BOYLE, Charles (1666-1704)

Charles Boyle was born on 30 Oct. 1666, according to his grandmother, into one of the most prominent families in English and Irish society. He had among his great-uncles the natural philosopher Robert Boyle and the statesman Roger Boyle^‡, earl of Orrery [I]. Most immediately he was the grandson of the wealthy and well-connected Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington and 2nd earl of Cork [I], and, after his father’s premature death on 12 Oct. 1694, he was direct heir to the immense fortune deriving from the Boyle estates in Munster in Ireland and his grandmother Elizabeth Clifford’s lands in Yorkshire. A great deal of expectation was thus placed on him from an early age and he was shipped off for three years of foreign travel in April 1683. In January 1688, shortly after his return from abroad, Boyle married the 15-year-old Lady Juliana Noel. Contemporaries estimated that the young Juliana could bring £1,500 a year to Charles Boyle and the Boyle clan. Chatsworth, Cork mss, Lady Burlington Diary, 44; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 43, f. 9.

Boyle first entered Parliament as a burgess for Appleby in 1690, to which Westmorland seat he was elected on the interest of his kinsman Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet. Boyle’s father had sat in the House of Lords since 18 July 1689 as Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, by means of a writ of acceleration. When Clifford predeceased his father on 12 Oct. 1694, the House was presented with a thorny issue. On 12 Nov. 1694, the first day of the new session, the House ordered the Committee for Privileges to consider the question ‘whether if a lord, called by writ into his father’s barony, shall happen to die in the life-time of his father, the son of that lord (so called) be a peer, and hath right to demand his writ of summons’. The Dutch envoy l’Hermitage wrote to his masters in the States-General that the House was then adjourned for a week solely in order that the Committee could determine this matter. Add. 17677 OO, f. 387. The lord president, Thomas Osborne, duke of Leeds, reported on 20 Nov. that the Committee could find no precedent in this case, whereupon the House, after debating the matter, resolved that ‘the said Charles, now Lord Clifford, by virtue of his father’s writ, hath right to a writ of summons to Parliament, as Lord Clifford of Launsburgh’. The following day, Charles Boyle first took his seat in the House, the Journal stating for 21 Nov. 1694 that ‘This day Charles, Lord Clifford of Launsburgh, sat first in Parliament, upon the death of his father Charles, late Lord Clifford of Launsburgh’, the phrasing that is used for noting a succession to a heritable title. HMC Lords, n.s. i. 397.

The new Lord Clifford of Lanesborough sat in a little over four-fifths (81 per cent) of the meetings of his first session in the House (1694–5) and was named to 21 committees. He maintained the largely independent and ‘country’ stance he had adopted in the Commons. On 23 Jan. 1695 he joined his grandfather Burlington and his uncle Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, in protesting against the government motion to postpone the implementation of the treason trial bill to 1698. The following day he was one of seven dissenters, the rest largely Tories, to the decision to add a clause to the bill allowing the process in treason trials to be questioned only through a writ of error submitted to the House after the trial.

The question of precedence of those sons (or even grandsons) of peers summoned to the House by a writ of acceleration was considered again by the House on 20 Mar. 1695. The decision of 20 Nov. 1694 was read and it was moved to place Clifford of Lanesborough in precedence as if his title dated from 1644 rather than from 1694. In the presence lists in the Journals for these years Clifford of Lanesborough does indeed appear in the list of barons as if his honour dated from 1644. HMC Lords, n.s. i. 403–5. At the latter end of the session he was involved in the proceedings against Sir Thomas Cooke^‡ and other East India Company merchants suspected of corruption. On 11 Apr. 1695 he was appointed to the committee to examine two of the suspects in this affair and two days later he was chosen a manager for a conference at which the Commons handed over papers of Sir Thomas Cooke^‡ regarding the recent payments by the Company. On 16 Apr. he was placed on the large committee to draft a bill to indemnify Cooke if he agreed to give evidence.

