The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics and Place by Ann-Maria Walsh

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics and Place by Ann-Maria Walsh Mary O’Dowd The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics and Place, by Ann-Maria Walsh (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020, 194 p., hardcover, €50) Collections of family papers are rare for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ireland. If records do survive, they usually consist of documents that successive generations considered legally or financially important. Private archives abound with property deeds, wills, marriage settlements, and tenancy agreements. Personal correspondence between members of the family or with those outside the extended kin group survive in a more sporadic fashion. The extensive archive of the family of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, is, therefore, exceptional. As Ann-Maria Walsh documents in her book on the correspondence of the women in Boyle’s family, the archive provides a detailed record of the lives of one of the most prominent families in early modern Ireland. While the financially savvy earl kept a meticulous record of his property and commercial transactions, he also preserved his correspondence with his children from their early years through to adulthood. The majority of Cork’s papers are deposited in the archive of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. The letters of the first earl’s daughters are, however, scattered throughout this large collection of documents, a fact that discouraged other scholars from searching for them. Undaunted by the task, Walsh trawled through the Chatsworth archive to identify the women’s letters. She also visited many other archival institutions in England and in Ireland to locate additional letters and relevant documentation. The result is a unique record of writing by a group of seventeenth-century Irish women. A central value of Walsh’s book is the bibliography in which she lists the individual letters she has identified and utilized in her analysis. Richard Boyle had fifteen children with his second wife, Catherine Fenton. Twelve of the children survived into adulthood (seven daughters and five sons). As Walsh notes, Boyle ensured that all of his children (girls as well as boys) were taught to read and write. This was partly for religious reasons: reading the Bible [End Page 155] was at the core of the children’s Protestant formation. Yet there was also a wider dimension to the girls’ education than a narrow focus on religious texts. They were encouraged by their father to read contemporary literature; taught how to speak (if not write) in French; and trained in the art of letter writing. Throughout the Boyle sisters’ adult lives, letter writing formed an important part of their daily routine. As Walsh notes, it was one of their “every day responsibilities.” Hence, too, the survival of such a rich archive of letters. As a literary scholar, Walsh opted to consider the letters thematically, an approach that also facilitated her critique of individual letters that illuminate certain themes. She focuses on five themes: the women’s relationship with place and identity, their life stages as women, their experience of the war that dominated their lives in the 1640s, their Protestant piety, and their attempts to establish a legacy for future generations of their families. The letters regularly refer to the movement of the sisters and their families to other parts of Ireland or across the Irish Sea to stay in the homes their father or husbands had established in England. Walsh suggests that the constant crossing from Ireland to England meant that the Boyle women did not develop any sense of national consciousness but rather focused on local loyalties to the place where they lived. Their strongest and longest loyalty was, however, to their membership in the Boyle kin group. Despite their marriages and physical separation, the sisters maintained throughout their lives a strong connection with each other, with their brothers and sisters-in-law, and with their father. Cork clearly encouraged, if not on occasion bribed, his children to keep him informed of their activities. As Nicholas Canny has documented, Cork carefully planned the marriages of all his children from an early age. His daughters Katherine and Dorothy were sent to live with their intended in-laws when they...