BOYLE, Richard (1612-98)

Earl of Cork [I], 1642-60

Dungarvan was one of 15 children, and had a formidable set of siblings. This biography is largely based on Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life ed. T. Barnard and J. Clark, 167-99. Three of his younger brothers received Irish titles, while his youngest brother Robert became a famous natural philosopher. His sisters Katharine, Lady Ranelagh [I], and Mary, countess of Warwick, were celebrated in their own right. The marriages of some of his sisters – to George Fitzgerald, 16th earl of Kildare [I]; David Barry, earl of Barrymore [I], Arthur Jones^‡, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh [I], and Robert Digby, Baron Digby of Geashill [I] – connected him to a number of prominent, or rising, Irish families. He gained in-laws within the English peerage through the marriages of his brother Lewis Boyle, Viscount Kinalmeaky [I], to a daughter of William Feilding^†, earl of Denbigh, of his other brother Roger Boyle, Baron Broghill [I] (later earl of Orrery [I]), to a sister of James Howard, 3rd earl of Suffolk, and of his sister Mary to Charles Rich, third son of Robert Rich^†, 2nd earl of Warwick, and himself later 4th earl of Warwick. On 3 July 1634 Dungarvan himself married Elizabeth Clifford, daughter of Henry Clifford, Baron Clifford and later 5th earl of Cumberland, a match which brought the young man into a prominent clan with large estates in Cumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire and, through the Cliffords’ multitudinous kinship connections, gave him an easy entrée to the English court, where he quickly became a favourite of Henrietta Maria.

Dungarvan raised a troop of horse for the Scottish wars in 1638-9 and was, through the Clifford interest in Westmorland, selected for Appleby in both April and November 1640, although he spent much of 1642 helping his father and brothers defend their Munster possessions against the Catholic insurgents. On 15 Sept. 1643 the earl of Cork died and Dungarvan inherited his title and estates. On that same day the ‘Irish Cessation’, the truce between the royalists in Ireland and the Confederate Catholics who had been in rebellion, was signed. About a month later, because of his support for the Cessation, Cork was disabled from attending the Commons at Westminster, and his estates in England and Ireland were ordered to be sequestered. On 11 Dec. 1643 the 5th earl of Cumberland died and Cork’s wife Elizabeth, as Cumberland’s only surviving child, inherited the Clifford estates in Yorkshire as well as a claim, contested between cousins for the next several decades, to the ancient barony of Clifford, allegedly created by a writ of summons in 1299. In recognition of Cork’s substantial English interests and as a reward for his faithfulness to the royalist cause, and perhaps in part to recognize and strengthen his wife’s tenuous claim to the Clifford barony, Charles I in Oxford created him, on 4 Nov. 1644, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, after his principal northern estate, Londesborough in the East Riding. Henceforth the subject of this article, as it concerns the English House of Lords, shall be referred to by his titles in the English peerage, Clifford and later Burlington, even when he is being discussed in an Irish context where he would have been known by his older Irish title as earl of Cork.

Clifford returned to England in 1650 after a number of years’ exile (in Caen among other places) undertaken after the fall of Oxford. After paying the remainder of his composition fine of £1,631, he moved with his family first to Londesborough and then to Ireland, where he arrived in May 1651. CCC, p. 1474; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 278; Chatsworth, Cork misc. box 1, Burlington diary. Through the influence of his brother Roger, Baron Broghill, Clifford was able to recover fully his Irish estates by an order of the parliamentary commissioners of 11 Apr. 1653. After 1653, Broghill and Clifford allied themselves with the Protectorate and especially with the Protector’s son Henry Cromwell^‡, who was in Ireland from mid 1655 and was appointed lord deputy in November 1657. P. Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union, ch. 3, esp. pp. 66-72.

Clifford received dispatches from his sister Katherine, Lady Ranelagh, describing the uncertain political situation in England throughout 1659, but he did not come over to England himself until the end of that year and arrived in the English capital on 2 Dec. 1659. From the beginning of 1660 he began calling on many of the nobility – such as his brother-in-law, Warwick; Warwick’s brother-in-law Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester; Henry Pierrepont, marquess of Dorchester; and Mountjoy Blount, earl of Newport – to discuss the developing political situation. During these first few months of 1660 Clifford continued to wait cautiously upon events, but increasingly supported the actions of George Monck, later duke of Albemarle. He celebrated in his diary for 21 Feb. the re-admission of the secluded Members and, on 16 Mar., the dissolution of the Long Parliament, with the hope that ‘God grant that the next [Parliament] may repair the breaches which since their sitting have been made in these miserable nations, by a part of them’. He resented that only those peers ‘as did sit there in ’48’ were permitted to meet as the Convention House of Lords on 25 Apr., while ‘the rest were by those endeavours to be kept out upon pretence that the general and the army would disapprove of us’. His journal exulted in the Declaration of Breda on 1 May and, on 4 May, with other ‘Oxford’ peers he petitioned Monck to be allowed into the House of Lords. The following day Monck, dining with Clifford and John Belasyse, Baron Belasyse, asked them to desist from their controversial demands. On 6 May Clifford heard for the first time, and ‘to my great comfort’, public prayers for the king, and he recorded that the official proclamation of the king in London was done ‘with the greatest joy and clamour that I ever observed’. At this same time he was busy composing and dispatching memoranda to Charles II and Sir Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, on Irish affairs, and particularly the settlement of the thorny land issue in Ireland. Bodl. Clarendon 72, ff. 191, 255. Clifford later travelled down to Dover to receive the king at his landfall on 25 May. Burlington diary, 2 Dec. 1659, 9, 18, 20, 28 Jan., 10, 17, 20 Feb., 2, 5, 16, 18, 21, 27-31 Mar., 5, 12, 25 Apr., 4, 5, 6, 8, 23, 25, 29 May 1660.

On 1 June 1660, with a large group of the returned royalists, he first took his seat in the Convention House of Lords as Baron Clifford of Lanesborough – although in his own diary he dates his first appearance as 8 June and further notes that ‘at the same time came those lords that were made at Oxford, the lords sitting in the house till the king declared himself therein opposing it’. Having been forced to miss the first month of the Convention, he came to just less than half of its sittings in total. His diary is laconic about his attendance in the House, both during the Convention and throughout his career, and usually merely records his presence there. However, he was concerned enough by the progress for the bill of indemnity to record proceedings on it, including on 1 Aug. when ‘we continued to set down such as should be added as guilty of the king’s murder’. He recorded the bill’s passage on 10 Aug., which he may have considered significant because on that same day Dorchester introduced a bill on behalf of Clifford ‘for reparation upon those who contrary to the articles of York [at its surrender] had seized my goods’. Dorchester also chaired the committee on the bill established on 18 Aug. and reported the bill fit to pass with some amendments on 28 August. But, perhaps because of the emphasis in the House on ‘indemnity’ during this time, this measure was thrown out on its third reading on 1 September. Ibid. 30 July, 1, 2, 7, 10, 11 Aug. 1660; HMC 7th Rep. 125.

Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, 1661-5

Clifford’s diary shows him to have been an assiduous courtier during the early months of the Restoration and among other events, provides a long and detailed account of the coronation of Charles II. His time in London, or at least what he bothers to record of it, appears to have been one long round of ‘waiting on’ the royal brothers and their mother and visiting, and negotiating marriage settlements with, other members of the nobility. On 7 May 1661, only one day before the first session of the Charles II’s first Parliament was to meet, was celebrated the marriage of Clifford’s son and heir Charles Boyle, styled Viscount Dungarvan (later summoned to the House by a writ of acceleration as Baron Clifford of Lanesborough) and Lady Jane Seymour, daughter of William Seymour, the late 2nd duke of Somerset, with a settlement on the couple of £12,000 a year. Less than two weeks later Clifford’s widowed daughter Frances Courtenay married the poet Wentworth Dillon, 2nd earl of Roscommon [I], who received the £4,000 dowry which was to have been paid to her first husband before his early death. Burlington diary, 11 Feb., 19 Apr., 7, 16, 18, 19 May 1661; Lady Burlington diary, 5, 7 May 1661.

Despite his connections with the upper echelons of the court, Clifford never received the high national offices in England to which his wealth – he was commonly referred to as ‘Richard the Rich’ – and social prominence would normally have entitled him. Even in Ireland he was only entrusted with largely honorific (and frequently non-remunerative) posts, such as lord treasurer of Ireland, a post his father had held and to which he was appointed on 28 June 1660. Burlington diary, 28-30 June 1660, 13 May 1661, 2 July 1668, 5 Feb. 1670. It was a little short of a year before he arrived in Ireland to take up this post and on 17 May 1661, as he was preparing for his departure, he also acquired from the king a patent for the command of the first troop of horse in Ireland to become vacant. He was, however, to spend the next several years unsuccessfully trying to obtain this commission. Ibid. 13, 17 May, 9 July 1661, 23 Jan., 9 July 1663, 8 May, 20 Sept. 1665, 26 Sept. 1666, 4 Apr., 14 Dec. 1667, 2 July 1668; CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 331. He entrusted his proxy on 20 May with his Irish colleague James Butler, duke of Ormond [I] (also earl of Brecknock), ‘enjoining him’, as he recorded in his diary, ‘to give my vote when the bill came in for the restoration of the bishops to their seats in the Lords’ house’. The proxy appears in the register for 21 May, but Clifford himself last sat in the House before his departure on 25 May, having attended only nine sittings of the session which had begun 17 days previously. PH, xxxii. 248. On 24 June 1661 he was first introduced in the Irish house of lords as the 2nd earl of Cork [I], an event which he also duly recorded in his journal. He attended the Irish parliament and council board (as lord treasurer) intermittently until the parliament was adjourned on 11 October.

He was back in the English capital, after spending some time in his Yorkshire estates, on 23 Nov. 1661, just after the second part of the first session of the Cavalier Parliament had commenced. He was present at 53 per cent of the sittings until the prorogation of 19 May 1662. His diary, usually so terse, becomes more detailed about matters in the English House in 1662, particularly those that involved him as a northern landowner. On 17 Jan. 1662 he noted the first reading of the bill to reinstate the council of the north and the presidency of York in the northern counties, and he continued to record its passage through the House, even noting on 25 Jan. the details of a ‘difference … between the duke of [Buckingham George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham] and my Lord [Northumberland Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland], which grew to high words’ and required their withdrawal from the House. On 15 Feb. Clifford noted his part in a large delegation of northern lords and gentry which called on the lord chancellor, Clarendon, to argue against the bill. On another matter he recorded his dinner on 26 Feb. 1662 ‘with the duke of Buckingham and several northern lords at the Sun in Westminster, where we consulted about making application to his Majesty about the patent of royal mines, which we conceived gave the patentees power to dig up any of our grounds’.

Other matters affected him as an Irish peer and grandee. He recorded, though made no comment on, the introduction of the bill to reverse the attainder of his father’s inveterate enemy Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford, on 23 Jan. 1662. Some of the vituperative comments about the Irish made in the meetings of the committee for privileges in late February and early March concerning the precedence of ‘foreign’ peers stung him sufficiently for him to record them and their speakers – principally Buckingham, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury) and Warwick Mohun, 2nd Baron Mohun. Burlington diary, 25 Feb., 3, 6, 8 Mar. 1662. He was so fascinated by the ‘great heats between the chancellor and Lord [Bristol George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol]’ over the government proviso to the uniformity bill that would have allowed the king to grant dispensations ‘to such of the Presbyterian ministers as had been instrumental in bringing in the king’ that he recorded the altercation twice in his diary, once for 19 Mar. and then again for 6 May 1662 (the correct date is 19 March). His diary records the press of business in Parliament during the final days of the 1661-2 session; for 17 May he noted that the House sat discussing bills until one in the morning and for 19 May he wrote that while the king had intended to prorogue the session at noon, ‘it was past seven a clock at night before the bills could be perfected’.

After the session’s end, Clifford made preparations to return to Ireland and, as he recorded, landed in Cork harbour on 9 Sept. 1662 before arriving in Dublin on 19 December. For the next year he performed his duties at the council board and house of lords in the Irish capital. He entrusted his proxy in the English House of Lords to Clarendon, and it was registered on 4 Feb. 1663, two weeks before the commencement of that session. Clarendon would have maintained it as one of his two proxies throughout the session, yet on 12 Mar. Clifford’s brother Roger Boyle, now earl of Orrery [I], wrote to Clarendon enclosing Clifford’s proxy for John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater. CCSP, v. 303. This proxy, though, was never registered and Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, marked Clarendon as Clifford’s proxy holder when he recorded Clifford as an opponent of Bristol’s attempt to accuse Clarendon of high treason in mid July 1663. Clifford returned to London on 6 Dec. 1663 and was more than usually active in the following short session of spring 1664, missing only seven of its 36 sittings.