Along with his English title of Clifford of Lanesborough, Charles Boyle the younger was deemed to have also ‘inherited’ the title Viscount Dungarvan [I], by which his father had sat in the Irish House of Lords under a writ of acceleration. This gave the younger Charles Boyle the same right to sit in the Irish House. His grandfather the 2nd earl of Cork [I] had long been lord treasurer of Ireland, and in March 1695 he resigned the office and its concomitant membership of the Irish Privy Council to his grandson. CSP Dom. 1694–5, pp. 414, 462. As Viscount Dungarvan, Clifford of Lanesborough was in Dublin during the autumn of 1695, where he was a frequent attender in the Irish House of Lords from his introduction on 13 Sept., as lord treasurer of Ireland, to his departure for England in November. LJ [I], i. 501, 533 et seq. He never sat there again, and from 11 Nov. 1695 until the prorogation of 3 Dec. 1697 was represented in the Irish chamber by a proxy. He was kept informed of events in the Irish House throughout the session of winter 1697 by his correspondent William King, bishop of Derry [I]. King was particularly anxious that Clifford, and his younger brother Henry Boyle, later Baron Carleton, should participate more actively in Irish politics:

I hope your Lordship will be convinced that it is necessary that both you and your brother should be here. I assure your Lordship everybody that wishes well to the country are of this opinion and your lordship will find in effect both houses at your direction. … As for the House of Lords we found your lordship’s [presence] of so great use to us that we were more sensible of the want of it … and I hope your lordship will be prevailed for so public a good, to give us the honour to see you here on the next occasion. TCD, ms 750/1, pp. 106–8, 132–4, 138–40.

Clifford evidently did aspire to further high office in Dublin. After the death of the lord deputy Henry Capell, Baron Capell of Tewkesbury, at the end of May 1696, it was rumoured that Clifford was going to put himself forward as a lord justice for Ireland. CSP Dom. 1696, p. 204. His failure to be further promoted may account for his effective retirement from Irish politics by late 1697; when the Irish Parliament resumed after a long series of prorogations on 27 Sept. 1698 his proxy was vacated, although at a call of the House on 24 Oct. it was reported that he was sending over a fresh proxy. Nevertheless, by April 1699 there were still unfounded rumours that he would be made lord lieutenant of the kingdom. CSP Dom. 1699–1700, p. 137.

From his return to England by mid-November 1695, Clifford of Lanesborough devoted himself to the English House, attending 77 per cent of the session of 1695–6, the first of the new Parliament elected in the summer of 1695. From the session’s early days he was involved in the proceedings in the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the nation, and in the first ten days of December 1695 was named to a number of committees assigned to draft addresses to the king on the matters discussed there, such as coin-clipping and the Scots East India Company. At the turn of 1695–6 he was also appointed to the large committees established to examine evidence and papers submitted to the House regarding naval affairs. He subscribed to the protest of 9 Jan. 1696 against the rejection of a clause to the Coinage Bill that would have required all coin (and not just that intended for the revenue) to be examined for its true value. That same day he was placed on a committee to draw up reasons to be presented in conference why the House had adhered to some of the other amendments objected to by the Commons. Later, on 31 Mar. 1696, he signed another protest against the passage of the bill to encourage the submission of plate to the Mint for recoining.

In between these two protests, the House was shaken by news of the assassination attempt against William III, and Clifford of Lanesborough was among the first group of peers to subscribe to the Association on 27 Feb. 1696. Browning, Danby, iii. 193. He also acted as a teller on 3 Apr. in the division on whether to agree to the motion to reverse the original judgment in the cause of Jones v. Shakerley. In the session’s final days he was named on 14 Apr. to a committee to develop reasons to be presented to the Commons why the House insisted on its amendments to the bill to prohibit trade with France. Throughout the session he was also named to 12 committees dealing with pieces of legislation.

