Henry Loftus

Early life

Henry Loftus was born in Ireland, the youngest of three sons to Simon and Hannah Loftus (née Johnson). His father had been transferred back to Ireland having served as a captain in Colonel Harrison's Regiment in the Battles of Malplaquet and Glen Shiel. Loftus is thought to have grown up in the parish of Clara to a military household with his elder brothers, each a year apart in age and each later to be commissioned in the British Army at the age of sixteen. His eldest brother Ensign Dudley Loftus joined their father's regiment in 1739 just before it was deployed to the Caribbean. Dudley Loftus was killed during the assault on Fort San Lazar in 1741, and his father died almost a year later, partly from injuries sustained in the same battle and partly from disease contracted at sea off Jamaica. Weeks after his father's death in service, Loftus was granted a commission in the British Army as a second lieutenant.

Military career

Loftus joined the 30th Regiment of Foot in May 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 as an officer in the British Army before being transferred to the English establishment in 1744. Loftus spent the next three years moving with his regiment around southern England, bolstering coastal defences against possible invasion by the French and defending London from the Jacobite Army's incursion into England in 1745.

The following year, Loftus was transferred to Portsmouth to form part of an amphibious force intended to conduct raids against French forces 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.

The next few years of Continental and British strategic realignment allowed Loftus to return to Ireland for a period of respite and was restored to the English establishment in 1755 shortly before France and Austria declared war on Britain. Loftus served with his regiment throughout the Seven Years' War taking part in military engagements in Brittany, Saxony and the Belle Île, where he was recognised for his gallantry and promoted to captain. While returning from Belle Île, Loftus's transport ship encountered severe gales, was captured by a French flotilla of privateers and was forced into Dieppe harbour, where he remained for several months before an exchange of prisoners could be arranged. The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 resulted in his regiment being transferred to Gibraltar.

Parliamentary career

In 1767, Loftus resigned his commission in the Army and returned to England at the same time as George Townshend was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 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. Loftus served as a Member of Parliament for the boroughs of Clonmines from 1768 to 1775 and Bannow from 1776 to 1790. Both boroughs were in the pocket of his cousin, who commanded up to ten seats in the Irish House of Commons constituting a powerful voting bloc known as the Loftus Squadron.

Townshend prorogued Parliament in 1767 having failed to get the undertakers to support his money bill, thereby gaining sixteen months to build a 'Castle Party' through new appointments and the granting patronage. With increasing scrutiny from Westminster in 1770, relationships between Dublin Castle and the Loftus Squadron were strained. Townshend threatened to remove Loftus from his position in the revenues office and to suspend his wife's pension. Following a period of negotiation and public scandal, the Loftus Squadron voted to reappoint Townshend as Lord Lieutenant in 1771. Shortly after, Loftus was restored to the accounts board and his cousin was created Earl of Ely. The Loftus Sqaudron continued to vote with the Government until Townshend was recalled to England in 1772.

Townshend's successors were in general much less combative and more accessible to the demands of the Protestant Ascendancy. Loftus was able to secure two additional sinecure posts in the administration, which he executed with diligence. Although Loftus continued to vote with the Government, he increasingly opposed the growing influence of the emerging Patriot Party, whose members were emboldened by events in America to press for legislative independence for Ireland. In 1775, the British Government drew heavily on the Irish establishment of the Army to serve in what became the American War of Independence, including Loftus's own son William. By 1778, roughly half of the Army had left Ireland, leaving the island vulnerable to the threat of invasion from France, prompting calls for Catholic emancipation.

An attempt to make up the shortfall in security resulted in the creation of an Irish Volunteer force in 1776, which was initially resisted by Dublin Castle. Under increased pressure from the Patriots, Loftus voted against relief for Catholics in 1774 and again in 1778, but a relief bill was carried seven weeks after similar legislation had passed in England.

Family

At the age of twenty, Loftus's first assignment in England was in Norfolk, most likely Swaffham where Diana Bullock lived. Diana was the daughter of local landed gentry with ties to the Townshend family at Raynham Hall. Within a year, Loftus had met and finally married Diana just two days before his regiment marched off to Canterbury. Despite Loftus's challenging relationship with George Townshend in Ireland, his second son General William Loftus married Townshend's eldest daughter, Lady Elizabeth Townshend, in 1790.

Diana Loftus died in Dublin at the end of August 1792. Henry returned to Raynham Hall not long after and died a few weeks later at Raynham, where he is buried in the cemetery of St. Mary's Church.

Notes and references