pendence showed itself conspicuously in his remarks on the king's rejection of the Place Bill. Foley took part in the debates from time to time. He spoke openly against the employment of Dutch and French officers in the English army and navy, and steadily opposed the attainder of Sir John Fenwick in 1696. Earlier in the same year Foley joined with Harley in proposing to parliament the establishment of a national land bank. A bill was passed authorising the government to borrow 2,564,000l. at seven per cent. It received the royal assent on 27 April. If before 1 Aug. half the sum had been subscribed, the subscribers were to be incorporated into a land bank, which was to lend annually on mortgages of land alone a sum of not less than 500,000l. Foley was one of the commissioners for raising the loan, but his efforts failed, and, in spite of various modifications of the original scheme, he and his colleagues were unable to borrow more than 2,100l. The land bank thus proved a disastrous failure. The library at Stoke Edith contains a valuable collection of books and pamphlets, which bear out Roger North's observation (ib. i. 292) that Foley was a busy student of records and had compiled a treatise which went further into the subject of precedents than either Cotton or Prynne had gone. Bishop Burnet, who naturally disparages a political opponent, yet gives him credit for being ‘a learned lawyer and a man of virtue and good principles’ (Hist. iv. 191), and Macaulay considers him to have been ‘superior to his partisan, Harley, both in parts and elevation of character’ (ib. iv. 67). Foley died from gangrene in the foot on 13 Nov. 1699 (MS. Family Notes), and was buried at Stoke Edith, where the inscription on his monument antedates his death by two days. He was not a man of extraordinary ability, but his political career was wholly free from those vices which most of the public men of his day displayed. He married Mary, daughter of Alderman Lane of London, and by her had two sons, Thomas (d. 1737), who was an active member of parliament, and Paul, a barrister-at-law. The grandson of the elder son, also Thomas, was raised to the peerage as Baron Foley of Kidderminster 20 May 1776. A similar peerage, held by a cousin, had become extinct ten years earlier [see Foley, Thomas]. The peerage of the second creation is still extant.
[Manning's Lives of the Speakers; Nash's Materials for Hist. of Worcestershire, ii. 460–2, App. 82–4; Parl. Hist. v. 64–108; Kennett, pp. 510–512; Luttrell's Brief Relation, iv. 583; Robinson's Manor Houses of Herefordshire, pp. 257–8; Macaulay's History.]
FOLEY, SAMUEL (1655–1695), bishop of Down and Connor, was eldest son of Samuel Foley of Clonmel and Dublin (d. 1695), younger brother of Thomas Foley [q. v.], founder of the Old Swinford Hospital. His mother, Elizabeth, was sister of Colonel Solomon Richards of Polsboro, Wexford. He was born at Clonmel 25 Nov. 1655, was admitted fellow-commoner of Trinity College, Dublin, 8 June 1672, was elected fellow 11 June 1697, and was ordained in the church of Ireland in 1678. On 14 Feb. 1688–9 he was installed chancellor of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was attainted by James II's parliament in the same year. On 4 April 1691 he became dean of Achonry and precentor of Killala. He proceeded D.D. of Trinity College in the same year. On 4 Oct. 1694 he was enthroned bishop of Down and Connor in succession to Thomas Hacket, who had been deprived for gross neglect of duty. He died of fever at Lisburn 22 May 1695, and was buried there. The bishop was married, and left issue. He wrote: 1. Two sermons, one preached 19 Feb. 1681–2, and the other 24 April 1682. 2. ‘An Account of the Giant's Causeway,’ published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1694. 3. ‘An Exhortation to the Inhabitants of Down and Connor concerning the Religious Education of their Children,’ Dublin, 1695. Foley left some manuscripts on the controversy between protestantism and Roman catholicism to the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
[Burke's Peerage, s.v. ‘Foley;’ Cotton's Fasti Eccles. Hibern. i. 270, ii. 118, iii. 208, iv. 84, 105; Ware's Bishops of Ireland, ed. Harris, i. 214; Ware's Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris, 253.]
FOLEY, THOMAS (1617–1677), founder of the hospital at Old Swinford, Worcestershire, was eldest son of Richard Foley of Stourbridge, by a second marriage with Alice, daughter of William Brindley of Hide, Staffordshire. His father was engaged in the iron manufactory near Stourbridge (four miles from the town), died 6 July 1657, aged 77, and was buried in the chancel of Old Swinford Church. His mother died 26 May 1663, aged 75. There is a legend (cf. Smiles, Self-Help, ed. 1877, pp. 205–7) that Richard Foley the father was originally a fiddler. On perceiving that the supremacy of the Stourbridge ironworks was threatened by the competition of ironworkers in Sweden, who had discovered the process of ‘splitting,’ he is said to have worked his way to a Swedish iron port and obtained access to the factories, where he learned the secret of the successful process. On his return home he induced some
