| Thomas
Boyd (1654?-1657) |
| Thomas
Boyd’ s registration is a lonely footnote in history, one of so many
who died young and forgotten for lack of years to have left a perceptible
imprint on the lives of others for posterity. He was the son of Mary
Loftus, Grand-daughter of Abp. Adam Loftus (daughter of Sir Adam Loftus)
who married Thomas Boyd a Dublin merchant. Of several issue only
one daughter survived, retaining the Boyd family name by marrying
her cousin William Boyd Earl of Kilmarnock. Their descendants were
to die at the scaffold having supported the Stewarts but Thomas died
younger than four years old like so many of his contemporaries. |
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Colonel
Sir Arthur Loftus (1616?-1659) and
Lady Dorothy Loftus (?? – 1668) |
| Arthur
Loftus was Mary’s elder brother and like her was brought up in their
great grandfather’s rambling estate at Rathfarnham Castle. He too
followed a military career but was a politician as well, representing
Wexford in the Irish Parliament from 1639 and becoming Provost Marshall
of Ulster, a condition that had eluded his great-grandfather in that
long troubled Province. Like so many of his contemporaries, he was
a Royalist who changed sides to preserve the family estates in 1641,
playing the chameleon for survival. He endured the siege of Duncannon
only to become the Governor of Duncannon Fort in 1644. The intricacies
of that period are expressed in the inconstancy of those who survived
it and the terrible slaughter that was to follow at the hands of Cromwell.
Arthur was part of the political machinery guided by his powerful
uncle Nicholas Loftus (ancestor of Mount Loftus) that eventually became
subservient to Cromwell’s purposes. Arthur married Dorothy Boyle,
daughter of the Earl of Cork, whom he pre-deceased. Dorothy went
on to marry again (Gilbert Talbot) but re-joined her first husband
in the family vault when she died nine years later. They were to
have four sons and three daughters, many of whom joined them later
in the family vault. |
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| Grissel
Loftus (1628 – 1672) |
| Grissel
was one of nine daughters of Sir Adam and Jane Loftus (née Vaughan).
Raised with her seventeen siblings at Rathfarnham Castle, it is assumed
that she remained there until her death at the age of 44, the only
one not to have made an excellent match. It seems that Grissel (Griselda?)
was a puritanical spinster who disapproved of the wild antics of her
extended family, giving them only trinkets in her will, leaving the
bulk of her valuable estate to her Minister, Mr. Isaac Smith. She
did choose, however, to remain in death as she had been through life,
in the bosom of her by now vast extended family at St. Patrick’s. |
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| Theobold
Bourk (?? – 1676) |
| Eleanor
Bourk was the second daughter of Col Sir Arthur Loftus, named after
her mother. Eleanor married Theobold Bourk (later to become the Earls
of Mayo), who was not the first son-in-law to be interred in the Loftus
family vault. The mystery is that there is no record of his wife
having joined him there, which seems unthinkable. This is attributed
to the incompleteness of the record rather than her actual exclusion
from the family vault. Theobold died on the 5th of January 1676 and was buried in the Loftus family vault three days later. |
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| Adam
Loftus (1654-1688) |
| Adam
Loftus was the second son of the polyglot Dr. Dudley Loftus referred
to above. There were eighteen Adam Loftus’es in the family and it
was because of this potential for name confusion that the family tree
was created. Mr Adam Loftus has left nothing to distinguish himself,
which in itself distinguishes him from those others bearing that name
who clearly did. He died at the age of 33 in 1688 (the year of Jonathan
Swift's first public address referring to his father) without issue
as far as is known, and was interred “in the buryall place of his
ancestors”, in the Loftus family vault. |
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| Lord
Adam (1625-1691) and “Lady Loftus” (??-1709) |
The
eldest son of Col Sir Arthur Loftus and Lady Dorothy (née Boyle) followed
his father in pursuit of a military and a political career. He was
much more his own man than his father, but had a reckless opportunistic
streak in him that was to characterise his life. Adam persuaded Charles
II to let him take control of state finances of Ireland in 1671, which
he followed through by persuading King William to appoint him Paymaster
General of England in 1691, conning his way in to the coffers of both
states. Having narrowly escaped the confiscation of his family estates
during Restoration purges, Adam eventually succeeded in selling his
allegiance to the new King James II to be elevated to the peerage
styled Adam Loftus, Baron of Rathfarnham and Viscount Lisburne. He
spent much time in France, serving in 1672 under the Duke of Monmouth,
tempting Royal disfavour. When he returned to Ireland five years
later, he re-entered political life and was made Privy Counsellor
for Ireland in 1684. He joined the new King William of Orange on
his “Glorious Revolution”, taking Carrickfergus in 1689 and serving
at the Battle of Aughrin. Adam’s final act came in 1691 at the siege
of Limerick when he had his head blown off as he emerged from his
tent, which he had evidently pitched too close to the defences of
the beleaguered city. King William of Orange was so incensed by his
death that he ordered his body "be placed in the middle of the
field" (of battle) over which he "caused
a Royal tent to be  pitched
which was hung with mourning and garnished with Military Ensigns and
other tokens of honour. Here the corpse lay in state and after a
proper time was removed to the City of Dublin and buried on the 28th September
1691 in St. Patrick's Cathedral where the cannon ball that killed
him is placed to an iron bar from which it pends over his grave, against
the wall, near the top and within the south side of the said church
near the alter." It is that ball that we see today still hung
like a warning over his remains and those of his family. The spurs
are assumed to be those of the unfortunate Adam, although there is
no documented evidence to support that. King William was to quit
Ireland shortly after Adam’s death, never to return. Lord Adam married
the beautiful Lucy (left), daughter of Lord Chandos, who gave him
a son James (who died young) and a not so beautiful daughter Lucia
(right), who seems to have inherited her father’s nose, well matched
in appearance to the character of her husband to be, the vile Marquis
Wharton. In 1709, a “Lady Loftus” is described as being interred
in the family vault – It is speculated here that this may be Lord
Adam’s second wife Dorothy, née Allen, although this is not substantiated.
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