the undertakers to support his money bill, giving him 16 months to build a “Castle Party” by making new appointments and granting patronages.{{efn|Townshend gave a Cornetcy to Loftus’s second son [[William Loftus (British Army officer)|William]]}}<ref>{{cite book |editor1= William Hunt |title=The Irish Parliament 1775 |date=1907 |publisher=Longmans, Green and Co. |location=London |url=https://filedn.eu/l40P8k9DAsNmBi2WfVocwS0/Historical%20Newspapers%2C%20Books%20%26%20Journals/Local%20History%20Books%2C%20Papers%20%26%20Reports/Hunt%2C%20W%20%281907%29%20The%20Irish%20Parliament%201775%20From%20an%20official%20and%20contemporary%20manuscript.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com |access-date=6 December 2025}}</ref> With increasing scrutiny from Westminster in 1770, relationships were strained between Dublin Castle and the Loftus Legion. Townshend threatened to remove Loftus from his position in the revenues office and to stop his wife’s pension.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bartlett |first1=Thomas |title=Opposition in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Case of the Townshend Viceroyalty |journal=Irish Historical Studies |date=September 1981 |volume=22 |issue=88 |page=326}}</ref> The ensuing public display of self-interest and scandal between the Loftus and Townshend families ensured that Loftus voted in 1771 to re-appoint Townshend as Lord Lieutenant in a period that saw the Legion switch allegiance from opposition to Government. The resulting affair was popularised in a published satire in 1771.{{efn|In 1769, Loftus’ cousin Henry had become the 4th Viscount Loftus and set about building his dynasty with insatiable vigour.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Loftus |first1=Simon |title=Count Lofthonzo |journal=The Georgian Group Journal |date=2012 |volume=XX |pages=119-136 |url=https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_2012_09_Loftus.pdf |access-date=7 December 2025}}</ref> When Townshend’s wife died in 1770, Lady Frances Loftus decided to win Townshend’s favour by encouraging her niece, Dolly Monroe, a celebrated beauty, to openly court Townshend.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Robins |first1=Joseph |title=Champagne & Silver Buckles – The Viceregal Court at Dublin Castle 1700-1922 |date=2001 |publisher=Lilliput Press |location=Dublin |isbn=1901866580 |pages=57-60}}</ref>}} Townshend ended the affair but not before Loftus had been restored to the accounts board and his cousin created Earl of Ely.<ref name=”Liik”/><ref>{{cite news |last1=Anon |title=Miscellaneous articles – Ireland |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000571/17720106/012/0003 |access-date=8 December 2025 |agency=Aberdeeen Press and Journal |publisher=British Newspaper Archive |date=6 January 1772}}</ref> The Loftus Legion continued to vote with the Government until Townshend was recalled back to England in 1772.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Langrische |first1=Hercules |title=The Senators of Ireland A characteristical Poem |agency=Freeman’s Journal |date=11 August 1772}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Heathcote|first=Tony|title=The British Field Marshals, 1736–1997: A Biographical Dictionary |publisher= Leo Cooper|location=Barnsley|year= 1999|isbn= 0-85052-696-5}}</ref>

