FOULKE, Francis (d. aft. 1688), of Camphire House, Co. Waterford.

The family of Francis Foulke (who spelled his name thus) was a cadet branch of the Fowkes of Gunston in Staffordshire.21Sig. SP28/70, f. 673: 26 Sept. 1650. His father, Walter Foulke, who was fifth son of John Fowke of Gunston, married into the Littletons of Staffordshire and migrated to Ireland before 1622, when he was acting as the 1st earl of Cork’s iron factor in his trading deals with Holland.22NLI, GO 169, p. 421; Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, ii. 52, 57, 66. Walter’s brother, Francis, was also involved in the iron trade, and by 1631 the earl had granted him the lease of the manor of Camphire, co. Waterford.23Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, iii. 102; v. 27. By the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641, Walter had apparently succeeded his brother as tenant of Camphire: when his son, Francis, was allowed to resume the lease in 1649, the rent was determined favourably ‘as his late deceased father held the same’.24NLI, MS 6254, unfol. Cork’s younger son, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*, born in 1621), later described Francis Foulke as a gentleman ‘always bred with me’, which may suggest that Foulke was attached to the Boyle household from an early age.25TSP vii. 597. The close connection between Foulke with the Boyles is also suggested by his inclusion as a beneficiary of Cork’s will, drawn up in 1642: the earl left him a musket from his armoury, ‘as poor token of my love’.26D. Townshend, The Life and Lttrs. of the Great Earl of Cork (1904), 502.

Francis Foulke’s first military position was as a captain of foot named in a parliamentary ordinance providing troops for the relief of Ireland, passed on 6 July 1642.27A. and O. Whether he took up an Irish command at this stage or not is uncertain; but by September 1646 he had come to the attention of his fellow Munsterman (and Boyle associate), Sir Hardress Waller*, who recommended Foulke, by then a major, as one of the field officers for the expeditionary force to be raised and sent to Ireland under the new parliamentary lord lieutenant, Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney*).28CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 512. Perhaps as a result of this, on 17 September 1646 Foulke was commissioned in the regiment of Col. Richard Townsend, as sergeant-major.29CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 515. The departure of Townsend’s regiment was delayed by the factional politics at Westminster, as Lisle jockeyed for position against Lord Inchiquin, the rival Protestant commander in Munster. The regiment was still at Bath in March 1647, and orders for its despatch were not finally sent until May 1647, after Lisle’s lieutenancy had ended.30CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 608; 1647-60, pp. 739-40, 747. Townsend’s force thus joined Lord Inchiquin’s army in Munster, and Foulke may have served at the sack of Cashel and the victory at Knocknanuss later in the same year. When Inchiquin joined the king in April 1648, Foulke probably joined him, as he is not mentioned among the ‘principal Independent officers’ arrested for opposing the break with Parliament.31Bodl. Carte 22, ff. 53, 69.

The success of Oliver Cromwell’s* invasion of Ireland in 1649 caused Foulke and his fellow Munster Protestants to re-consider their allegiances. After the sack of Wexford in October, Cromwell marched westwards towards Cork and Youghal, and used the influence of Lord Broghill to gain the coastal towns without bloodshed in November. Foulke played an important role in this.32Bodl. Carte 68, f. 150. His former lieutenant-colonel, Robert Phaier, contacted him in November, and asked him act as the means to gain the support of Colonel Townshend and other officers. A meeting, duly arranged at Tallow, was surprised by Inchiquin’s royalist troops, but Foulke managed to escape to the relative safety of the Boyle town of Youghal, and remained there until it yielded to Cromwell.33Council Bk. of Youghal ed. Caulfield, 566-7. By the summer of 1650, Foulke had become major in the foot regiment of Thomas Sadleir, which had formerly been commanded by Sir Arthur Culme.34SP28/70, f. 673; SP63/281, unfol. He served at the siege of Limerick in the autumn of that year, and by February 1651 had been promoted to lieutenant-colonel.35SP28/71, ff. 106-7; SP28/74, f. 551. He retained this position until August 1653, when his regiment was disbanded, and by this time he had been appointed governor of Dungarvan.36SP28/94, f. 451; SP28/96, ff. 115, 177; SP28/97, f. 53; Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 28 Feb. 1653.

During his spell in the Cromwellian army, Foulke was able to strengthen his local position in Munster. From 1649 he is recorded as renting the family’s Camphire estate from the 2nd earl of Cork for £30, and land at Okill for £10 per annum.37NLI, MS 6254, unfol. In the following decade, Cork’s rentals show that Foulke increased his holdings to include the tithes of Camphire and Okill, an estate at Castle Weyres, and tenements in the town of Dungarvan.38NLI, MSS 6255, 6257, 6258, unfol.; MS 6259, pp. 27, 36, 62; MS 6260, pp. 31, 41, 67. Foulke was also speculating at the expense of other Old Protestants (pre-1649 settlers) in the area. In 1653 Sir Percy Smith* warned his nephew, John Percivalle, against agreeing long leases, at low rents, with Foulke, ‘for let times fall as they will, you will prejudice yourself and not the tenant if otherwise you proceed’.39HMC Egmont, i. 519. In April 1654 Foulke was included in a plan to set out lands in co. Cork to compensate Old Protestant officers for their unpaid arrears.40Bodl. Firth c.5, f. 150v. By 1659, Foulke’s schemes had been relatively successful. He had acquired land at Newtown in co. Limerick, where he was visited by the earl of Cork, then en route for nearby Newcastle West; and in the same year Lord Broghill described Foulke as a ‘gentleman of £800 a year’.41Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 19 Oct. 1659; TSP vii. 597.