During the first few days of the session in late March 1664 he recorded the eccentric and fugitive behaviour of Bristol, consequent to his proscription by the king for his attempt to impeach the lord chancellor. Burlington diary, 16, 21-23 Mar. 1664. Clifford had already had dealings with Bristol, for in November and December 1661 abortive negotiations had been on foot for the marriage of Clifford’s daughter Elizabeth to Bristol’s heir John Digby, styled Lord Digby (later 3rd earl of Bristol). These came to naught, for as Clifford bluntly told Bristol (through the medium of his sister Lady Ranelagh) he had ‘received some advertisements concerning the young lord, which made me decline a treaty’. Ibid. 25 Nov., 2, 6 Dec. 1661. On 11 Apr. 1664 Elizabeth instead married, with a portion of £10,000, Nicholas Tufton, styled Lord Tufton, who barely a month after the wedding, on 7 May 1664, became 3rd earl of Thanet upon the death of his father. This marriage had added advantages for Clifford’s economic and social ambitions as Thanet was the grandson and heir of Lady Anne Clifford, dowager countess of Pembroke, who had earlier successfully taken possession of the major portion of the Clifford lands in Cumberland and Westmorland and the previous year, on 30 May 1663, had submitted a petition to the House setting forth her claim to the 1299 barony by writ of Clifford, to which Cifford of Lanesborough’s wife Elizabeth also had a claim. The marriage of Elizabeth to Lord Tufton was seen by all parties as a means of uniting the divided estates and the warring branches of the Clifford family. Diary of Lady Anne Clifford ed. D.J.H. Clifford, 160-1, 171, 172; R. T. Spence, Lady Anne Clifford, 235-40.

Tufton’s marriage to Lady Elizabeth Boyle had been conducted privately, without the knowledge of his parents, and the dowager countess of Thanet appears to have extracted from him, as a condition of her consent, his agreement to provide maintenance for his five younger brothers. The act for confirming a deed of settlement between the earl of Thanet and his younger brethren was given its first reading on 28 Jan. 1665, well into the 1664-5 session, of whose sittings Clifford attended 79 per cent. The proceedings on the bill were to show that despite the marriage, all was not well between the two branches of the Clifford family. The dowager countess of Thanet complained that Clifford of Lanesborough was referred to as ‘Lord Clifford’ throughout the bill, without the addition of ‘Lanesborough’ to distinguish between the various Clifford baronies. Clifford of Lanesborough was initially conciliatory, but when he discovered that the new earl of Thanet had, without consulting him first, told a committee of the Commons considering the bill that Clifford of Lanesborough had agreed to remove the offending term ‘Lord Clifford’ from the bill he flew into a rage against his son-in-law. Telling him he ‘would rather suffer the act to miscarry than to suffer such an injury’, he insisted that he continue to be referred to as ‘Lord Clifford’ in the bill, but agreed to have the distinguishing addition ‘of Lanesborough’. He consented to this on condition that Thanet formally sign an engagement before the attorney general that his styling himself ‘Clifford of Lanesborough’ would not prejudice him in case he ever chose to claim the ancient honour. Clifford of Lanesborough’s peers in the House agreed to this alteration when the bill was returned from the lower chamber on 27 Feb. and the lord privy seal John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor), led the committee which set out reasons to justify this change to the Commons. In the free conference on 1 Mar., Robartes and the House’s managers were able to convince the Commons to accept the amended wording, just in time to allow the bill to receive the royal assent at the prorogation of Parliament the following day. Burlington diary, 1, 16, 18, 20, 23 Feb. 1665.

Earl of Burlington and Clarendonian 1665-73

Probably to remove any further confrontation over what was obviously a contested title, Clifford of Lanesborough was created earl of Burlington on 20 Mar. 1665, on the recommendation of his patron from his youth, Henrietta Maria, the queen mother. He chose his title from the port (Bridlington) near Londesborough at which she had disembarked in 1643 bringing supplies from France to her husband. Ibid. 13-16 Mar. 1665. Throughout the spring of 1665 negotiations were carried on for the joining of his youngest daughter Henrietta to Clarendon’s younger son Laurence Hyde, later earl of Rochester. This union had royal backing, having been initially proposed by Hyde’s sister, the duchess of York, and in April Burlington received assurances from her husband James Stuart, duke of York, and from the king himself that if Clarendon himself could not provide the marriage settlement requested by Burlington, the royal brothers would supply the shortfall. Burlington left for Ireland, arriving there on 28 May, before the marriage was solemnized and entrusted his wife to oversee the wedding on 29 June. Lady Burlington diary, 5, 18, 20, 26 Mar., 7, 10, 11, 24 Apr., 29 June 1665; Burlington diary, 2, 22, 24, 27 Apr., 14, 18, 28 May 1665; Add. 75356, York to Burlington, 17 Apr. 1665; Bodl. Clarendon 83, f. 156. The marriage confirmed the friendship between Burlington and the family of the heir to the throne. York had already expressed his regard for Burlington’s second son Richard, who was killed while standing next to the duke on the flagship at the Battle of Lowestoft on 3 June. The duke and duchess of York later descended on the countess of Burlington at Londesborough Hall, while the earl was still away in Ireland, during their visit to the north in the summer of 1665. Lady Burlington diary, 3 June, 3, 4, 26 Sept. 1665; Burlington diary, 20 June 1665; Add. 75354, countess of Burlington to Burlington, 29 Aug., 8 Sept. 1665.

