Admiral Sir Thomas Foley GCB (1757 – 9 January 1833) was a Royal Navy officer and "Hero of the Battle of the Nile".

[1] He entered the Royal Navy in 1770, and, during his time as midshipman, saw a good deal of active service in the West Indies against American privateers.

Promoted lieutenant in 1778, he served under Admiral Keppel (afterwards Viscount) and Sir Charles Hardy in the Channel, and with Rodney's squadron was present at the defeat of De Langara off Cape St Vincent in 1780, and at the relief of Gibraltar.

He was racked with the Baltic cold, and wroth, as was common with him, with the still chillier winds which blew from the Admiralty Board: "But," he says, "all in the fleet are so truly kind to me that I should be a wretch not to cheer up.

Foley has put me under a regimen of milk at four in the morning; Murray has given me lozenges; Hardy is as good as ever, and all have proved their desire to keep my mind easy."

That picture of one sea veteran administering warm milk to his admiral at four o'clock in the morning is amusing enough; but it shows more effectively than graver things could do the feeling Nelson inspired in his captains.

Ill-health obliged Foley to decline Nelson's offer (made when on the point of starting for the Battle of Trafalgar) of the post of Captain of the Fleet.

[5] Her mother was the great-granddaughter of Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland and his mistress Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth.

[9] She wrote in 1798 an address to the Irish nation that wasn't published until many years later: "Irishmen, Countrymen, it is Edward FitzGerald's sister who addresses you: it is a woman but that woman is his sister: she would therefore die for you as he did...Yes, this is the moment, the precious moment which must either stamp with Infamy, the name of Irishmen and denote you forever wretched, enslaved to the power of England, or raise the Paddies to the consequence which they deserve and which England shall no longer withhold, to happiness, freedom, glory ..." [10] The couple's principal residence was Admiral Foley's country estate, Abermarlais, near Llansadwrn in Carmarthenshire, which he had purchased from Sir Cornwallis Maude, 1st Viscount Hawarden in 1795 with his share of the booty resulting from the capture of a Spanish treasure ship, the St Jago, in 1793.

After Sir Thomas' death the widowed Lady Lucy lived at Arundel in Sussex until 1841 when she moved abroad and settled in the south of France, where she spent the remainder of her life.