[3] During the Elizabethan wars in Ireland martial law was commonly imposed, and the object of Loftus's appointment as judge of the Irish Marshal's Court was to secure that its decrees should be "orderly and judiciously examined and determined".

[4] On 8 November 1598 he was made a master in chancery, and a year later he obtained an interest in lands leased by his uncle with the consent of the chapters of St. Patrick's and Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

[5] In 1604 the archbishop officially described his nephew, a professor of civil law and his own vicar-general, as archdeacon of Glendalough Cathedral, and as keeping a competent vicar to perform the parochial duties attached.

[4] In 1607 he seems to have gone to England; on 21 March Archbishop Jones, whose chancellor he then was, recommended him strongly to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, then the dominant figure in the English Government.

[6] In the summer of 1618, Loftus went to England, carrying with him a commendatory letter from Lord-Deputy St. John and his Council, and in the following year, he was made one of the Commissioners of the Court of Wards.

In the privy seal directing this creation James I said he had bestowed this hereditary honour on him "that his virtues may be recorded to future ages, so long as there shall remain an heir male to his house".

The Chancellor refused to affix the Great Seal of Ireland to certain licenses for tanning and distilling, but offered to submit their legality to the decision of the judges.

[8] The accession of Charles I made no difference to the bad relations between Falkland and his Chancellor, and in May 1627 the latter was summoned to England, the Great Seal being placed in commission.

After a long inquiry Charles I declared Loftus quite innocent of all charges made against him as a judge, and in May 1628 Falkland was ordered to reinstate him fully, and to treat him with the respect due to himself and to his office.

[10] Lord Falkland's successor, The 1st Viscount Wentworth, did not reach Ireland until the summer of 1633, but Loftus wrote him a congratulatory letter as soon as his appointment was known.

Until 1636, the two men seem to have got on pretty well together; however, on 23 April of that year, Wentworth wrote to Bishop Bramhall of Loftus and of "that fury his lady" (Sarah Barlow) in disparaging terms.

[16] Castle Chamber, without pre-judging the case, asked Loftus to release Fitzgerald pending a further inquiry, but he refused to do so, despite repeated reminders.

As the Lord Chancellor could scarcely be the judge in his own case, the matter was referred to the Lord Deputy and the Privy Council, who decided, upon the evidence of a single witness, who testified to words spoken nearly twenty years before, that Loftus must settle upon Sir Robert Loftus and his children by Eleanor Ruishe his house at Monasterevin, County Kildare, furnished, and £1,200 a year in land.

Wentworth, as so often throughout his career, aggravated matters by his habit of bullying, and ordered Loftus to kneel in his presence; the furious old man, who whatever his faults certainly did not lack courage, said that he would die first.

He accused the Lord Deputy of partiality at the trial, but apologised and withdrew the charges as being unsupported by evidence and as not proper to be lightly made against a viceroy.

Eleanor Loftus herself was Strafford's close friend, as well as the sister of his brother's wife, but there is no evidence that she was his mistress, and his words quoted above do not support the accusation, which seems to rest upon some ambiguous expressions in Clarendon's History.

Richard Bagwell in the DNB article states "On the other hand, it may be thought suspicious that Sir Robert Loftus refused to join in his wife's suit against his father".

[23] Loftus married Sarah Bathow (died 1650), of whom Strafford spoke unkindly, widow of Richard Meredith, Bishop of Leighlin, by whom he had four sons and two daughters, including:[23] The title, which became extinct on the death of his grandson, the 3rd Viscount, in 1725 (when the family estate of Monasterevin, renamed Moore Abbey, passed to his daughter's son Henry, 4th Earl of Drogheda), was re-granted in 1756 to his cousin Nicholas Loftus, a lineal descendant of the archbishop.