Like all significant Irish landowners Burlington was concerned by the Irish cattle bill. He returned to Londesborough on 5 Oct. 1665 but, afflicted by gout, did not manage to attend the session at Oxford in late October 1665 when the bill was first introduced. Nevertheless, his youngest brother, the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, represented the Irish interests of the family by petitioning against it there. Add 75354, R. Boyle to Burlington, 24 Oct. 1665; Bodl. Carte 34, ff. 442, 557. Burlington returned to Dublin on 25 May 1666 and there, on 15 Aug., the Irish privy council of which he was a member addressed a petition to the king against the bill and delegated ‘some members of the Board being persons of honour and interest in both kingdoms’ – Burlington; Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I], (soon after created Baron Butler of Moore Park); Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey; and Edward Conway, 3rd Viscount (later earl of) Conway – to represent to the king the many arguments against the measure. Bodl. Carte 35, ff. 32-35; CSP Ire. 1666-9, p. 184; Add. 21135, f. 37. Burlington returned to London on 12 Oct. 1666, and first took his seat as earl of Burlington three days later. Having missed the first 13 days of the 1666-7 session he then proceeded to attend every sitting thereafter, and was especially concerned with the proceedings on the Irish cattle bill. In his journal he lamented the course of the debate on the bill of 23 Oct.: ‘This is the 2d time an unhappy day for Ireland on which day the rebellions broke out Anno 1641’. On 10 Nov. he informed Ormond of the almost inevitable passage of the bill, despite the exertions of the agents assigned to foil it, and from 16 Nov. he had the proxy of his brother-in-law Warwick to help him. Even with this additional vote, the bill was passed by ten votes on 23 Nov. and Burlington recorded that ‘we that were against it had liberty to enter our dissents, which we did the next day’. In the event, only the four representatives earlier delegated by the Irish privy council – Burlington, Ossory (sitting in the House as Butler of Moore Park), Anglesey and Conway – signed the dissent which appears in the Journal. Bodl. Carte 35, f. 124; Burlington diary, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23 Nov. 1666. In December Ormond in Dublin, realizing that his former proxy Charles Weston, 3rd earl of Portland, had died in June 1665, hurriedly wrote to his ally Clarendon, instructing him that, as ‘it should seem that in many cases votes are more necessary, and more wanted, than arguments, I therefore think it fit to put mine into such hands, as you shall choose, either into my Lord Burlington’s or my Lord Conway’s, or to any other peer’s, as they have room for it, and are most like to attend’. Bodl. Carte 48, f. 432. Clarendon acted on these instructions and on 3 Jan. 1667 Ormond’s proxy (under his English title of Brecknock) was registered with Burlington, who fulfilled the requirement by attending every single sitting of the session. Burlington took his duty as Ormond’s proxy seriously and kept him informed of events in the English Parliament throughout January and February 1667, informing Ormond not only of the progress of the Irish cattle bill, but also of the impeachment proceedings against John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, as well. Bodl. Carte 215, ff. 310-11, 328-9. Even with the two proxies he had, which he held until the end of the session, Burlington was not able to defeat the resolution of the House on 14 Jan. to agree with the Commons’ amendment that the importation of cattle from Ireland was a ‘nuisance’, and he entered his name in the protest of eight peers against this motion that day, reporting to Ormond in a long, gloomy letter about the unfortunate conclusion of ‘two months debate ... and I heartily wish it may not be the beginning of more’. He further recommended that Ormond compose an address from the Irish government asking for dispensations and concessions ‘as may in some measure keep from us total despair’. Ibid. ff. 318-19. On 8 Feb. Parliament was prorogued, and the following day Ormond and the Irish privy council dispatched the address against the bill and once again assigned Burlington, with his Irish colleagues Anglesey and Conway, to present it and its arguments to the king. CSP Ire. 1666-9, pp. 293, 299; Bodl. Carte 35, ff. 309-10; Carte 46, f. 452.

He attended at court again in early March when the king personally conferred on him the lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire, which had been previously exercised by the currently disgraced Buckingham. Burlington diary, 3, 5, 7, 15, 21 Mar. 1667. Burlington was largely unknown in the West Riding, as his main base of influence was the East Riding, where he had sat in a number of local commissions for the past several years. Buckingham, meanwhile, had surrounded himself with loyal supporters in the West Riding, especially the prominent militia colonels and deputy lieutenants Sir Thomas Osborne, later earl of Danby, marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds, and Sir George Savile, later marquess of Halifax, who refused to serve under the new lord lieutenant. Reresby Mems. 64-65; W. Yorks. AS (Leeds), Mexborough mss (WYL156), 2/20, 3/15; Burlington diary, 21 Mar., 6 Apr. 1667. Burlington arrived in Londesborough on 13 Apr., distinctly nervous about the reception he would have in the West Riding, which could not have been eased by Lady Ranelagh’s news from London that ‘several of your predecessor’s deputies have waited upon him out of his lieutenancy by throwing up their commissions’. Burlington was, though, heartened by the positive greeting he received at York on the 25th when he began issuing commissions. Add. 75354, Lady Ranelagh to Burlington, 20 Apr., 4 May 1667, R. Boyle to Burlington, 4 May 1667; Burlington diary, 13 Apr.-10 May 1667.

By the middle of 1667 Burlington held high office and lucrative landholdings in both Ireland and Yorkshire, was a favoured figure at court and was tied by marriage and political sentiments to Clarendon. So close was he to Clarendon that he decided to build his own grand new London residence next to Clarendon House, and it was the lord chancellor who led the negotiations throughout the summer of 1667 for the marriage of Burlington’s daughter Anne to Edward Montagu, styled Lord Hinchingbrooke (later 2nd earl of Sandwich). Burlington diary, 4, 12 Feb., 2 Apr., 24 July 1667, 4, 9, 11 Mar., 16 Apr. 1668; Add. 75354, Lady Ranelagh to Burlington, 1 June 1667; Pepys Diary, viii. 190-1. His fortune, though, declined with Clarendon’s in the latter part of the year. After Buckingham’s surrender and readmission to favour in the late summer, Burlington waited on the king on 20 Oct. 1667 and volunteered to resign his lieutenancy, fearing that the king ‘might be in some constraint as to this which I knew the duke did much desire to repossess’. He recorded in his journal that on 25 Oct. he received a peremptory order from Henry Bennet, Baron, later earl of Arlington, to surrender his commission appointing him lord lieutenant, which he decided instead to keep ‘for my own justification’. He was formally replaced by Buckingham on 1 November. CSP Dom. 1667, p. 547; 1667-8, p. 2.

Before the opening of the following session on 10 Oct. 1667 Burlington consulted with Clarendon about preparing a defence against the charges that would be levelled against the lord chancellor. Burnet, i. 466. He was heavily involved in the proceedings against Clarendon and attended 86 per cent of the sittings in the last three months of 1667 which saw Clarendon’s downfall and exile. On 15 Oct. he, with York, Bridgwater and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, physically left the House rather than vote on the motion to thank the king for his promise no longer to employ Clarendon, ‘for’, as Burlington explained in his journal, ‘we did conceive the giving thanks for that was a kind of prejudging my lord when no crime was laid to his charge’. On 9 Nov. Thanet, who did not attend any of the sittings of this session, registered his proxy with his father-in-law, and Burlington would have been able to use it in the proceedings on the impeachment of Clarendon, which began shortly afterwards. Unsurprisingly, Burlington’s name is not among the protesters against the resolution of 20 Nov. that Clarendon could not be committed without more specific charges of treason being brought against him, He appears to have abstained from the division on 19 Dec. to agree with the Commons’ amendments to the bill for Clarendon’s banishment, which allowed the king to give the bill his royal assent later that afternoon. Burlington recorded in his diary for that day that ‘the bill for banishing of the earl of Clarendon was past in our house at the which I was not present’, even though the Journals clearly mark his presence in the House that day. One advantage of Clarendon’s flight did accrue to Burlington. By the original marriage settlement of Henrietta Boyle to Laurence Hyde, Burlington had accepted from the lord chancellor a mortgage on Clarendon House, in lieu of jointure lands for his daughter. Upon his flight Clarendon was no longer in a position to pay the mortgage and by late December Burlington took possession of his friend’s house, although it was sold in 1675 to Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle. Bodl. Carte 75, ff. 594-5; Carte 222, ff. 176-7.

