Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Luttrell, Henry (1655?-1717)
LUTTRELL, HENRY (1655?–1717), colonel, born about 1655, was son of Thomas Luttrell, by whom the family estates of Luttrellstown, co. Dublin, were recovered at the Restoration, and younger brother of Colonel Simon Luttrell [q. v.] He was for some years in the French service, and Macaulay describes him as having ‘brought back to his native Ireland a sharpened intellect and polished manners, a flattering tongue, some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue’ (Hist. iii. 203). He was active in the cause of James II, and in 1688–9 he is spoken of as member for co. Carlow, but his name does not occur in the official list of Irish members of parliament. He appears, however, to have intrigued actively against Tyrconnel, and was one of the deputation sent to St. Germains to seek Tyrconnel's recall. He was colonel of the 6th regiment of horse in King James's army (D'Alton, ii. 209). Before the battle of the Boyne he was sent by Sarsfield with his regiment to check King William's advance. Afterwards he was despatched to aid Sarsfield in Connaught, where his exertions largely enabled Sarsfield to take Sligo. His defection from the Jacobites in the following year is said to have contributed to their defeat at the bloody battle of Aughrim. A Williamite diary of the last siege of Limerick (Harl. Collections, vii. 481) records: ‘We had accounts this day that Henry Luttrell had been seized by order of the French general, d'Usson, for having made some proposals for the surrender of the place, and that he was condemned by a court-martial to be shot; but our general sent them word by a trumpet that if they put any one to death for having a mind to come over to us he would revenge it on the Irish.’ Luttrell appears to have been convicted of traitorous correspondence with the English, and to have been respited until instructions arrived from King James. The surrender of Limerick in September 1691 secured his release. He received a pension of 500l. a year from William III, and was very active in inducing the Irish soldiers to enlist on the winning side. In April 1693 Luttrell received permission to enlist fifteen hundred Irish papists for the Venetian republic, to serve against the Turks. In 1702 he was made a major-general in the Dutch service, with a regiment; but on the death of King William immediately afterwards he retired to Luttrellstown, where he passed the remainder of his life.
Luttrell was shot dead while in his sedan-chair in Stafford Street, Dublin, on 3 Nov. 1717. The Irish House of Commons declared there was reason to believe that the act was one of revenge on the part of the papists, and a reward of 1,000l. was offered for discovery of the perpetrators. During the excesses of the Irish rebellion of 1798, when his grandson had excited popular feeling by his high-handed conduct as commander-in-chief in 1796–7, ‘his grave was violated and his skull broken in pieces with a pickaxe.’ A portrait of Luttrell by Lely belongs to Lady Du Cane.
By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Jones of Halkin, Flintshire, whom he married in October 1704, Luttrell left two sons: Richard, who died on his travels; and Simon (1713–1787), who in 1768 was raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Irnham, and afterwards as Viscount (1780) and Earl (1785) of Carhampton. The latter married Maria (d. 1798), daughter of Sir Nicholas Lawes, governor of Jamaica, and was father of General Henry Lawes Luttrell, second earl of Carhampton [q. v.]; of John Luttrell-Olmius, third earl [see under Luttrell, James (1751?–1788)]; of James Luttrell, captain in the navy [q. v.], and of Temple (Simon) Luttrell (d. 1803), M.P. for Milborne Port, Somerset (1774–1780), who married a daughter of Sir Henry Gould [q. v.], was arrested at Boulogne 18 Sept. 1793, and was confined in the Abbaye and Luxembourg prisons in Paris from 24 Oct. 1793 to 14 Feb. 1795. His sister being wife of the Duke of Cumberland, his captors exhibited him to the populace as brother of the king of England (Gent. Mag. 1789, ii. 998); he died in Paris without issue 14 Jan. 1803 (ib. 1803, i. 92; Alger, Englishmen in the French Revolution, pp. 148, 299, 341). The first earl of Carhampton's eldest daughter, Anne, was the wife, first of Christopher Horton of Catton, and afterwards (2 Oct. 1771), of Henry Frederick [q. v.], duke of Cumberland, brother of George III. Her portrait was painted by Reynolds and Gainsborough.
[Burke's Extinct Peerage; D'Alton's King James's Army List, 2nd ed. 1860, ii. 209–15 (wrongly indexed in orig.); O'Callaghan's Hist. of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France (Glasgow, 1870); Macaulay's Hist. of England, vols. iii. and iv.; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, iii. 399 sq.; Webb's Compendium Irish Biog.; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xi. 272; Accounts of Irish Affairs in Hist. MSS. Comm. Reps. vii. and x. pt. v.]