Adam Loftus

Adam Loftus (c. 1533 – 5 April 1605) was Archbishop of Armagh, and later Dublin, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1581. He was also the first Provost of Trinity College Dublin. Early life Adam Loftus was born in 1533, the second son of Edward Loftus, bailiff of Swineside in Coverdale, one of the Yorkshire Dales, for Coverham Abbey. Edward died when Loftus was only eight years old, leaving his estates to his elder brother Robert Loftus. Edward Loftus had made his living through the Catholic Church, but the son embraced the Protestant faith early in his development. He was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he reportedly attracted the notice of the young Queen Elizabeth, as much by his physique as through the power of his intellect, having shone before her in oratory. This encounter may never have happened, but Loftus certainly met with the Queen more than once, and she became his patron for the rest of her reign. At Cambridge Loftus took holy orders as a Catholic priest and was appointed rector of Outwell St Clement in Norfolk. He came to the attention of the Catholic Queen Mary (1553–58), who named him vicar of Gedney, Lincolnshire. On Elizabeth's accession in 1558, he declared himself Anglican. Ireland Loftus made the acquaintance of the Queen's favourite Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex and served as his chaplain in Ireland in 1560. In 1561 he became chaplain to Alexander Craike, Bishop of Kildare and Dean of St Patrick's in Dublin. Later that year he was appointed Rector of Painstown, County Meath, and evidently earned a reputation as a learned and discreet advisor to the English authorities in Dublin. In 1563, he was consecrated archbishop of Armagh at the unprecedented age of 30 by Hugh Curwen, Archbishop of Dublin. Following a clash with Shane O'Neill, Chief of the Name of Clan O'Neill, Lord of Tír Eoghain, and the real power in Ulster during these years, Loftus moved his residence to Dublin in 1564. To supplement the meagre income of his troubled archbishopric he was temporarily appointed to the Deanery of St Patrick's by the queen in the following year, "in lieu of better times ahead". He was also appointed president of the new commission for ecclesiastical causes. This led to a serious quarrel with the highly respected Bishop of Meath, Hugh Brady.