Clifford of Lanesborough was present at 65 per cent of the sitting days of the session of 1696–7, during which he was named to seven committees on legislation. In its first days of business he chaired the drafting committee for the House’s response to the king’s speech, from which he reported on 27 Oct. 1696. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, p. 411. On 23 Dec. he joined his grandfather Burlington, his uncle Rochester and many other peers in signing the protest against the bill for the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡. He was a teller on 23 Jan. 1697 in the division on whether to commit the Elections Regulations Bill. Near the end of February he and the Whig naval commander John Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley of Stratton, exchanged proxies in what turned out to be the final days of Berkeley’s life. On 20 Feb. Clifford registered his proxy with Berkeley, but then, perhaps because of Berkeley’s illness, Clifford returned to the House on the 22nd, at which point he took possession in turn of Berkeley’s proxy, which was vacated five days later by Berkeley’s death. Later, on 18 Mar. Clifford’s own grandfather Burlington, himself an ailing man in his eighties, registered his proxy with the young man, who held it for the remainder of the session. On the penultimate day of the session, 15 Apr. 1697, Clifford of Lanesborough was a teller in two divisions regarding an amendment to a clause in the bill against brokers and stock-jobbers. He felt very strongly about this amendment for he was among the nine peers who protested against the decision to reject it, arguing that without the disputed wording the bill had a retrospective power. HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 551.

The final session of the 1695 Parliament, in 1697–8, saw great changes to Charles Boyle’s situation. He was present on its first day, 3 Dec. 1697, as Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, and proceeded to sit in a further 12 meetings with that title until 8 Jan. 1698. A week later his grandfather the earl of Cork and Burlington died at the age of 86. This brought to Clifford of Lanesborough earldoms in both England and Ireland and an estate reportedly worth £22,000 p.a., with enough left over to provide an income of £4,000 p.a. for his younger brother, Henry Boyle. CSP Dom. 1698, p. 36. He also inherited his grandfather’s prestige, local influence and offices. He had already been made a gentleman of the bedchamber in 1697, with an annuity of £1,000, which office was probably an attempt to bind him closer to the court interest. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 204; CTB, xiii. 332. This annuity, and whatever ties to the court it entailed, quickly paled into insignificance compared to his inheritance, and it was in the northern theatre of Yorkshire, where much of his English estate lay, that he rose to prominence. Burlington became constable and warden for life of the honour of Knaresborough through the reversionary interest in a patent granted to his grandfather in 1663. In the summer of 1699 William III stripped the ailing duke of Leeds of his lieutenancies in Yorkshire, and made Burlington both lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the West Riding. CSP Dom. 1699–1700, pp. 32, 248; Browning, Danby, i. 548; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 545. In the same summer there were unfounded rumours that he would also be elevated to a dukedom. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 562, 573. In the following years the earl gained further local offices – custos rotulorum of the North Riding in 1701 and vice-admiral of the Yorkshire coast in 1702. Shortly before William III’s death he was also appointed to the English Privy Council and his place at the Council was reaffirmed by Anne upon her accession.

Boyle first sat in the House as Burlington on 9 Feb. 1698, about a month after he had last sat there as Clifford of Lanesborough. In total, under both titles, he came to 56 per cent of the sitting days of 1697–8 and was named to 16 committees on legislation. On 15 Mar. 1698 he voted against the commitment of the Junto-inspired bill to punish Charles Duncombe^‡ and the following day he dissented from the resolution to grant relief to the appellants in the cause of James Bertie v. Lord Falkland. He remained involved in this latter cause, on 24 Mar. being named a manager for a conference to discuss a recent libel that had been published concerning this dispute. William Richard George Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, registered his proxy with him on 29 Mar. and Burlington maintained it for his votes for the remainder of the session. Near the end of the session, on 9 June, he was placed on a committee to draw up a statement of the House’s view of the proper procedures to be taken in the trial of the French merchant Goudet, to be presented to the Commons in conference.

