Capel Lofft

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Capel Lofft (November 14, 1751 - May 26, 1824), English lawyer, minor political figure and miscellaneous writer.

Born in London, he was educated at Eton College, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, which he left to become a member of Lincoln's Inn. He was called to the bar in 1775, and the deaths of his father and uncle left him with a handsome property and the family estates. A Foxite Whig, He was a prolific writer on the law and political topics, a vigorous and contentious advocate of parliamentary and other reforms, and carried on a voluminous correspondence with all the literary men of his time. A strong supporter of Napoleon he wrote numerous letters to the press opposing the Government's decision to send Napoleon to St Helena and himself attempted to serve a write of habeas corpus while Napoleon was held on board a ship in Plymouth.

He became the patron of Robert Bloomfield, the author of The Farmer's Boy, and was responsible for the very successful publication of that work. Byron, in a note to his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, ridiculed Lofft as "the Maecenas of shoemakers and preface-writer general to distressed versemen; a kind of gratis accoucheur to those who wish to be delivered of rhyme, but do not know how to bring forth." He died at Montcalieri, near Turin.

His fourth son Capel Lofft, the younger (1806-1873), also a writer on various topics, inherited his father's liberal ideas and principles, and carried them in youth to greater extremes. In his old age he abandoned these theories, which had brought him into the company of some of the leading political agitators of the day. He died in America, where he had a Virginia estate.