Thomas Keightley (official)

Thomas Keightley (1650–1719) was an English courtier and official in Ireland, who as brother-in-law to Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon played a role in the abdication of James II.

Keightley seems to have stayed in London throughout James II's reign, but Clarendon's efforts to induce the king to give his brother-in-law a high place in the Irish government failed.

When James II fled from Whitehall at the approach of William of Orange (December 1688), Keightley was sent by Clarendon to the fugitive king at Rochester to entreat him to stay in England.

His paternal grandfather, Thomas Keightley, born at Kinver, Staffordshire, 28 March 1580, purchased the estate of Hertingfordbury before 1643, when John Evelyn visited him there (Diary, i.

[2] Frances was at Glaslough, Ireland, in 1686 where she met the controversialist Charles Leslie (who may have written his Short and Easie Method with the Deists, 1698, to address her religious doubts).

[3] Subsequently she lived at Athelhampton House with her sister-in-law Mary Long (nee Keightley), together with whom she petitioned King William in 1701/2 to be absolved from the fines for not attending church.