Burlington attended three-fifths of the meetings of the 1698–9 session of the new Parliament elected that summer. He was placed on nine committees considering legislation and on 4 Feb. 1699 was also named to the drafting committee for the address of thanks for the king’s speech. Irish matters loomed large for him in this session, and throughout 1698–9 he was involved in, or at least nominated to, a number of committees of the English House of Lords dealing with Irish affairs. In his last days as Clifford of Lanesborough he had, on 7 Jan. 1698, been placed on a large committee to consider methods of dealing with appeals from subjects in Ireland. On 30 Mar. he had also been nominated to a committee entrusted to consider the state of trade between Ireland and England. In the 1698–9 session, he was, on 11 Feb. 1699, made part of the committee dealing with an appeal brought before the House from the Irish House of Lords. The most explosive matter was the petition of the Ulster Society of London to the English House of Lords complaining that their legal opponent William King, bishop of Derry, had submitted a petition and appeal to the Irish House of Lords, despite the English House’s earlier resolution that they had jurisdiction over such appeals from Ireland. On 24 Mar. 1699 Burlington was placed on the large committee appointed to consider this petition and five days later he defended his old correspondent and colleague Bishop King, dissenting from the resolution that he should be brought in custody to Westminster to answer for his appeal to the Irish House. This matter had long troubled King who in his letters to Clifford as far back as late 1697 had expressed his concern that the London Ulster Company’s attempt to have their case against him heard by the English House of Lords was a breach of the Irish Parliament’s privilege. TCD, ms 750/1, pp. 106–8, 132–4, 138–40.

Burlington attended a similar number of sitting days, 57 per cent, in the following session of 1699–1700, but was named to only four committees on legislation. On 23 Feb. 1700 he voted in favour of the House’s adjourning into a Committee of the Whole to discuss amendments to the bill for continuing the East India Company as a corporation, and in March he opposed the bill for the divorce of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, by subscribing to the protests against both its commitment (8 Mar.) and its passage (12 March). His name appears nowhere in the Journal for the proceedings on the bill for the resumption of grants of forfeited Irish lands in April 1700, despite his obvious interest in the matter as an Irish landowner, either as a manager for the many conferences with the Commons or in the protest against the House’s last-minute decision to withdraw from its wrecking amendment on 10 April.

Burlington came to only one-fifth of the sittings of the first Parliament of 1701. His low attendance may have led him to register his proxy with another peer for a time, but the disappearance of the proxy register for this Parliament, and indeed for both sessions of the 1698 Parliament, precludes certainty on this point. He was present for the session’s first few days and on 12 Feb. 1701 was placed on the drafting committee for the House’s response to the king’s speech, five days later being appointed a manager for the conference to achieve the Commons’ concurrence with the address. He was principally appointed to drafting committees on the many addresses of that Parliament. On 14 Mar. he was assigned to help formulate the address on the Partition Treaty and on 5 May he was to help with another address concerning the impeached former ministers of the Junto. On that matter Burlington was added on 6 June to the joint committee discussing the procedures for the trial, and he later went on to vote for the acquittal of the Whig lords on 17 and 23 June.

In the elections in the winter of 1701, following the surprise dissolution of 11 Nov. 1701, Burlington as lord lieutenant of the West Riding supported the candidacy of Arthur Ingram^‡, Viscount Irwin [S], for knight of the shire, writing to him assuring him of his support as Irwin’s ‘character agrees so well with my principles, that I can never serve a fitter man to represent our county’. HP Commons, 1690–1715, ii. 718. Irwin won after extensive politicking with the local aristocracy and gentry, and was joined by Thomas Fairfax^‡, 5th Baron Fairfax [S]. Burlington himself came to only a quarter of the sittings of the Parliament of the first half of 1702, during which he was named to four committees on legislation. At the death of William III on 8 Mar. 1702, Burlington, along with the rest of the House, was appointed a manager for a conference to arrange for the accession of Anne and the summoning of a new Parliament. He took his duties at this point seriously, and on 26 Mar. apologized to his agents in Ireland for his neglect in attending to their letters, excusing himself by emphasizing his involvement in the press of public business since the death of the king. Chatsworth, Cork mss 35/2. Near the end of the session, in late May 1702, he was named to two drafting committees for addresses, one to the Commons and one to the queen, setting forth the House’s views on the bill to encourage privateers.

