Lefroy’s ancestors were Huguenots who in the late sixteenth century migrated from Cambrai in the Spanish Netherlands to Canterbury, where they practised as silk dyers and obtained the freedom of the borough. In the early eighteenth century, the only remaining male member of the family, Anthony, became a banker and merchant in Leghorn, where he made and lost a fortune, but was a notable art collector. In 1738 he married Elizabeth, daughter of his business partner Pierre L’Anglois, a Languedoc Huguenot who had been naturalized in 1702 and whose son Benjamin Langlois, Member for St. Germans, 1768-74, was under-secretary of state for the Southern department, 1779-82. Their two sons, who were sent back to England to be educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, were Isaac Peter George, who became rector of Ashe in Hampshire, and his elder brother Anthony Peter, who joined the army as ensign in the 33rd Foot in 1763 and was stationed in Limerick. At Killaloe on 15 Nov. 1765 he contracted a clandestine marriage to the daughter of a penurious local squire, with whom he had three daughters, but the marriage was resolemnized in Limerick Cathedral in 1774, with the apparent blessing of his childless uncle Benjamin Langlois, the patron of the Irish branch of the family. The following year he was promoted from his lieutenancy in the 49th Foot to be a captain in the 13th Dragoons, and the eldest of his five sons, Tom, was born in 1776. On the death of his widowed mother in 1781, he divided his father’s estate with his brother, which enabled him to purchase the command of another cavalry regiment, the 9th Dragoons, in 1785. He retired in 1791, when he sold his remaining English property to his brother, but he later regretted his inactivity, especially during the Rebellion.
Yet he had overworked himself and in the winter of 1795 he was dispatched to recuperate at Ashe, where his aunt was a friend of the young and then unknown Jane Austen, the daughter of the rector of neighbouring Steventon.
I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the last three balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe, that he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago.
In the same flippant tone of playful indifference, which was possibly meant to disguise anxious expectation, she wrote on the 14th, of the following night’s party, that
I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat ... Tell Mary that I make over Mr. Heartley and all his estate to her for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care sixpence.
The next evening, when she added that ‘at length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over - my tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea’, was possibly the last time they ever met. Quite how far each had become attracted or committed to the other is not known, but evidently Mrs. Lefroy, aware of the family weakness for contracting improvident marriages, hurried away Tom, who soon began his legal studies in London. Two years later, Jane reported to Cassandra about a visit from Mrs. Lefroy
with whom, in spite of interruptions both from my father and James, I was enough alone to hear all that was interesting, which you will easily credit when I tell you that of her nephew she said nothing at all, and of her friend [the Rev. Samuel Blackall, another potential suitor] very little. She did not mention the name of the former to me, and I was too proud to make any enquiries; but on my father’s afterwards asking where he was, I learnt that he was gone back to London in his way to Ireland, where he is called to the bar and means to practise.Jane Austen’s Letters ed. D. Le Faye, 1-4, 19.
The unhappy affair, perhaps among others, no doubt informed her novels, but one commentator has speculated that he meant much more to her than is usually supposed and in fact remained the central focus of her romantic life, serving as the model for Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey and Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion; the argument is certainly suggestive, her young Irishmen being, for example, invariably figures of ease, charm and gentleness. That there was a lasting sense of bitterness is shown by the coolness that thereafter subsisted between the two families, even after the wedding of Tom’s cousin Benjamin Lefroy and Jane’s niece Anna Austen, which took place in glacial circumstances in 1814.
I think I need not warn you against raking up that old story of the still living chief justice. That there was something in it, is true - but nothing out of the common way (as I believe). Nothing to call ill usage, and no very serious sorrow endured. The York Lefroys [their brother Anthony, with whom they differed over family settlements, was barrack master at York] got up a very strong version of it all, and spread their own notions in the family - but they were for years very angry with their kinsman, and rather delighted in a proof as they thought, of his early heartlessness. I have my story from my mother, who was near at the time. It was a disappointment, but Mrs. Lefroy sent the gentleman off at the end of a very few weeks, that no more mischief might be done. If his love had continued a few more years, he might have sought her out again - as he was then making enough to marry on - but who can wonder that he did not? He was settled in Ireland, and he married an Irish lady, who certainly had the convenience of money - there was no engagement, and never had been.
