Adam Loftus, 1st Viscount of Ely (c. 1568-1643), was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1619. His uncle, also named Adam, was Archbishop of Armagh and Dublin.
Loftus came into violent conflict with the lord deputy, Viscount Falkland, in 1624; and at a later date his quarrel with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford was even fiercer. One of the articles in Strafford's impeachment was based on his dealings with Loftus. The title, which became extinct on the death of his grandson, the 3rd viscount, in 1725 (when the family estate of Monasterevan, re-named Moore Abbey, passed to his daughter's son Henry, 4th earl of Drogheda), was re-granted in 1756 to his cousin Nicholas Loftus, a lineal descendant of the archbishop. It again became extinct more than once afterwards, but was on each occasion revived in favour of a descendant through the female line; and it later became held by the marquess of Ely in conjunction with other family titles.
See Richard Mant, History of the Church of Ireland (2 vols., London, 1840); JR O'Flanagan, Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland (2 vols., London, 1870); John D'Alton, Memoirs of the Archbishops of Dublin (Dublin, 1838); Henry Cotton, Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae (5 vols., Dublin, 1848-1878); William Monck Mason, History and Antiquities of the College and Cathedral Church of St Patrick, near Dublin (Dublin, 1819); GEC, Complete Peerage vol. iii.. sub. "Ely" (London, 1890).
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