[[File:The Irish House of Commons in 1780 by Francis Wheatley.jpg|thumb|The Irish House of Commons in 1780 by Francis Wheatley, which would feature Loftus’ likeness (unknown)]]Townshend [[prorogued]] Parliament in 1767 having failed to get the undertakers to support his money bill, giving him 16 months to build a “Castle Party” by making new appointments and granting patronages.{{efn|Townshend gave a Cornetcy to Loftus’s second son [[William Loftus (British Army officer)|William]]}}<ref>{{cite book |editor1= William Hunt |title=The Irish Parliament 1775 |date=1907 |publisher=Longmans, Green and Co. |location=London |url=https://filedn.eu/l40P8k9DAsNmBi2WfVocwS0/Historical%20Newspapers%2C%20Books%20%26%20Journals/Local%20History%20Books%2C%20Papers%20%26%20Reports/Hunt%2C%20W%20%281907%29%20The%20Irish%20Parliament%201775%20From%20an%20official%20and%20contemporary%20manuscript.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com |access-date=6 December 2025}}</ref> With increasing scrutiny from Westminster in 1770, relationships were strained between Dublin Castle and the Loftus Legion. Townshend threatened to remove Loftus from his position in the revenues office and to stop his wife’s pension.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bartlett |first1=Thomas |title=Opposition in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Case of the Townshend Viceroyalty |journal=Irish Historical Studies |date=September 1981 |volume=22 |issue=88 |page=326}}</ref> The ensuing public display of self-interest and scandal between the Loftus and Townshend families ensured that Loftus voted in 1771 to re-appoint Townshend as Lord Lieutenant in a period that saw the Legion switch allegiance from opposition to Government. The resulting affair was popularised in a published satire in 1771.{{efn|In 1769, Loftus’ cousin Henry had become the 4th Viscount Loftus and set about building his dynasty with insatiable vigour.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Loftus |first1=Simon |title=Count Lofthonzo |journal=The Georgian Group Journal |date=2012 |volume=XX |pages=119-136 |url=https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_2012_09_Loftus.pdf |access-date=7 December 2025}}</ref> When Townshend’s wife died in 1770, Lady Frances Loftus decided to win Townshend’s favour by encouraging her niece, Dolly Monroe, a celebrated beauty, to openly court Townshend.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Robins |first1=Joseph |title=Champagne & Silver Buckles – The Viceregal Court at Dublin Castle 1700-1922 |date=2001 |publisher=Lilliput Press |location=Dublin |isbn=1901866580 |pages=57-60}}</ref>}} Townshend ended the affair but not before Loftus had been restored to the accounts board and his cousin created Earl of Ely.<ref name=”Liik”/><ref>{{cite news |last1=Anon |title=Miscellaneous articles – Ireland |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000571/17720106/012/0003 |access-date=8 December 2025 |agency=Aberdeeen Press and Journal |publisher=British Newspaper Archive |date=6 January 1772}}</ref> The Loftus Legion continued to vote with the Government until Townshend was recalled back to England in 1772.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Langrische |first1=Hercules |title=The Senators of Ireland A characteristical Poem |agency=Freeman’s Journal |date=11 August 1772}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Heathcote|first=Tony|title=The British Field Marshals, 1736–1997: A Biographical Dictionary |publisher= Leo Cooper|location=Barnsley|year= 1999|isbn= 0-85052-696-5}}</ref>

Townshend’s replacement, [[Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt|Lord Harcourt]], was much less combative and amenable to the interests of the [[Protestant Ascendancy]].{{efn|Loftus acquired an additional sinecure as commissioner of stamp duty, manging the duties on marking parchment, vellum and paper}} Loftus voted with the Government but increasingly in opposition to parliamentary reform and the rising influence of the emerging [[Irish Patriot Party|Patriot Party]].

Townshend’s replacement, [[Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt|Lord Harcourt]], was much less combative amenable to the of the [[Protestant Ascendancy]].{{efn|Loftus acquired an additional sinecure as commissioner of stamp duty, manging the duties on marking parchment, vellum and paper}} Loftus voted with the Government but increasingly in opposition to parliamentary reform and the rising influence of the emerging [[Irish Patriot Party|Patriot Party]].

==Family==

==Family==

Irish Member of Parliament

Captain Henry Loftus (1725 – 1792) of Sackville Street was an Anglo-Irish Member of Parliament in Irish House of Commons from 1768 until 1790, having previously served in the 30th Regiment of Foot for 25 years in Ireland, England, Germany, Flanders, France, Portugal and Gibraltar.[1]

Henry Loftus was born in 1725, the youngest of three sons to Simon and Hannah (née Johnson). Simon Loftus was a Captain in the Colonel Harrison’s Regiment (15th Regiment of Foot), a veteran of the Battles of Malplaquet and of Galashiel,[2] but in 1725, he was serving between wars in Ireland, potentially on half pay.[3] Henry Loftus was raised in a military household with his elder brothers, each a year apart in age all of whom were to purchase commissions in the British Army at the age of 16. His eldest brother Ensign Dudley Loftus joined their father’s regiment in 1739 just before both were transferred to war in the Caribbean. Dudley Loftus was killed in the assault on Fort San Lazar in 1741 and his father almost a year later,[a] partly from his injuries in the same battle, but also through rampant disease at sea off Jamaica.[4] Henry Loftus, still in Ireland with his mother, received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the same year in 1742.[5]

