Richard Boyle 1st earl of Cork

Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork 1566-1643, English settler in Ireland. He first went to Ireland in 1588 and in 1602 purchased for a small sum Sir Walter Raleigh's large landholdings in Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary. His energy and success in improving the lands, building mills, establishing ironworks and other industries, founding towns, and creating trade were remarkable and won him rapid advancement. Created earl of Cork in 1620, he was appointed (1629) one of the lord justices of Ireland and in 1631 became lord high treasurer of the kingdom. In this position he came into conflict with Thomas Wentworth (later 1st earl of Strafford ), who arrived in Ireland as lord deputy in 1633. In their long struggle Strafford at first was successful in depriving Boyle of a large part of his privileges and income, but Boyle's patient marshaling of the forces of opposition to Strafford's Irish program was an important factor in the latter's downfall. Two of his seven sons became well known—Roger Boyle, 1st earl of Orrery, and Robert Boyle , the scientist.

Bibliography: See D. Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (1904).

Richard Boyle Cork, 1st earl of see Boyle, Richard, 1st earl of Cork .

Boyle, Richard (1566–1643), 1st earl of Cork, the most successful of the New English. A Kentish younger son who became deputy escheator of crown lands after achieving entry into official circles with forged introductions, Boyle built a substantial estate by coercing landholders and defrauding the state in the campaign against concealed lands.

Marriage in 1603 to Catherine Fenton, daughter of the Irish council secretary, brought respectability. He bought Raleigh's vast Munster plantation grant for the knock‐down price of £1,500—part of a strategy of acquiring land whereby he gained by the prior investment of others. Boyle was soon the richest man in Ireland with an annual rent‐roll of £20,000.

His wealth brought him status and power—Irish privy counsellor (1612), lord (1616), earl (1620), lord high treasurer of Ireland (1631). Between 1629 and 1632 Boyle served as lord justice with Adam Loftus, an ally of his factional rival Lord Mountnorris. Wentworth, however, was determined to make an example of Boyle as the New Englishman who had most defrauded the crown. He forced the upstart to move an enormous family tomb erected in St Patrick's cathedral, Dublin, to a side aisle. Acting on information from Mountnorris, he also fined Boyle £15,000 for his impropriation of Lismore diocese.

Hiram Morgan