Adam Loftus, 1st Viscount Loftus (c. 1568–1643), was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1619 and from 1622 raised to the peerage of Ireland as Viscount Loftus of Ely, King's County. His uncle, another Adam Loftus, was both Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Church of Ireland primate.
Lord Loftus clashed with the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Viscount Falkland, in 1624; and in the late 1630s his quarrel with Falkland's successor, The 1st Viscount Wentworth, was even fiercer. Lord Wentworth was created The 1st Earl of Strafford in January 1640. One of the principal articles of the then Lord Strafford's impeachment in 1641, which led to his attainder and execution for treason, was based on his alleged mistreatment of Lord Loftus.
Early life
Loftus was the second son of Robert Loftus; little is known of his mother. His grandfather was Edward Loftus of Swineside, of the parish of Coverham, Yorkshire. In or about 1592, his uncle Adam Loftus, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin, who knew how to look after his own family, bestowed upon his nephew a prebend of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, without a cure of souls. The young man was then in holy (or perhaps only deacon's) orders, and had been for three or four years a Master of Arts, probably of the University of Cambridge. Two years later he held the archdeaconry of Glendalough, and on 17 September 1597, he was made judge of the Irish Marshal's Court. The patent calls him Bachelor of Civil Law, and notes his good knowledge therein.
Career
During the Elizabethan wars in Ireland martial law was commonly imposed, and the object of Loftus's appointment as judge of the Irish Marshal's Court was to secure that its decrees should be "orderly and judiciously examined and determined". He was the only holder of this office, which became obsolete in the next reign. Loftus afterwards complained that his ill-paid duties as a judge had obliged him to abandon a lucrative practice in the ecclesiastical courts.
On 8 November 1598 he was made a master in chancery, and a year later he obtained an interest in lands leased by his uncle with the consent of the chapters of St. Patrick's and Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. In 1604 the archbishop officially described his nephew, a professor of civil law and his own vicar-general, as archdeacon of Glendalough Cathedral, and as keeping a competent vicar to perform the parochial duties attached. The archdeacon was soon afterwards knighted. Later, Archbishop Laud protested strongly against this arrangement, but Loftus kept Glendalough until his death.
In 1607 he seems to have gone to England; on 21 March Archbishop Jones, whose chancellor he then was, recommended him strongly to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, then the dominant figure in the English Government. Three months later he obtained a lifetime annuity of £219. Early in 1608, Loftus was made a member of the Irish Privy Council. He seems to have worked well with Lord-Deputy Chichester, who praised his conduct in the marshal's court. In 1610 he had a bitter dispute with Lord Thomond, which Salisbury decided against him. In 1611 he became constable of Maryborough, Queen's County, which was already a virtual sinecure.
Loftus was returned, along with Sir Francis Rushe, as MP for King's County in the Irish Parliament of 1613, more apparently by the act of the sheriff than by the choice of the freeholders, and he was one of the Protestant majority who made Sir John Davies Speaker of the House of Commons, over the vehement objections of the Catholic minority, who had voted for Sir John Everard. In the following year, he had a grant of forfeited lands in Wexford.
Lord Chancellor of Ireland
In the summer of 1618, Loftus went to England, carrying with him a commendatory letter from Lord-Deputy St. John and his Council, and in the following year, he was made one of the Commissioners of the Court of Wards. Thomas Jones, Archbishop of Dublin, died on 10 April 1619, and on the 23rd Loftus was appointed Lord Chancellor in his stead.