Adam Loftus (Archbishop)
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Adam Loftus (c. 1533- April 5, 1605) was Archbishop of Armagh and Dublin, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1581. He was the first provost of Trinity College, Dublin.
He was the son of a Yorkshire gentleman (Edward Loftus) and was educated at the University of Cambridge. He accompanied Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex to Ireland as his chaplain in 1560. In 1563, Loftus was consecrated archbishop of Armagh by Hugh Curwen, Archbishop of Dublin. In 1565 Queen Elizabeth I of England, to supplement the meagre income derivable from the archbishopric in a politically unstable country, appointed Loftus temporarily to the deanery of St Patrick's; and in the same year he became president of the new commission for ecclesiastical causes.
In 1567 he was made Archbishop of Dublin, where the queen expected him to carry out reforms in the Church. On several occasions he temporarily carried out the functions of lord keeper, and in August 1581 he was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Loftus was constantly occupied in attempts to improve his financial position by obtaining additional preferment. He had been obliged to resign the deanery of St Patrick's in 1567, and twenty years later he quarrelled violently with Sir John Perrot, the lord deputy, over the proposal to appropriate the revenues of the cathedral to the foundation of a university. Loftus favoured the project of founding a university in Dublin, but on lines different from Perrot's proposal, and it was largely through his influence that the corporation of Dublin granted the lands of the priory of All Hallows as a beginning of the endowment of Trinity College, Dublin, of which he was named first provost in the charter creating the foundation in 1591. Loftus, who took an important part in the administration of Ireland under successive lords deputy, and whose zeal and efficiency were commended by James I on his accession, died in Dublin. By his wife, Jane Purdon, he had twenty children.
Adam Loftus was born in 1533 the second son of a monastic bailiff, Edward Loftus, in the heart of the English Yorkshire Dales. Edward died when Adam was only 8, leaving his estates to his elder brother Robert Loftus. Edward had made his living through the Catholic Church but Adam embraced the Protestant faith early in his development. As an undergraduate at Trinity, Cambridge University, a vibrant Adam reportedly attracted the notice of the young Queen Elizabeth, as much it seems by his alluring physique as through the power of his intellect, having shone before her with his powers of oratory. There is good reason to believe that this particular encounter may never have taken place but they certainly met more than once and the Queen became his patron, a relationship that was to last her entire reign, coming to Adam’s rescue at a number of times in his career when other less tolerant patrons might have withheld sanction.
Much has been written about the talented but zealous Archbishop Adam Loftus whose life was rich with intrigue and controversy (see extra bibliography below). Adam was appointed as one of the Queen’s Chaplains before she sent him to Ireland around 1559 as Chaplain to the Lord Deputy, whence he was rapidly promoted to Primate of Ireland, becoming Archbishop of Armagh at the unprecedented age of 28. Following a catastrophic clash with Shane O’Neill, the real power in the province during these years, he came to the See of Dublin in 1564 and was offered the Deanery of St. Patrick’s Cathedral “in lieu of better times ahead”. As Archbishop and Protestant Primate of Ireland and later Lord Chancellor, Keeper of the Royal Seal, etc. Adam became the most powerful administrator in Ireland for several decades, which he seems largely to have accrued to the benefit of his family. In 1582, he acquired land and built a Castle at Rathfarnham, which he inhabited from 1585 and which has become so recently restored to public view. Much has been written about Adam during this time (see elsewhere) but between 1584 and 1591, he had a series of clashes with Sir John Perrot on the location of an Irish University. Perrot wanted to use St. Patrick’s Cathedral as the site of the new University, which Adam sought to preserve as the principal place of Protestant worship in Dublin (as well as a valuable source of income for himself). Adam won the argument with the help of his ever patient Patron Queen Elizabeth and Trinity College was born at its current location, named after his old college at Cambridge (with Adam its first Provost in 1593) leaving the Cathedral unassailed. It was fitting, therefore, that Adam should be interred in the building he had helped to preserve for future generations, with the many faces of his portraits hanging today within the learned walls of the University which he co-founded. Having buried his wife Jane and two sons in the family vault at St. Patrick’s, Abp. Adam Loftus was 71 when he finally died at his Episcopal Palace in Kavan Street “worn out with age” and joined his family in the same vault.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Extra bibliography: Ball FE, 1902 A History of the County of Dublin - Dublin: Greene's Bookshop; the HSP Library - Ir 94133 1: 6 volumes
Ball FE, 1926 The Judges of Ireland 1221-1921 - London: John Murray pp. 214-217; 326-328
Lee, S 1893 Dictionary of National Biography - ed. Sidney Lee vol XXXIV, London Smith Elder & co, Waterloo Place, 1893 pp 73-77
Luce JV, 1992 Trinity College Dublin, the first 400 years –
Prestwick J, 1783 Origin and Etymology of the Loftus Family – attributed to a Herald’s manuscript
Ware J, 1739 The Whole Works of - Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, revised & improved - Vol I p. 94-95, 1739
