Description
After years of ruthlessly and skilfully acquiring and managing property, Richard Boyle was granted the earldom of Cork in 1620. In the years that followed the legitimacy of Cork’s purchase of the Ralegh estate was questioned. When summoned to London in 1628 to answer charges regarding this acquisition he used the time to make connections with people of influence at court and within the administration. He was pardoned and returned to Ireland in 1929 with the new position of Lord Justice.
The letters in this letterbook (Chatsworth House, Hardwick MS 78), both to and from Cork, are mostly private, unofficial communications on government matters to members of the English administration. Frequent correspondents included Lord Dorchester, Sir John Coke and Sir William Beecher, the last of whom he expressed himself most freely to on private and political matters. In letters to high-tier officials he boasts of the successful enforcement of the proclamation against Catholic worship and claims credit for the ‘peacetime’ establishment. He lobbies Viscount Wentworth to compel Catholics to financially support the army. On more private matters Cork discusses disputes with former employees, his role in protecting Munster from pirates, the price of clothing, his loan to the King, his marriage and his continental tour.
These letters record one man’s participation in a unique episode in early seventeenth-century Irish history, when the New English settler community were given an opportunity to govern themselves and the country without the superintendence of an English representative of the crown.