Officer of the 30th Regiment of Foot, 1742

Loftus joined the 30th Regiment of Foot in May of 1742 at a time when the regiment was augmented as part of the Irish establishment, partly in response to Prussian expansion into Moravia. He spent two years learning his craft (an officer in the British Army) before being transferred to the English establishment in 1744.[6] Loftus spent the next three years moving with his regiment around southern England, bolstering coastal defences agains possible invasion by the French and defending London from the Jacobite Army‘s incursion in 1745. The following year, Loftus transferred to Portsmouth to form part of an amphibious force to harry the French on land and at sea. He was placed in command of a detachment of marines aboard HMS Monmouth, returning to Ireland with the end of the war in 1748.[7]

The next few years of strategic realignment allowed Loftus to return to Ireland for a period of respite, returning to the English establishment in 1755 just before France and Austria declared war on Britain. Loftus served with his regiment over the course of the Seven Years’ War through military engagements in Brittany, Saxony and the Belleisle, where he was recognised for his gallantry and promoted to Captain.[8][9][10] Loftus’ transport ship ran into gales on the way back from Belleisle and was captured by a French force of privateers and forced into Dieppe harbour, where he remained for a few months before an exchange of prisoners could be arranged. The end of the seven year’s war in 1763 resulted in his regiment being transferred to Gibraltar.[11]

Parliamentary career

[edit]

In 1767, Loftus resigned his commission in the Army and returned to England at the same time as George Townshend was appointed as the next Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.[b] Loftus declared his intention to stand for the Irish Parliament the following year in a pocket borough under the patronage of his distant undertaker cousin, the Honourable Henry Loftus.[12] Loftus served as a Member of Parliament for the borough Clonmines from 1768 to 1775 and for Bannow from 1776 to 1790, both seats in the pocket of his cousin, who commanded upto ten seats in the Irish House of Commons constituting a powerful voting bloc known as the Loftus Legion, which exert influence over the Government at Dublin Castle.[c] Loftus’ loyalty was often torn between kinship and Crown, which was to shape the way he voted in the Irish House of Commons.[1]

The Irish House of Commons in 1780 by Francis Wheatley, which would feature Loftus’ likeness (unknown)

Townshend prorogued Parliament in 1767 having failed to get the undertakers to support his money bill, giving him 16 months to build a “Castle Party” by making new appointments and granting patronages.[d][13] With increasing scrutiny from Westminster in 1770, relationships were strained between Dublin Castle and the Loftus Legion. Townshend threatened to remove Loftus from his position in the revenues office and to stop his wife’s pension.[14] The ensuing public display of self-interest and scandal between the Loftus and Townshend families ensured that Loftus voted in 1771 to re-appoint Townshend as Lord Lieutenant in a period that saw the Legion switch allegiance from opposition to Government. The resulting affair was popularised in a published satire in 1771.[e] Townshend ended the affair but not before Loftus had been restored to the accounts board and his cousin created Earl of Ely.[1][17] The Loftus Legion continued to vote with the Government until Townshend was recalled back to England in 1772.[18][19]

Townshend’s replacement, Lord Harcourt, was much less combative, more amenable to the demands of the Protestant Ascendancy.[f] Loftus voted with the Government but increasingly in opposition to parliamentary reform and the rising influence of the emerging Patriot Party. It was with the next

A few months later, the Regiment was distributed through Norfolk to support local communities fearful of French invasion and the opportunistic activities of Armed groups of smugglers across the county.[21] Within a year, Loftus had met and married his wife, Diana Bullock, a daughter of local landed gentry with close family ties to the Townshend family at Raynham Hall.[22] Two days after they were married, Loftus’s regiment marched to Canterbury.[23]

in 1756 – Harry in Norwich and Dublin…?

