Francis Plowden

Francis Plowden ( – April 1712) was an English Jacobite politician, official and courtier who rose to prominence while serving James II of England in Ireland.

Early life Plowden born in in Plowden, Shropshire to a Roman Catholic gentry family, he was the second son of Edmund Plowden and Elizabeth (née Cotton) of Plowden and Aston le Walls. Among his siblings was an elder brother, Edmund Plowden, who married Penelope Drummond (a daughter of Sir Maurice Drummond).

Career Although his family had no previous connections to Ireland, by 1688 Plowden had settled in Galway and was a member of the city's council. On 11 August 1688, he was appointed a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. Following the death of the Earl of Tyrconnell on 14 August 1691, Plowden was appointed a Lord Justice of Ireland alongside Richard Nagle and Alexander Fitton, tasked with acting on James II's behalf while he was outside Ireland. The remaining Jacobite territory overseen by the Lords Justices was minimal, and the Williamite War in Ireland ended on 3 October 1691 with the Treaty of Limerick. Together they had a son and two daughters:

Marie Françoise Plowden (1704–1785), who married Sir George Jerningham, 5th Baronet, son of Sir Francis Jerningham, 3rd Baronet, in 1733.

He died in April 1712 and was buried at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Descendants Through his daughter Marie, his only child to have issue, he was a grandfather of Sir William Jerningham, 6th Baronet (1736–1809), who would have been 7th Baron Stafford but for the attainder, which was reversed in 1824; he married Frances Dillon, daughter of the 11th Viscount Dillon and Lady Charlotte Lee (a daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lichfield).