Other evidence shows that Foulke was more than a mere tenant of the Boyle family. In September 1653 the earl of Cork visited Foulke and his wife at Camphire; and in December 1654, Foulke carried letters from Cork to Broghill and Lady Ranelagh (wife of Arthur Jones*, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh).42Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 21 Sept. 1653, 16 Dec. 1654. In February 1656 Foulke dined with Cork at Lismore, and admired his new building schemes at the castle.43Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 8 Feb. 1656. The round of visits and compliments continued, but later in the decade Foulke also seems to have acted as an informal agent of the Boyle family. In April 1656 he joined Joshua Boyle as Cork’s commissioner in arbitrating with his cousin Henry Tynt for a debt of £1,000; in February 1657 Cork noted that he had paid out money, ‘Broghill having given me authority to receive and make use of such of his rents as were in the hands of Francis Foulke’.44Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 12 Apr. 1656, 1 Feb. 1657. Again, in October that year, Cork received Foulke’s accounts of rents received from a ‘Widow Coppinger’, and in June 1658 Foulke was reimbursed for a gratuity given on Cork’s behalf to the groom of his nephew, Lord Digby of Geashill.45NLI, MS 6256, unfol. Foulke’s involvement in these private transactions – often between members of the family – indicates the intimacy of his relationship with the Boyles.

The Boyle connection was the driving force behind Foulke’s political career. The uncertainty which followed the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 made the elections to the 1659 Parliament of particular importance. In the three co. Cork constituencies the Boyles expected to choose the candidates, and selected Foulke for the joint-constituency of Cork and Youghal; but their supremacy was challenged by Vincent Gookin*, who put forward Dr William Petty* as a rival candidate. Broghill rebuffed Gookin’s suggestion that Foulke should stand down in Petty’s favour. As he told the earl of Cork on 14 January, this request ‘I flatly denied, having appeared openly for Francis Foulke and having [had] an assurance from both those places that they would elect him’. The burgesses, he asserted, ‘by their having chosen Frank Foulke, at my desire, they have thereby chosen me, and [that] in the Parliament I would embrace their concerns as much as if I had been particularly elected by them’.46Chatsworth, CM/30, no. 65. In the days that followed, Broghill and his brother drummed up support for Foulke in the two boroughs, to the irritation of Gookin, who complained of their activities to Henry Cromwell.47T.C. Barnard, ‘Lord Broghill, Vincent Gookin and the Cork election of 1659’, EHR lxxxviii. 361-4. Gookin was to be disappointed: Foulke was duly chosen, in a contest ‘without six negatives’, on 20 January 1659.48TSP, vii. 597; Barnard, ‘Cork election’, 358-9.

Although Foulke made no recorded contribution to business at Westminster, it is likely that he took his seat, since in early March 1659 the earl of Cork wrote to him in England.49Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 5 Mar. 1659. He had returned to Ireland by July, and in the tense months of the summer and autumn of 1659 he remained in close contact with the Boyles, a situation which may have encouraged his active involvement in the Old Protestant coup in Ireland at the end of the year.50Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 7 July 1659, 19 Oct. 1659. On 15 December 1659, Parliament’s commander in chief Edmund Ludlowe II* recorded that ‘Lieutenant Colonel Foulke, with the assistance of the cavalier party, had seized upon Youghal’.51Ludlow, Mems. ii. 189. In the following February Foulke signed a declaration of Broghill and the Munster officers against the English army and in favour of the return of the secluded Members to Westminster.52TSP vii. 820.

As with the Boyles, Foulke was able to use his public opposition to the army and its supporters to smooth his own path through the politics of the Restoration. Knighted in Ireland on 19 March 1661, he subscribed to a loyal address to the king in the following month, and was included in a general pardon shortly afterwards.53Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 233; CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 314, 318. By this time Foulke had also regained a military command, being listed as colonel of the regiment commanded by the earl of Cork’s nephew, the 2nd earl of Barrymore.54CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 474. He was elected as Member for Clonmel in the Irish Parliament of 1661.55CJI, i. 593. Foulke’s connection to the Boyles strengthened in the following decades. In 1669, when Broghill (now 1st earl of Orrery) faced impeachment in England, his ‘justification’ included a commendation by Foulke and others as ‘worthy gentlemen and officers in the king’s Irish army’.56CSP Ire. 1669-70, p. 39. By 1670 Foulke had acquired lands in the barony of Orrery and Kilmore in north co. Cork, an area dominated by the earl.57Down Survey website. In the decade that followed, Foulke acted on behalf of the countess in the settlement of various lands (including those of her brother-in-law, the scientist Robert Boyle), and even advised her on staff appointments, urging her husband not to employ a Catholic butler, for ‘though he is a serviceable man, yet the papists are so wicked they would be glad to have my lord out of the way upon any terms’.58Cal. of Orrery Papers ed. E. MacLysaght (Dublin, 1941), 84, 87-8, 89, 93-4, 97-8, 105-6, 111, 112-3, 117, 139, 147. Foulke acted as overseer of Orrery’s will in 1679, and continued to serve the dowager countess as late as 1688.59Cal. Orrery Papers, 223, 303, 358. The date of Foulke’s death is unknown. His eldest son, also Francis, died in 1701.60NLI, GO 169, p. 421.