The attacks against the followers of Clarendon continued when the session resumed on 6 Feb. 1668 after the enforced Christmas recess. Burlington may have kept a low profile as he had been one of the former lord chancellor’s principal allies, and he attended only 46 per cent of the sittings of this part of the session. His journal gives little indication of his activities or concerns in the House in this period, but he was affected by the attacks led by Buckingham and his allies on one of Clarendon’s closest associates, the duke of Ormond. Burlington’s own relationship with Ormond probably reached its lowest point in 1668 when for his own reasons the earl was fuming at what he considered the lord lieutenant’s purposeful snubs to his honour and advancement – the failure to pay his daily salary as lord treasurer, omitting his name as lord treasurer in a commission to inspect the Irish accounts and passing him over for the long-promised command of a troop of horse. Burlington diary, 3, 30 June, 1-2 July 1668. Ormond may have turned against Burlington because of the attacks he was then subject to from Burlington’s brother Orrery, president of the Irish province of Munster, who was agitating for the lord lieutenancy of Ireland himself and had made common cause with Buckingham to oust Ormond. Ossory, for one, doubted Burlington’s, and indeed Orrery’s, professions that they had no ‘design of prejudice’ against his father Ormond. Bodl. Carte 220, ff. 402-3. Buckingham’s campaign was ultimately successful and Ormond was dismissed from his office in late April 1669, but was not replaced by Orrery but by Robartes instead. Burlington came, holding from late October an unfortunately undated proxy from Thanet, to all but five of the 36 sittings of the House during the session of autumn 1669. In this session his brother Orrery, after having succeeded in removing Ormond for his coveted post, saw himself brought before the Commons on charges of maladministration in Munster. Burlington recorded, with some pride and satisfaction, that on 1 Dec. 1669 Orrery ‘sitting in his place (the gout not permitting him to stand) he answered every article of the charges which consisted of ten, and gave so much satisfaction to the house that upon a division of it, it was carried by three voices ... that those articles should be dismissed’. Burlington diary, 1, 10 Dec. 1669.

In the years after Clarendon’s fall Burlington’s diary reveals that he maintained close connections with fellow Clarendonians and some of his most frequent visitors and dining companions were bishops such as Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, and particularly George Morley, bishop of Winchester, who may have been his colleague in preparing Clarendon’s defence before the autumn 1667 sittings. Ibid. 1 Jan., 20 Feb., 23 Mar., 3, 30 June, 1, 2 July, 1 Aug., 8 Dec. 1668, 23, 28 May 1670, 3 May 1672; HMC Ormonde, i. 101; Burnet, i. 466. He continued to act as a friendly confidant of York and on the day before her death on 31 Mar. 1671 the duchess of York roused herself from her sickbed to pay a final farewell visit to Lady Burlington. Burlington diary, 23 Mar. 1668, 14 May 1670; 30-31 Mar. 1671; Lady Burlington diary, 30 Mar. 1671; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 447. His diary, however, becomes increasingly sketchy from this time, and is entirely silent for the months of February-April 1670, when he came to all but six of the sittings of the 1670-1 session before the adjournment of 11 Apr. 1670. In this part of the session, perhaps following the lead of York and his friends among the episcopate, he signed the dissent of 28 Mar. 1670 against the passage of the bill to allow John Manners, styled Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland) to remarry after his divorce. He came to 72 per cent of the sittings after the session resumed on 31 Oct. 1670 but as his diary entries become even more erratic and terse from this point they do not provide a guide to his activities and concerns, apart from his frequent attendance in the House.

A ‘country’ peer? 1673-81

The same is true of Burlington’s recording of the session, long delayed, of early 1673, of which he attended 71 per cent of the sittings. Indeed his diary entries stop completely after 9 May 1673, and his final entries detail his opposition to the schemes put forward to allow Catholics to be placed on Irish commissions of the peace, a proposal which he vigorously denounced as ‘extraordinary and in my opinion illegal’. Burlington diary, 7, 9 May 1673; S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, 21. With his Protestant Irish background, Burlington undoubtedly felt uneasy with Charles II’s increasingly pro-French and pro-Catholic policies, as well as York’s open conversion of the duke of York to Catholicism, and he began to distance himself increasingly from the Stuarts and the court from this point, although the break with his kinsman York, his daughter’s brother-in-law, could never be absolute. Burlington did not attend any of the sittings of the session of autumn 1673, but was present at 73 per cent of those of the session of the first months of 1674. The proxy of Charles Stanhope, 2nd Baron Stanhope of Harrington, was entered in Burlington’s name from 19 Dec. 1673, well before the commencement of that session, while the proxy of John Crew, Baron Crew, was registered with Burlington on 7 Feb. 1674; both were maintained by Burlington for the entire session. Burlington attended all but one of the meetings of spring 1675 and Crew, who had stopped attending the House in April 1671, once again entrusted him with his proxy, entered in the register on 14 Apr. 1675, the second day of the session. Danby (as Thomas Osborne had become) fully expected Burlington to oppose his proposed ‘non-resisting’ test bill. This is corroborated by the author of A Letter from a Person of Quality, which lists Burlington among ‘those great lords’ who gave their ‘countenance and support to the English interest’ by their opposition to the bill. Timberland, i. 157. Burlington’s opposition to the bill may have come from a concern for the potential damage its provisions would do to freedom of debate in the House, but it may also have been tinged with personal animus. As an ally and friend of the late earl of Clarendon (who had died in 1674) Burlington was likely to remember the part Danby played in his late friend’s impeachment and banishment. However, Burlington, shying away from controversy, did not put his name to any of the protests against the passage of the measure. On 5 May 1675 William Wentworth, 2nd earl of Strafford, son of the former lord deputy of Ireland, formally complained to the House about a pamphlet that had been published that impugned both the earl and his father by claiming that the first earl had illegally cozened the barony of Shelalagh, with its valuable forest, and castle of Carnow (both in co. Wicklow) out of William Eyre’s father-in-law, Calcot Chambres, and that the second earl was still in illegal possession of the land. The matter was on 11 May referred to the committee for privileges, and on 3 June Burlington, supplied evidence to the committee in favour of both Strafford and his proxy donor Crew, one of the trustees of the estate who was also attacked in the pamphlet. The Case of William Eyres, esq. (1670?); CSP Dom. 1675-6, pp. 101-6; PA HL/PO/DC/CP/1/2, p. 122 (for 3 June 1675). In the following session of autumn 1675 Burlington stopped attending on 18 Nov., after coming to only six sittings in total. A list of those taking part in the division two days later on the motion for an address urging the dissolution of Parliament placed Burlington among those peers ‘absent and sick who have attended this session’ and who it was thought would most likely have voted in favour of the address if they had been present.

