IMC are delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of The letterbook of Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork, 1629‒1634, edited by Aidan Clarke†, Bríd McGrath and David Edwards. The volume will be available to purchase online and through any good bookshop from 10 March.
This letterbook covers the period after Cork’s appointment as Lord Justice of Ireland and then as Lord Treasurer. They are mainly unofficial communications on government and business matters to members of the English administration. In his correspondence Cork boasts of the enforcement of measures against Catholic worship and claims credit for the ‘peacetime’ establishment of Ireland. He also discusses private matters such as disputes with former employees, piracy in Munster, the price of clothing, his loan to the King, his marriage and his son’s ‘grand tour’.
These letters record a unique episode in early seventeenth-century Irish history, when the New English settler community were able to govern the country without supervision by an English viceroy.