Early Life
Adam Loftus was born in 1533, the second son of a monastic bailiff, Edward Loftus, in the heart of the English Yorkshire Dales. Edward died when Loftus was only 8, leaving his estates to his elder brother Robert Loftus.
Edward had made his living through the Catholic Church, but Adam embraced the Protestant faith early in his development. He was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he reportedly attracted the notice of the young Queen Elizabeth, as much by his physique as through the power of his intellect, having shone before her in oratory. There is good reason to believe that this particular encounter may never have taken place; but they certainly met more than once and the Queen became his patron. The relationship was to last her entire reign, coming to Adam's rescue at times in his career when less tolerant patrons might have held back. At Cambridge he took holy orders (as a Catholic priest, though England had just turned Protestant) and was named rector of Outwell St Clement in Norfolk. He came to the attention of the Catholic Queen Mary (1553–1558), who named him vicar of Gedney, Lincolnshire. On Elizabeth's accession in 1558 he declared himself Anglican.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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