By the spring of 1677 Burlington had become so distant from Danby and the court that Shaftesbury could consider him ‘twice worthy’ in his political analysis of the peers. Burlington himself was principally preoccupied during the sittings of 1677, of which he attended 61 per cent, in pursuing his claim of a breach of privilege against a Mr Dury Deane, who tried various means to obstruct Burlington’s entering into full possession of the Essex manor of Nazeing. In a petition to the House of 7 Apr. 1677 Burlington claimed that years previously he had purchased the reversion of Nazeing from his brother-in-law Colonel George Goring^‡, styled Lord Goring, and that upon the death of the last claimant to the property in December 1676, he had come into full possession of the estate. Most of the tenants accepted his ownership, but Deane refused to, claiming that he was the proper heir to Lord Goring, and impounded the cattle of Burlington’s new tenants. The House duly ordered on 9 Apr. the attachment of Deane and others and most of them had made their submission and had been discharged by 14 April. Deane remained at large though and the case became more complicated when one of Burlington’s agents impounded the goods of Dury Deane’s brother who, as it transpired on 16 Apr. was a servant of Buckingham and had a protection from him. Deane later involved the widow of Goring’s younger brother, Charles Goring, 2nd earl of Norwich, and convinced her to claim that the manor properly belonged to her. Burlington himself was not even attending the House on 23 May 1677 when his petition against the dowager countess’s attempt to block his legal proceedings against her by claiming privilege of peerage was read before the House. The House quickly decided that she had no claim of privilege and left her to the law. Legal proceedings between Burlington and Deane continued throughout 1677, but on 29 Jan. 1678, after the House had reconvened following the long adjournment from 28 May 1677 to 28 Jan. 1678, Deane finally made his submission to Burlington and the House and was released. HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 92, 95, 96, 97.

Burlington was present at 85 per cent of the sittings of this latter part of the session in the first five months of 1678. In May 1677 Ormond had been reappointed as lord lieutenant of Ireland and Burlington’s letters to Ormond in Ireland from this time were, as usual with Burlington, filled with complaints of unpaid salaries and of other perceived snubs, but in a more collegial manner he also took it upon himself to inform the lord lieutenant of the proceedings in Parliament from 1678 until 1681. HMC Ormonde, i. 49, 101; n.s. iv. 30, 32, 153, 286, 299, 361; n.s. v. 88, 93, 221, 445, 470; NLI, ms 2364, pp. 253-60; ms 2374, 279-84; ms 2378, pp. 425-30. On 9 Feb. 1678 he told his friend of the formal submission their mutual enemy Buckingham had made to the House for his insistence the previous year that the Parliament had been dissolved by the 15-month prorogation, and of the duke’s careful ingratiation, once again, into the king’s favour. Ormond professed not to be worried about the re-emergence of the man who had forced his first departure from his Irish post: ‘I serve a master who knows us both’, he wrote, perhaps over-confidently. NLI, ms 2371, pp. 267-72; HMC Ormonde n.s. iv. 109. On 4 Apr. Burlington voted Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, guilty of manslaughter. On 11 May 1678, two days before the prorogation, Burlington wrote Ormond that ‘the weather grows very hot here and the humours of some keep temper with the season’, while Ormond replied that unless there was a ‘better correspondence’ between the Commons and the king it could be 1641 all over again. ‘Your Lordship and I cannot possibly live over again so many ill years as we have done, nor did I believe you were very fond of eating champignons at Caen’. In early June 1678, near the beginning of the first session of that year Burlington was encouraged, perhaps misguidedly, that ‘much moderation and compliance is now observed to be in those whose temper was somewhat late discomposed’. NLI, ms 2375, pp. 37-42; HMC Ormonde n.s. iv, 143-4. Burlington stopped attending this session on 19 June and in total came to only 48 per cent of its sittings. For the session of autumn 1678 Burlington entrusted his proxy, entered in the register on the first day of the session, 21 Oct. 1678, to Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon who held it for the entire session, as Burlington absented himself from this tumultuous final session of the Cavalier Parliament altogether.

In the weeks preceding the meeting of the new Parliament summoned for spring 1679 Danby consistently listed Burlington as a probable opponent. There were good reasons for Burlington to desire the downfall of Danby, who was a principal rival in Yorkshire and had snatched from Burlington the lieutenancy of the West Riding when it had once again been removed from Buckingham in 1674. Burlington was more than usually attentive during the first Exclusion Parliament; he first took his seat on 13 Mar., the last day of the abortive first session, and then came to 93 per cent of the sitting days of the 61-day second session. Throughout he voted to facilitate the progress of the impeachment proceedings against the former lord treasurer. On 14 Apr. 1679 he voted in favour of the version of the bill threatening Danby with impeachment if he did not surrender himself to face the charges against him. Danby’s disgrace and imprisonment did benefit Burlington locally, as he replaced him as lord lieutenant of the West Riding on 8 May 1679 and was able to remain in that position until 1688. Burlington remained involved in the debates surrounding the trials of Danby and the Catholic peers, apparently reluctantly according to a letter of 30 Apr. to Ormond in which he complained that he had intended to go to Ireland that summer, ‘but the House of Peers are so stout on the point of permitting their members to stir from their attendance that they … resolve to imprison and fine every peer that shall not appear at the trial of the lords, which moves so slowly that I doubt it will be near Midsummer before those trials will be finished’. HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 71. On 10 May he voted in favour of the motion to appoint a joint committee of both Houses to consider procedures for the trials and, with a large number of country peers, signed the dissent when this motion was rejected. On 23 May, after the House had relented and had decided to have a joint committee with the Commons, Burlington objected, as signified by his subscription to the dissents, against the instructions to the House’s representatives that they were to inform the Commons’ commissioners that the House insisted that the Catholic peers would be tried before Danby and that the bishops could attend the trials, despite the possibility that a sentence of death would be determined. On this latter issue he may have changed his mind by 27 May, the day of prorogation, for on that day he probably voted to insist on the House’s previous resolution regarding the bishops’ right to assist at the trials. Browning, Danby, iii. 138. Through Burlington’s influence in both the East and West Ridings, his son and heir Charles Boyle, Lord Clifford of Lanesborough, had been elected a knight of the shire for Yorkshire, and during this Parliament he too voted in favour of Danby’s impeachment and even for the Exclusion Bill when it passed the Commons. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 468-9.