Burlington lost his place in the royal bedchamber at the death of William III, but he was in effect replaced there by his wife, Juliana, who was appointed one of the ladies of the queen’s bedchamber in May 1702, largely through the patronage of Sarah, countess (later duchess) of Marlborough. The duchess later reminisced, or claimed, that she did Burlington a great service in effecting this appointment, as Anne was, for some unstated reason, ‘angry’ with Burlington, ‘at which he was so much concerned that he writ a letter to [her] I think of four sides of paper’. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 163; Add. 61463, ff. 90–104. Whether or not the duchess’s account is true, the appointment of his wife to the bedchamber did not necessarily draw Burlington closer to the court interest, and in the Yorkshire county elections for Anne’s first Parliament he threw his weight behind the short-lived and unsuccessful candidacy of Thomas Watson Wentworth^‡, the favoured candidate of the Whigs. HP Commons, 1690–1715, ii. 718.

Burlington came to only a quarter of the meetings of the 1702–3 session in Anne’s first Parliament, where he was placed on a number of drafting committees in its first days. He was also present on 16 Jan. 1703 to vote in favour of the wrecking amendments to the Occasional Conformity bill. At another attempt to pass the bill in the following session of 1703–4, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, was certain that Burlington would again oppose it and recorded that he voted against the measure on 14 Dec. 1703 by proxy. Burlington was certainly absent for that session, for he had stopped attending the House entirely from 26 Feb. 1703, probably because of ill health, but the recipient of his proxy for this vote cannot be determined as the proxy register for the session is missing.

Burlington appears to have been sickly from an early age. Add. 75354, ff. 42–43, 70–73. From 1693, the letters of his brother Henry to their sister Mary, duchess of Queensberry, are full of news of Charles’s constant illnesses and his many visits to Bath to recover. Add. 75376, ff. 77v et seq. In July 1700 it was rumoured that he was dead of an apoplexy and a year later it was reported that ‘My Lord Burlington’s sickness has lasted long’. HMC Portland, iii. 623; Verney ms mic M636/51, C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney. By 1701 his health had declined seriously, reflected in part in his decreased attendance in the House from that time, while he sought cures for his ill health. In November 1701 he was able to tell his kinsman Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, in a letter otherwise concerned with their co-operation in the Yorkshire elections then underway, that his health was improving ever since he had moved to Chiswick, whose air he thought was better than the waters at Bath. W. Suss. RO, Petworth Archives 15, Burlington to Somerset, 16 Nov. 1701. He did make a brief recovery at that time, but on 8 Feb. 1704 it was reported that he was ‘so dangerously sick that his life is despaired of’. He died the following day ‘after a long indispostion’. Add. 70075, newsletters, 8 and 10 Feb. 1704.

As far back as June 1693 the patriarch of the family, the first earl of Burlington, had been frustrated by his sickly grandson Charles’s lack of ‘the knack of getting sons’. Add. 75376, ff. 77v–78. At his death Burlington left behind him four daughters and just one son and heir, a minor at ten years old. He also left behind him a mountain of debts, and rumour had it that in his final days ‘the sense of what he had done struck him so severely for the great wrong he had done his family, that he could not die in peace before he had obtained their pardon’.Eaton Hall, Grosvenor mss, F. Cholmondeley to Sir R. Grosvenor, 5 June 1705. His brief will of 4 Feb. 1704 put his estate in trust to pay for the settlements of his debts, with any residue left over to be used to provide for £500 to each of his four daughters. On 14 Mar. 1705 a bill which allowed his widow to sell part of the estate to pay off her late husband’s creditors received the royal assent. The heir, Richard Boyle, 3rd earl of Burlington, was, however, still able to inherit enough of the estate in England and Ireland to finance his grand architectural and cultural ambitions as ‘the architect earl’ and patron of eighteenth-century English Palladianism.