Thomas Bermingham, 1st Earl of Louth

Thomas Bermingham, 1st Earl of Louth (16 November 1717 – 11 January 1799) was an Anglo-Irish politician and peer. He was also the last man to be summoned to parliament as Baron Athenry.

Bermingham was the son of Francis Bermingham, 14th Baron Athenry, by his first marriage to Lady Mary Nugent, daughter of Thomas Nugent, 4th Earl of Westmeath.[1] He was elected to the Irish House of Commons as Member of Parliament for County Galway, sitting between 1745 and 1750, when on 4 March 1750 he succeeded his father as Baron Athenry and became a member of the Irish House of Lords. He was invested as a member of the Privy Council of Ireland, but was ejected from it in 1767 by Lord Townshend, the newly arrived Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who wished to make a "clean sweep" of the Irish administration, removing all those he regarded as corrupt or inefficient. On 23 April 1759 Lord Athenry was created Earl of Louth in the Peerage of Ireland, a title previously held by John de Bermingham, 1st Earl of Louth, a cousin of his remote ancestor Rickard de Bermingham.[1]

  1. ^ a b The Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland: The peerage of Ireland ( W. Owen [and 2 others], 1790), pp. 93-95.