Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork

Richard Boyle was an English lawyer who became one of the most powerful landed and industrial magnates in 17th-century Ireland.

Richard Boyle was born in 1566, as the second son of Kentish landowner Roger Boyle and his wife Joan Naylor Boyle. After he completed Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University he began to work at Middle Temple, London, as a clerk to complete his legal training. There he became a close friend with Sir Edward Waterhouse, chancellor of the Irish exchequer and a chief proponent of settling the Irish province of Munster with English landowners as a response to the Desmond Rebellions against English rule. Through his help, Boyle gained a position as deputy escheator and first traveled to Ireland in 1588. He was in charge for the valuation, distribution and sale of recently confiscated estates in Munster, which were owned by Irish lords that rebelled against the Crown, and intended for plantations for English settlers.

Through this service, Byole became familiar with the most productive and fertile regions of Munster. Thus, he claimed some of the best lands for himself. In a meantime, he married Joan Apsley in 1595. When the plantation system came under inspection of the British government, he was among those accused of corruption and abuse of power. Boyle was imprisoned briefly in 1596, but was released through his growing network of patrons and associates. He returned to London and in 1600 again returned to Ireland, with Sir George Carew, the newly appointed lord president of Munster.

After he received confidential notice that Sir Water Ralegh’s lands in Munster were for sale, he used the dowry of his second wife, Catherine Fenton, to obtain some forty-two thousand acres that included County Waterford and most of County Cork. With this legal purchase he consolidated his holdings into a small empire across southern Ireland that was valued at some £30,000 per year.

He used the experienced English and other European settlers to develop economic potential of his lands. Cattle rearing, glassmaking, brewing, the production of cheese, cloth, wool and leather flourished. He also created fisheries along rivers and the country’s southern coast, mined iron and created iron foundries. He also owned orchards and horse and deer farms. Thanks to his efforts, Munster was the most commercially and agriculturally developed region in Ireland through the eighteenth century. For his assistance to Carew, Boyle was knighted in 1603.

He was also interested in politics, and held some political posts in Ireland and England. With one part of his growing fortune, he provided public and private loans to the English government. In 1616 and 1620 he purchased two noble titles – Lord Boyle and earl of Cork.

At the time of his death Boyle was worth £500,000, the equivalent of £15.7bn in 2010.