BOYLE, Richard (1694-1753)

At his death on 9 Feb. 1704 the 2nd earl of Burlington, left behind him four daughters and just one son, Richard, aged ten. The new earl of Burlington did not come of age until 25 Apr. 1715 and his initial interest in politics is indicated by the fact that he first sat in the House the day after he reached his majority. Indeed he returned from his Grand Tour on the continent specifically to take his place among his peers. At that time he also took over many of the Boyles’ quasi-hereditary local roles – lord treasurer of Ireland, governor of county Cork, lord lieutenant and vice-admiral of Yorkshire – which until that time had been exercised in trust during his minority by his uncle the court Whig Henry Boyle^* [615], from October 1714 Baron Carleton.6 CSP Dom. 1704-5, pp. 7, 24.

In October 1713 it was reported to Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, that both Richard Lowther, 2nd Viscount Lonsdale (an intended husband for Burlington’s sister before his death later that year), and Burlington, the latter described as ‘a good-natured, pretty gentleman’, were in the ‘ill hands’ of the Whigs.7 HMC Portland, v. 343. Burlington is consequently usually seen as a Whig nobleman, but some scholars have argued strongly that Burlington’s purportedly educational grand tour of 1714-15 was actually a covert mission to make contact with the Pretender and that Burlington thereafter remained a committed and active Jacobite, carefully obfuscated by his self-presentation as an aesthete and amateur architect.8 Lord Burlington, ed. Barnard and Clark, 253-7 et seq. These views and interpretations of Burlington’s active engagement in politics in the period 1715-33, will be discussed in detail in the following volumes of this series.