Tottenham, who was in the country, is said to have mounted his horse at Ballycarny, to have ridden sixty miles by night, and rushed into the parliament-house, Dublin, where the sergeant-at-arms endeavoured to bar his entrance on the ground that he was ‘undressed, in dirty boots, and splashed up to his shoulders.’ The speaker decided that he had no power to exclude him, and Tottenham strode into the house in jack boots ‘to vote for the country.’ The division was just about to be taken, and his casting vote gave a majority of one against the unpopular measure. Thenceforth he was known and toasted by Irish patriots as ‘Tottenham in his boots,’ although details of the story have been questioned. He died on 20 Sept. 1758. A character-portrait by Pope Stevens, dated 1749, was engraved in mezzotint by Andrew Miller, and bore the legend, ‘Tottenham in his Boots.’
By his first wife, Ellinor (d. 1745), daughter of John Cliffe of Mulrancan, co. Wexford, he had, with other issue, John, M.P. for New Ross in 1758, and for Fethard, co. Wexford, in 1761 and 1769, and sheriff for his county in 1749, who was created Sir John Tottenham, bart., of Tottenham Green, on 2 Dec. 1780, and died 29 Dec. 1786; and Charles, the ancestor of the Tottenhams of Ballycurry, co. Wicklow.
By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas, and sister and coheir of Henry Loftus, earl of Ely, Sir John, the first baronet, had issue Charles Tottenham (afterwards Loftus) (1738–1806), who in connection with the negotiations preceding the Act of Union was on 29 Dec. 1800 created Marquis of Ely, having previously been made Baron (1785) and Viscount (1789) Loftus and Earl of Ely (1794). He assumed the name of Loftus in 1783, and on 19 Jan. 1801 he was created Baron Loftus of Long Loftus in the United Kingdom, having thus obtained no fewer than five separate peerage creations within fifteen years. ‘Prends-moi tel que je suis’ was the marquis's motto (G. E. C[okayne], Peerage, iii. 263 n.).
[Lodge's Peerage, 1789, vii. 269; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1894, p. 2022; Members of Parliament, Official Returns; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Barrington's Personal Sketches, i. 105–6; Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits, p. 937; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. vi. 41; Hardy's Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, i. 76; Warburton's Dublin.]
TOUCHET, GEORGE (d. 1689?), Benedictine monk, born at Stalbridge, Dorset, was second son of Mervyn Touchet, twelfth lord Audley and second earl of Castlehaven, and younger brother of James Audley, third earl of Castlehaven [q. v.] He made his solemn profession in the chapel of the English Benedictine monastery of St. Gregory at Douay on 22 Nov. 1643, taking in religion the name of Anselm (Collins, Peerage of England, ed. Brydges, vi. 555; Weldon, Chronicle, App. p. 10). He was sent to the mission in the southern province of England, and was appointed chaplain to Queen Catherine of Braganza about 1671 with a salary of 100l. a year and apartments in Somerset House. He was banished in 1675, and, by act of parliament in 1678, was expressly excluded from the succession to the earldom of Castlehaven. He probably died about 1689.
He was the author of ‘Historical Collections out of several grave Protestant Historians concerning the Changes in Religion, and the strange confusions following from thence; in the reigns of King Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary and Elizabeth’ (anon.), sine loco, 1674, 8vo; with an addition of ‘several remarkable passages taken out of Sir Will. Dugdale's “Antiquities of Warwickshire,” relating to the Abbies and their Institution,’ London, 1686, 8vo; and ‘with an appendix, setting forth the Abbies, Priories, and other Religious Houses dissolved in Ireland, and an historical account of each,’ Dublin, 1758, 12mo. The authorship of this work has been erroneously ascribed to Dr. George Hickes [q. v.]
[Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 493; Jones's Popery Tracts, pp. 271, 485; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn, p. 1074; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 388; Oliver's Cornwall, p. 524; Rambler, 1850, vii. 428; Snow's Necrology, p. 74.]
TOUCHET, JAMES, seventh Baron Audley (1465?–1497), was descended from Adam de Aldithley or Audley, who lived in the reign of Henry I, and is considered the first Baron Audley or Aldithley (of Heleigh) by tenure. There were nine barons of the family by tenure, the first baron by writ being Nicholas Audley (d. 1317). His great-great-grandson, John Touchet, fourth baron by writ (d. 1408), served under Henry IV in the wars against Glendower and the French (Wylie, Henry IV). John's son James, fifth baron, was slain by the Yorkists at the battle of Blore Heath, 23 Sept. 1458, leaving a son John, sixth baron (d. 1491), who had livery of his lands in 1459–60, joined Edward IV, was summoned to parliament from 1461 to 1483, and was sworn of the privy council in 1471. He was employed in Brittany in 1475, and was present at the coronation of Richard III, who appointed him lord treasurer in 1484. He