Soon afterwards one of Lefroy’s nephews confirmed that in later life his uncle often alluded to his admiration of Jane, with whom he had apparently had no more than a holiday flirtation: ‘he did not state in what her fascination consisted, but he said in so many words that he was in love with her, although he qualified his confession by saying it was a boyish love’.
Lefroy, who led a blameless life with his wife Mabs, the great-granddaughter of Jeffrey Paul, Member for county Carlow, 1725-30, did not start to practise law in Ireland until a year or so after his marriage, but proved an instant success and soon earned a substantial income. In November 1801, arguing a writ of error in an intractable exchequer case, he was praised by the lord chancellor Lord Clare. In 1802 he published a pamphlet on Proceedings by Elegit, which was well received, and, with his friend John Schoales, he compiled the valuable Reports of Cases in the Court of Chancery in Ireland during the time of Lord Redesdale, an early patron. He served with distinction on the Munster circuit for many years and took silk in 1816, the year, as he wrote in one of his numerous Evangelical memoranda, ‘when I first began to have any view of God’s true method of salvation for a sinner’. He expounded his pious attitude to life, and explained his refusal to court favour by pandering to the fripperies of Castle society, in letters to his father, who died at his house in George’s Street, Limerick, 9 Sept. 1819.
instead of eyes alternately veiled in the humility of their long and downcast lashes, or lifted up in visionary devotion, you behold them fixed upon the chancellor, and watching with a subtle intensity all the shiftings of expression with which the judicial countenance intimates its approval or dissent. The whole face of the vigilant and wily pleader is overspread with craft. There is a lurking design in every feature of his sharp and elongated visage.Lefroy, Mem. 70-79, 87-98; R. L. Sheil, Sketches of Irish Bar (1854), i. 216-31.
Lefroy, who was given the freedom of Cork in 1825, owned property in several southern counties and eventually rebuilt the ruined mansion at Carrickglass in county Longford, where his eldest son Anthony had political ambitions, but mostly resided at his house in Dublin, where he devoted much of his time to gardening.
He was brought forward as the Ascendancy candidate for Dublin University in May 1827, at the by-election caused by the new Canning ministry’s decision to grant a peerage to William Plunket, the pro-Catholic Member. As Lefroy explained to Peel, the recently resigned home secretary
it never was my intention to have engaged in parliamentary pursuits but called upon as I was by so respectable a portion of that body (including its heads) I felt myself bound to forego my own inclinations and to afford our only Protestant university an opportunity of being represented according to its great charter principle.
He was too late in the field to gain sufficient promises and, after an ugly contest in which he was dismissed as ‘sophism personified’ and the ‘silky serjeant’, he finished in third place behind the government candidate, John Croker, and another pro-Catholic barrister, John Henry North*.
made a wrong cast in politics ... After the part Lefroy has lately been taking (very much I believe out of a mistaken calculation of his own interests) it requires some assurance to present himself as a candidate for confidential employment or high judicial office.Add. 40336, f. 266.
To the delight of the staunch Protestants, including those who at this time asked him to stand for Cork, in early 1830 he sensationally resigned as first serjeant in protest at the Castle’s attempt to prevent him going the circuit in place of the indisposed Baron McClelland.
Considered ‘the darling object of the Brunswickers and Ultra Tories’, Lefroy had powerful backing within the Protestant College and, as Croker rightly feared, North’s persistence in the contest divided the ministerialist support, so allowing Lefroy to win the university seat by three votes at the general election of 1830.
On 4 and 6 Apr. 1831 Lefroy lamented to Farnham the lack of Protestant activism and added, in an apparent reference to the restrained official Tory opposition to the reform bill, that
I agree with you as to the sad disembodied state in which an overwhelming opposition (for such it really is) now stands. No head, because none in whom, even the bulk of them, would or can confide, but more and worse, nobody appears willing to put himself at the head of the whole; those to whom you allude as standing off are playing an unaccountable game and seem to be only looking to their own old party, and this appears so to others as an influence from the stand-off system which they have perceived, as well as yourself.Farnham mss 18611 (1).
