The Geraldine ambitions of the first earl of Cork

Abstract

Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, was a most unlikely antiquarian. A self-made man and a ruthless politician, by the early 1630s he had become the richest landowner in Munster and was entertaining ambitions to rule Ireland as Lord deputy. Yet in the same period the ‘great earl’ spent much time and effort sifting the archives for genealogical information about one of the most ancient noble houses of Ireland — the Fitzgeralds, earls of Kildare and Desmond. In 1627 Cork paid for repairs to the ‘pedigree box’ he kept in his study at Youghal, and it was soon put to good use. In 1632 Cork ‘and … other his judicious friends by him imployed herein’ spent time searching ‘several ancient records and sundry other deeds and muniments’ in order to produce a genealogy of the senior branch of the Fitzgerald clan, the earls of Kildare. And shortly afterwards Cork prepared a ‘fair pedigree of the house and descent of the ancient and noble family of the Fitzgeralds earls of Desmond, drawn up by myself, and friends’ searches of ancient records’, which he later sent to Thomas Russell, whose own ‘Relation of the Fitzgeralds’, published in 1638, was dedicated to and probably commissioned by, the earl. Why should a blunt businessman and wily politician such as the earl of Cork spend so much time and effort researching the genealogies of the defunct dynasties of medieval Ireland?