John Clotworthy, 1st Viscount Massereene

He was criticised for his conduct at Laud's execution, where he thrust himself forward and harangued that elderly man, who was trying to prepare himself for death, on his alleged religious errors.

[10] In 1646, during the Irish Confederate Wars he unsuccessfully negotiated with the Royalist commander James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde for the surrender of Dublin to the Parliamentary forces.

[9] Clotworthy in no way abated his old animosity against Papists and High Anglicans, despite the King's well-known leaning towards the Roman Catholic faith, and championed the cause of the Irish Presbyterians.

Notwithstanding, being personally agreeable to King Charles II, his religious views were overlooked, and on 21 November 1660 he was created Baron Lough Neagh and Viscount Massereene in the Irish peerage, with the remainder in default of male heirs to his son-in-law, Sir John Skeffington.

The earldom became extinct on the death of the 4th Earl without male issue in 1816, the viscounty and barony of Lough Neagh descending to his daughter Harriet Skeffington, whose husband, Thomas Foster, adopted the surname of Skeffington, and in 1824 inherited from his mother the titles of Viscount Ferrard and Baron Oriel of Collon in the Irish peerage, and from his father in 1828 that of Baron Oriel of Ferrard in the peerage of the United Kingdom.