Nevertheless, he set an example by retaining his university seat at the ensuing general election, defeating Philip Crampton*, the Irish solicitor-general, by eight votes in a bitter contest, during which he opposed reform and raised the spectre of its securing 40 or 50 Catholic Members for Irish seats.
Lefroy vindicated the conduct of the clergyman and yeomanry at the centre of the Newtownbarry affair, 23 June, 1 July, and clashed with Daniel O’Connell over the unrest in Ireland, 27, 30 June 1831, when he presented the Trinity College petition for its franchise to be assimilated to that of Oxford and Cambridge. He insisted that the wealth and intelligence of Ireland were against reform, 1 July, and voted against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, at least twice to adjourn proceedings on it, 12 July, for using the 1831 census, 19 July, and to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July. He joined in the complaints about the condemned boroughs being refused permission to represent their cases by counsel, 4 Aug., brought up Dublin guild petitions against reform, 5 Aug., when he denied that the College electorate was exclusive in character, and divided for preserving the right of voting to non-resident freemen for their lives, 30 Aug. He vindicated the role of Frederick Shaw as both recorder of and Member for Dublin, 12 Aug., justified the presence of clergymen in the commissions of the peace in Ireland, 15 Aug., and spoke and acted as a teller for the minority for the Irish union of parishes bill, 19 Aug. He accused Irish officials of direct interference in the Dublin election, 20, 23 Aug., when he joined Robert Gordon as teller for the minority for his amendment to this effect, and reiterated his views on this topic, 25, 26, 31 Aug. He voted for Benett’s successful amendment to the motion to issue the Liverpool writ alleging gross bribery at the previous election, 5 Sept., and for inquiry into how far the Sugar Refinery Act could be renewed with due regard to the interests of the West Indies and against going into committee on the truck bill, 12 Sept. Among several other short contributions to debate, he defended the established church in relation to the Irish Vestry Acts, 29 Aug., complaints about non-residence and pluralities, 14 Sept., and the necessity of collecting tithes, 6 Oct., when he condemned the party political appointments of lord lieutenants in several Irish counties. He spoke at length in defence of the Kildare Place Society, 9 Sept., and spoke and voted against the Maynooth grant, 26 Sept. He divided against the third reading, 19 Sept., and passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., and the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. 1831.
Lefroy, who was one of the requisitionists for the Protestant meeting in Dublin that month, was appointed to the select committee on Irish tithes, 15 Dec., and paired (with O’Connell) against the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831.
Lefroy, who made numerous interventions and sat on a handful of select committees on Irish matters that session, called for firm action to suppress outrages, 31 May, and divided (unless it was Anthony) against making permanent provision for the Irish poor by a tax on absentees, 19 June 1832. Vindicating the conduct of the Irish Orangemen, he unsuccessfully moved the amendment (and acted as teller) against the Irish party processions bill, 25 June, and he clashed with Smith Stanley over this, 29 June, and the latter’s suggestion that he was stirring up religious animosity by airing allegations of a conspiracy against Protestant landlords, 9 July. He voted against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July, but with them against postponing the Irish tithes bill to the reformed Parliament, 13 July, when, however, he gave notice that he would resist all attempts to appropriate church revenues. He again vaunted the superiority of the Kildare Place Society scheme on dividing against the grant for the plan of national education, 23 July, and the following day it was probably he, not Anthony, who spoke and was a teller for the minority against Hume’s bill to exclude Shaw from the Commons. He objected to the retrospective character of the ecclesiastical courts bill, 1 (when either he or Anthony was in the majority against Blake’s amendment to the Irish tithes bill) and 3 Aug. (when he was in the minority for going into committee on crown colonies relief). Wrongly believing that the party processions bill would no longer be pursued that session, he left London in early August and, emphasizing his constant rearguard efforts in defence of Protestant education and the established church, was again returned for Trinity College in December 1832.