Ossory could report to his father in January 1680 that ‘I find my Lord of Burlington very kind to you, though some would inflame him’, presumably thinking of Orrery who at that point was again at the forefront of those accusing Ormond of a laxness in prosecuting Catholics in Ireland suspected of involvement in the Popish Plot. HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 264. However, in the new Parliament which eventually convened on 21 Oct. 1680, and of whose sitting days he attended just under two-thirds, Burlington served diligently with such country stalwarts as Shaftesbury and Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, on the subcommittee assigned to examine the evidence of Catholic conspiracy in Ireland, particularly surrounding the Catholic primate of Ireland, Oliver Plunket. The results of the subcommittee’s deliberations were reported to the House by Shaftesbury on 4 Nov. 1680 and were used to further damn Ormond for complacency. Haley, Shaftesbury, 594-5. Burlington’s conviction of the Plot’s reality is further suggested by his finding William Howard, Viscount Stafford, guilty of treason on 7 December. ‘A weaker defence I have not observed then was made by his lordship’, he commented to Ormond on this trial, ‘nor evidence better ordered than was that of the House of Commons … Many are of opinion that nothing can save his life but a full discovery of the Plot’. HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 517-18. Burlington drew the line at exclusion, though, and on 15 Nov. voted for throwing the bill out at its first reading. Add. 36988, f. 159. He also signed the dissent from the resolution of 7 Jan. 1681 not to put the question whether Lord Chief Justice Scroggs should be committed upon the articles of impeachment against him submitted by the Commons, although his name did not appear in the Journal. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 656. In the weeks before the Parliament scheduled to meet at Oxford, Danby again considered Burlington as a potential enemy, one who would not countenance his proposed petition to be bailed from the Tower. In the event, Burlington did not attend any sittings of the week-long Parliament in March 1681.

‘A cautious man’, 1681-9

A large part of Burlington’s continuing stature at court during the ‘Tory reaction’ in the first part of the 1680s relied on the influence of his daughter Henrietta and her husband Laurence Hyde, an intimate of the Stuart brothers and a leading Tory, who was created earl of Rochester in November 1682. Burlington himself was considered for elevation at that same time when, at the death of Prince Rupert, duke of Cumberland, it was rumoured that he was going to have that peerage conferred on him in order to emphasize his connection with his late father-in-law Henry Clifford, 5th earl of Cumberland. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 556; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 335. Both Henrietta Hyde and her mother the countess of Burlington were trusted confidants of Mary of Modena who, from her exile in Scotland in 1681, wrote to the countess that Henrietta was ‘without exception, the dearest friend I have’. Add. 75356, Mary of Modena to countess of Burlington, 14 May 1681. Burlington cemented his position among the great families of Ireland through the marriage in July 1682 of his granddaughter Lady Anne Hyde to Ormond’s grandson, James Butler, styled earl of Ossory [I], from 30 July 1680 and later 2nd duke of Ormond. Burlington later added a Scottish title to his family when in December 1685 another granddaughter, Mary Boyle, daughter of Lord Clifford of Lanesborough, married James Douglas, earl of Drumlanrig [S] (later 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], and duke of Dover). Lady Burlington diary, 29 July 1682, 1 Dec. 1685; NLI, ms 2421, pp. 317-20; Morrice, Entring Bk. iii. 69.

Sir John Reresby^‡, governor of York from April 1682, commented that as lord lieutenant of the West Riding Burlington ‘was looked upon above as a cautious man, that had no mind to venture too far for fear of his great estate, and so seemed to carry fair with all parties’. Reresby Mems. 307, 311. A desire to avoid controversy was a distinguishing characteristic of the earl, but Reresby is hardly an impartial judge. As governor of York, Reresby had a long-running feud with Burlington over their respective spheres of jurisdiction in the city. He was in addition a client of the marquess of Halifax, another local rival of Burlington who, as lord privy seal, was closer to the circles of power. Ibid. 261, 361, 364-5, 372. At the time of the discovery of the Rye House Plot the gentlemen of the county, led in part by Reresby (despite his protestations of innocence), managed to snub Burlington by requesting that Halifax present their loyal address to the king. In general, Reresby regarded the marquess as a more forceful personality in representing the needs of the county. Ibid. 312, 361, 367. If not inspired or particularly forceful, Burlington does appear to have performed his duties in the West Riding diligently throughout the 1680s, and in August 1685 was further rewarded with the recordership of York when the new charter for that city was drawn up. CSP Dom. July-Sept 1683, pp. 251, 270; 1684-5, pp. 28, 299, 307; W. Yorks. AS (Leeds), Mexborough mss (WYL156), 31/20-34. He attended 70 per cent of the sittings of James II’s Parliament in 1685 but did not take a noticeable stance on the king’s desire in November to dispense his Catholic army officers from the provisions of the Test Act. Burlington was considered enough of a follower of the court to be summoned to the special court of the lord high steward to try Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington) outside time of Parliament, but he did not appear at the trial on 16 Jan. 1686 and did not take part. State Trials, xi. 515. Throughout the late 1680s political observers were doubtful as to where he stood on James II’s religious policies, aware of the strong family ties that bound him to the king and his ministers. While some observers thought he would stand against the proposed repeal of the Test Acts, Danby did not include him in his list of the king’s opponents, and a careful analysis of the peerage’s political sentiments drawn up by the French agent in late 1687 considered him as yet ‘undeclared’. James II, however, considered Burlington too staunchly Protestant to implement his policies and in March 1688 deprived him of the recordership of York and of the command of the West Riding, replacing him in the latter with the Catholic Lord Thomas Howard. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 161; Reresby Mems. 491. This insult may have turned Burlington more firmly against the king. He was proposed by Henry Compton, bishop of London, as a potential surety for Francis Turner, bishop of Ely at the trial of the seven bishops in June 1688. Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 76; Add. 34510, f. 134. He withheld his active support for the king upon William of Orange’s invasion, and Reresby later included him among those lords ‘who had all been active to bring in the Prince’. Reresby Mems. 551. Burlington subscribed to the petition presented to the king on 17 Nov. 1688 calling on him to summon a ‘free parliament’ and after the king’s first flight, he attended the first meeting of the provisional government of the peers on 11 Dec. and subscribed to the Guildhall declaration that day. He only attended again two days later when news reached the provisional government of the king’s apprehension at Faversham. If Burlington himself did not take an active role in the Revolution both his grandson Henry Boyle, later Baron Carleton, and grandson-in-law the earl of Drumlanrig [S], did defect to the prince of Orange in November 1688. Add. 34510, ff. 166v-67; Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 249; Kingdom without a King, 67, 72, 92; Reresby Mems. 535.

