La Touche

La Touche, a prominent banking family of Huguenot origin. David Digues (1671–1745), who took the name of the family estate of La Touche, was a veteran of the Williamite War who had settled in Dublin as a cloth dealer and merchant. His banking business developed out of his responsibility for handling pensions and remittances payable to his fellow Huguenot refugees. His eldest son David La Touche (d. 1785) bought out his father's partners to make the bank a family‐owned and highly profitable enterprise, and also acquired extensive landed property. Another son, James La Touche (d. 1763), a cloth merchant, joined with Charles Lucas in a campaign to reform Dublin muncipal politics. David II's son, another David La Touche (d. 1817), was first governor of the Bank of Ireland. In 1761 he purchased a seat in the Irish parliament, where he was a prominent opponent of Catholic relief. He later acquired control of his own parliamentary borough, and was joined in parliament by his two brothers and by two nephews. In the two decades after the Act of Union five members of the family sat for Irish seats at Westminster. The La Touche bank lost its financial dynamism from the 1840s, and was absorbed by the Munster Bank in 1870.