Author: Lofft, Capel
Biography:
LOFFT, Capel (1751-1824: ODNB)
He was born in London on 14. Nov. 1751 and baptised at St. Clement Danes on 14 Dec., the son of Christopher Lofft and Ann Capell, who had married on 2 Jan. 1750. He was named for his uncle Edward Capell (1713-81), a landowner and Shakespearean scholar, and his first name appears as Capell in the birth certificate but seems to have lost a the final letter by the time he entered Eton in 1759. From Eton he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge (matric. 1769), but did not proceed to a degree. In 1770 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn and in 1775 was called to the bar. His early publications The Praises of Poetry (1775) and a digest of cases in King’s Bench (1776) reflect his engagement with both literature and the law. He was twice married, first to Anne Emlyn (1753-1801) on 20 Aug. 1778, and then to Sarah Watson Finch (1780-1855) on 10 Mar. 1802. Anne Lofft had five children, of whom four grew to maturity; Sarah Lofft had three of whom one, Capell Lofft (1806-73) became a writer of some note. In 1781 Capel Lofft inherited his uncle’s estates and became a country gentleman, free to pursue his interests. His views were strongly reformist: he campaigned, among other things, for parliamentary reform, for universal male suffrage, and for the abolition of capital punishment. In religion he became a Unitarian dissenter. He joined or founded influential societies, including the Society for Constitutional Information. He was a county magistrate until removed from his post for publicly opposing an execution. Many of his publications are pamphlets addressing current issues. He carried on his literary work, however, not least by his successful patronage of Nathaniel and Robert Bloomfield (qq.v.). He edited Milton and translated Virgil, and brought out two anthologies, one of “aphorisms” from Shakespeare (1812) and one of sonnets and elegies, in five volumes (Laura, 1813-14). In 1818 he left England for the Continent with his wife and two daughters (their son was at Eton), and settled in Italy. He died at Moncalieri, near Turin in Piedmont, on 26 May 1824 and was buried at the Protestant church of St. Germain. His library was sold at auction in 1825. (ODNB 28 Jan. 2024; ancestry.com 28 Jan. 2024; Eton College Register [1921], 339; GM Aug. 1824, 184-5; Bell’s Weekly Messenger 14 June 1824)