Earl Of Cork Research Articles

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

Book Review: <i>The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics and Place</i> by Ann-Maria Walsh

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

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

Ann-Maria Walsh. The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics and Place. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020. Pp. 194. €50.00 (cloth).

Ann-Maria Walsh. The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics and Place. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020. Pp. 194. €50.00 (cloth).

The daughters of the first earl of Cork: writing family, faith, politics and place. By Ann-Maria Walsh. Pp 178. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2020. €45 hardback.

The daughters of the first earl of Cork: writing family, faith, politics and place. By Ann-Maria Walsh. Pp 178. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2020. €45 hardback.

The Colonial World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, ed. David Edwards and Colin Rynne

The Colonial World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, ed. David Edwards and Colin Rynne

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

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...

Book review: The Colonial World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork

Book review: The Colonial World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork

Molana Abbey: from medieval monastery to Tudor Manor to Georgian folly

Molana Abbey, a small Augustinian monastery near Youghal, Co. Cork, became the property of Sir Walter Raleigh as part of the Elizabethan colonization of Munster. It passed from him to his scientific advisor, Thomas Harriot, and later via Richard Boyle, Great Earl of Cork, into the Smyth family, who held it until the end of the 20th century. After initial observations of the ruins, a three-stage research project of architectural survey, mortar analysis, and archaeological testing took place from 2012 to 2015. This paper presents those findings, which point to post-medieval alterations and decay as well as systematic changes made to create a medieval folly for the grand Georgian mansion, Ballynatray House, on the banks of the Blackwater River.

Elite Women in Ascendancy Ireland, 1690–1745: Imitation and Innovation by Rachel Wilson

Reviewed by: Elite Women in Ascendancy Ireland, 1690–1745: Imitation and Innovation by Rachel Wilson Ingrid Tague Rachel Wilson. Elite Women in Ascendancy Ireland, 1690–1745: Imitation and Innovation. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell, 2015. Pp. xiii + 208. $99. In 1707, Juliana, dowager countess of Burlington and guardian of her son's estate, was asked by an Irish curate to support repairs to a church in Tallow, County Waterford. The church's roof had been partially blown off in a storm, and the curate turned to her because of her family's long ties to the area; her son's great-grandfather, the Earl of Cork, had worshiped there. Juliana grudgingly agreed to cover some of the costs but not enough to pay for both the demolition and rebuilding that were needed. Yet only a year later she spent a considerable sum of money to repair and beautify a church on her son's English estate. These two decisions nicely exemplify the peculiarities of both the Irish elite and Ms. Wilson's book, which seeks to emphasize the distinguishing characteristics of Irish elite women while consistently demonstrating the ways in which those women identified with their English counterparts. Juliana's role as a central figure in this book also points to an even greater oddity, since she was herself an Englishwoman who never set foot in Ireland. The lives of elite British women during the long eighteenth century have by now been extensively studied. Ms. Wilson seeks to identify areas of comparison and contrast with Irish women's counterparts in England and Scotland, who have received considerably more attention from historians. Focusing on the decades following the Revolution, when Ireland's economy was suffering, its political system was in flux, and Catholics were systematically deprived of economic and political power, Ms. Wilson argues that this period saw the establishment of a unique role for elite Irish women. The book moves outward from family and the home to sociability, politics, and finally "institutional philanthropy." Ms. Wilson relies for her evidence primarily on five families for whom extensive documentation survives. Appendices provide family trees for each, which helps the reader keep track of the complex networks and multiple titles involved; brief summaries of each family's history also appear in the introduction. These families spanned a broad range in terms of both rank and fortune; Ms. Wilson acknowledges that she conceives of elite status "quite liberally," relying on an unspecified "baseline in terms of income and status." This decision is understandable: intermarriage, political engagement, and sociability all enabled a broad elite to mingle and participate in many of the same activities. More problematic is the equally liberal conception of what it meant to be Irish. Many of the women who are the subjects of this study spent relatively little time in Ireland; one, as we have noted, "never visited at all." While Ms. Wilson argues that Irish women's experiences were distinct from their counterparts in England and Scotland, this case is hard to make when she relies so heavily on women who spent much of their lives outside Ireland. Details throughout the book, however, support her view. She notes the strong tendency toward endogamous marriage, observing that "even the most cosmopolitan families were deceptively provincial." Irish families married into other Irish families, with a relatively small pool of potential mates who shared similar rank and [End Page 179] fortune. Similarly, she addresses the impact of the post-Revolutionary years on elite sociability in Ireland, with the emergence of a "new Ascendancy elite, … blending together those with rank and the newly moneyed commoners who had risen to prominence in the wake of the Glorious Revolution." The absence of regular parliaments and a royal court further distinguished Irish from English sociability, especially as it intersected with politics. Ms. Wilson notes that while the same key families participated in court politics over years in England, "in Ireland, the ground was constantly shifting beneath women's feet, as its political leaders changed, arrived and left. This prevented the acquisition and implementation of the kind of influence wielded at the English court by female favourites or quickly nullified it." Yet the political roles played by...