Notes and references

[edit]

  1. ^ by then a Lieutenant Colonel
  2. ^ with whom he was connected by marriage
  3. ^ the Loftus Legion (AKA Ely Legion or Loftus Squadron) formed one of the most powerful voting blocs in the Irish House of Commons under the patronage of whoever owned the family seat at Loftus Hall between 1692 and 1801, and the Wexford estates adjacent to to it. In 1769, the Legion was directed by the Hon. Henry Loftus, one of a handful of elite Irish Protestants known as “undertakers“, the “grandees” of the Protestant Ascendancy.
  4. ^ Townshend gave a Cornetcy to Loftus’s second son William
  5. ^ In 1769, Loftus’ cousin Henry had become the 4th Viscount Loftus and set about building his dynasty with insatiable vigour.[15] When Townshend’s wife died in 1770, Lady Frances Loftus decided to win Townshend’s favour by encouraging her niece, Dolly Monroe, a celebrated beauty, to openly court Townshend.[16]
  6. ^ Loftus acquired an additional sinecure as commissioner of stamp duty, manging the duties on marking parchment, vellum and paper, satirised by the Freeman’s Journal in 1774[20]
  1. ^ a b c Johnston-Liik, E.M. (2006). MPs in Dublin: Companion to History of the Irish Parliament, 1692-1800 (Illustrated ed.). Ulster Historical Foundation. p. 250. ISBN 9781903688601.
  2. ^ Canon, Richard (4 May 2016). Historical Record of the Fifteenth, or the Yorkshire East Riding Regiment of Foot: Containing an Account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1685, and of its Subsequent Services to 1848. Palala Press. p. 144. ISBN 978-1355357889.
  3. ^ Anon. Major General Harrison’s Regiment of Foot. York: York Museum Regimental List.
  4. ^ Dalton, Charles (8 March 2005). George the First’s Army 1714-1727. Naval & Military Press Ltd. p. 931. ISBN 978-1845742911.
  5. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. p. 474.
  6. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. p. 118.
  7. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. pp. 127–132.
  8. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. pp. 138–148.
  9. ^ Anon (15 June 1761). “Letter”. Vol. 20, no. 1021. Arris Birmingham Gazette. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette or The General Correspondent.
  10. ^ Anon, Fred (1783). Army list & Commissions register: Thirtieth Regiment of Foot DATES?. pp. 76–84.
  11. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. p. 152.
  12. ^ Loftus, Henry (13 February 1768). “Announcements”. No. 4256. The Dublin Journal. The Dublin Journal.
  13. ^ William Hunt, ed. (1907). The Irish Parliament 1775 (PDF). London: Longmans, Green and Co. Retrieved 6 December 2025.
  14. ^ Bartlett, Thomas (September 1981). “Opposition in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Case of the Townshend Viceroyalty”. Irish Historical Studies. 22 (88): 326.
  15. ^ Loftus, Simon (2012). “Count Lofthonzo” (PDF). The Georgian Group Journal. XX: 119–136. Retrieved 7 December 2025.
  16. ^ Robins, Joseph (2001). Champagne & Silver Buckles – The Viceregal Court at Dublin Castle 1700-1922. Dublin: Lilliput Press. pp. 57–60. ISBN 1901866580.
  17. ^ Anon (6 January 1772). “Miscellaneous articles – Ireland”. British Newspaper Archive. Aberdeeen Press and Journal. Retrieved 8 December 2025.
  18. ^ Langrische, Hercules (11 August 1772). “The Senators of Ireland A characteristical Poem”. Freeman’s Journal.
  19. ^ Heathcote, Tony (1999). The British Field Marshals, 1736–1997: A Biographical Dictionary. Barnsley: Leo Cooper. ISBN 0-85052-696-5.
  20. ^ Montgomery, Vaun (18 June 1774). “To the committee for conducting the Free Press”. Vol. 11, no. 117. Freeman’s Journal.
  21. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. p. 124.
  22. ^ HMSO. “Henry Loftus in 1745 Norfolk Banns And Marriages Cranworth with Letton, Norfolk, England”. No. Letton/vol 3A/page 1580. brightsolid online publishing ltd.
  23. ^ Bannatyne, Neil (1923). History of the Thirtieth Regiment: now the First Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1689-1881. Liverpool: Littlebury Bros. p. 125.

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