Nor was Burlington highly visible in the Convention. He attended for the first few days and does not appear to have voted in favour of the regency on 29 Jan. while two days later he voted in a division in a committee of the whole against inserting words declaring William and Mary king and queen in the text of the vote brought up from the Commons. At this point his caution appears to have overtaken him and he began to regret his initial support for the Revolution. According to Reresby, he ‘and some other lords who had all been active to bring in the Prince [began to] speak in another strain. Some said the thing was gone further than they expected, others that they never believed the prince would contend for the Crown; and all were of opinion the Crown ought to be set upon the princess’s head, and is to descend in its right course’. Reresby Mems. 551. Burlington appears to have abstained from the vote on 4 Feb. on whether James II had ‘abdicated’ and, perhaps fearing further constitutionally contentious votes on this point, absented himself from the House from 5 Feb. until the matter had been settled; he returned to the House a week later. In March and April he would have been present for the proceedings in the committee for privileges which decided in his wife’s favour against her kinsman James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury. She had complained to the House on 16 Mar. that the earl had secretly conveyed his two younger brothers, who had been entrusted to the countess for their Protestant education, to France to be raised as Catholics like himself. HMC Lords, ii. 62-3. Burlington left the House again on 23 July when he registered his proxy to the Tory Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, who a week later cast Burlington’s vote in favour of the House’s punitive amendments to the bill for reversing the judgments against Titus Oates. The proxy was not vacated until 20 Aug., when Burlington returned briefly to the House. Overall Burlington sat in just less than half of the sitting days of the first session of the Convention.

He maintained the same attendance rate, at 47 per cent, in the winter session of the Convention and from that point his attendance in the House continued to decrease until his death in 1698. He still felt some responsibility to his parliamentary duties, but age and infirmity, and his crippling gout, may well have prevented him from coming more often. He explained to one of his agents in Ireland in a letter of 17 May 1692 that he would not be able to make his long-intended visit to Ireland because ‘this day sevennight the parliament is summoned to sit here, upon which account it would have been very unfit for me to be going away before that meeting’. NLI, ms 13226/11, Burlington to Col. William Congreve, 17 May 1692. He did sit at a number of meetings in the latter part of 1690, and on 6 Oct. voted against the release from the Tower of his kinsman Salisbury and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough. Browning, iii. 180. In a list he compiled between October 1689 and February 1690, the marquess of Carmarthen (as Danby had become) reckoned him to be an opponent of the court.

Old age, 1690-8

The sessions of 1690-1 and 1691-2 saw the culmination in the House of the long-simmering family dispute over the barony of Clifford, although Burlington himself was not much involved at this point. As discussed above, Lady Anne Clifford, the dowager countess of Pembroke, had long claimed the barony of Clifford as the heir general of Roger Clifford, allegedly created Lord Clifford by a writ of summons addressed to him in 1299. This claim had long been equally contested by the countess of Burlington, who claimed the title through the male heir, her father Henry Clifford, 5th earl of Cumberland. Lady Anne Clifford had died in 1676 but her claim to the barony was maintained by her heirs, and particularly by her grandson Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet, who had succeeded to his title in March 1684.

This issue had come up again when Burlington’s heir, Charles Boyle, first sat in the House on 18 July 1689, under a writ of acceleration, as Lord Clifford of Lanesborough. This undoubtedly spurred Thanet to promote his own claim to be the Lord Clifford. In the elections of February 1690 for William III’s first Parliament Thanet had ensured the election for his borough of Appleby of Burlington’s grandson, Clifford of Lanesborough’s son and heir, Charles Boyle, later 2nd earl of Burlington. This was perhaps to help smooth relations with the Boyles and thus help to ensure the passage of the petition he submitted to the House on 27 Nov. 1690 to the Clifford barony. The countess of Burlington put in her own counter-petition on 2 Dec., and it may even have been submitted by Burlington himself, as he was present in the House that day, one of only 36 sittings he attended in 1690-1. However, Parliament was prorogued on 5 Jan. 1691 before it could hear counsel for either side, and to further complicate matters Lady Burlington died the following day.

The matter thus stood in abeyance when the session of 1691-2 convened, with Burlington present, on 22 Oct. 1691. However, perhaps still recovering from the loss of his wife, he only sat for a further six sittings in that session and did not attend again after 20 November. He was thus absent when his son Clifford of Lanesborough, who had the much grander titles of Cork and Burlington to look forward to, assured the House on 8 Dec. that he did ‘not obstruct the said claim’ of Thanet. Four days later the committee for privileges resolved and reported that the 1299 barony of Clifford did of right belong to Thanet, which was agreed upon by the House. HMC Lords, iii. 191-2.

Shortly after this decision Burlington, having been absent from the House for over two months, registered his proxy with his son-in-law Rochester on 27 Jan. 1692. He did not attend any of the meetings of the following session of 1692-3 and entrusted his proxy with Rochester again on 19 Jan. 1693. He was absent for the entirety of the session of 1693-4 without, apparently, assigning a proxy. He did appear in the 1694-5 session on 23 Jan. 1695, when he subscribed to the protest against the passage of the amendment postponing the implementation of the treason trials bill from 1695 to 1698. In the following session of 1695-6 he did not sign the Association until 20 Mar. 1696, but this was probably because of his advanced age, as he came to only three meetings of the House in that session. Throughout December 1696 in the 1696-7 session he did make a determined effort to be at the proceedings concerning the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡, and he had to apologize to his agents in Ireland that he was not able to give sufficient attention to their letters because the House was keeping him occupied for ten to 12 hours a day. Chatsworth, Cork mss 34/125, 127-8, Burlington to Col. W. Congreve, 8, 17, 26 Dec. 1696. He opposed the bill of attainder, and subscribed to all three of the protests which sought to impede its passage through Parliament, those against the decision to hear the suspect testimony of Cardell Goodman (15 Dec. 1696); against the resolution to read the bill a second time (18 Dec.) and against the passage of the bill (23 December).

He maintained a distant but equally concerned involvement in Irish politics at the same time. From the time of the summoning of the Irish Parliament in 1692 (the first in 25 years) he sent detailed instructions to his agents there on how to manage the election of his preferred candidates for his Cork and Waterford boroughs. His own grandson Henry Boyle was the target of much of the old man’s hopes and expectations, and he sorely disappointed Burlington when he rejected the safe seat of Youghal for a more prestigious English parliamentary career which was eventually to lead to his appointment as a secretary of state under Queen Anne. NLI, mss 13226/13, Burlington to Col. W. Congreve, 9, 16 and 27 Aug. 1692; 13226/14, Burlington to Col. W. Congreve, 1 Sept. 1692; 13226/15, Burlington to Col. W. Congreve, 18 Oct., 17 Nov. 1692; 13226/25, Burlington to Col. W. Congreve, 16 July 1695; Add. 75375, ff. 25-26; Add. 75376, ff. 77-81.

Burlington last sat in the House on 8 Jan. 1697, and on 18 Mar. 1697 registered his proxy with his grandson Charles Boyle, who sat under a writ of acceleration. It was this grandson who inherited the estate, estimated by contemporaries to be worth at least £26,000 a year, and titles as 3rd earl of Cork [I], and 2nd earl of Burlington when Burlington died, aged 87, on 15 Jan. 1698, having been predeceased by all but one of his seven children. CSP Dom. 1698, p. 36.