English Poetry in Cromwellian Ireland

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)David a Prophet, yet in Verse excels:'Twas ECCLESIASTES made the Canticles.1The Cromwellian invasion of Ireland has not been famed for the value of its poetry. And yet, like 'David a Prophet', some of the soldiers, civil servants and divines that have been identified with and resisted the Cromwellian invasion and administration of Ireland did produce a discernable body of religiously orientated verse. The best overview of the writing produced during this period has been provided in Andrew Carpenter's groundbreaking anthology, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (2003), but its selection of a dozen or so examples of material from the 1650s could represent only a small fraction of the decade's poetic output, and, necessarily, could not offer a broader context for its production and reception. The recent edition of Faithful Teate's Ter Tria (1658), edited by Angelina Lynch (2007), reminded scholars that material produced in this period did make significant demands upon its readers and usefully highlighted its complexity, its value, and its relation to the wider English tradition. Nevertheless, the thematic characteristics of the poetry of Cromwellian Ireland can be distinguished from that of earlier periods - most of all in its engagement with the tumult of its contexts, the 'strange alteration of affaires' in the aftermath of the regicide and the English Parliament's campaign to subjugate Ireland.2 This article will outline a context for this body of writing within the changing mentalities of Cromwellian Ireland, and will offer a new model for the interpretation of such principal works as Ter Tria, alongside a reading of other texts, which emerged out of even as they shaped the experiences of invasion and administration in Cromwellian Ireland.IOf course, poetry in English had been written in Ireland long before the Cromwellian invasion: John Derricke and Edmund Spenser are just two of its better-known exponents. But this English-language poetry was not uniquely Protestant in its orientation - Richard Stanihurst, uncle of the Renaissance polymath and Protestant polemicist James Ussher, combined his interest in writing metaphysical lyrics with the literary defence of the Catholic faith at the end of the sixteenth century. While it crossed confessional boundaries, this English-language poetry rarely moved beyond its coterie circulation. But a native literary culture did begin to appear. In the 1630s, Dublin felt like 'a city under the distant but perceptible influence of English-language Renaissance culture ... a city which thought of itself as an intellectual centre'.3 Its new cultural confidence emerged with its first printing of poetry, though it would be another generation and several political revolutions later before those publications appeared in anything other than short runs. The slow development of the publication of poetry can be partly explained by the difficulty of securing access to printing presses. When the teaching staff of Trinity College combined their efforts to produce Musarum Lachrymae (1630), a collection of verse elegising Catherine Fenton, the second wife of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, they benefited from access to the printing facilities of the official stationers' office in Dublin, but most poetry written by Protestants in Ireland continued to be published in London.4 By the 1650s, responding to the new need for the rapid and widespread dissemination of news, printing presses had been established in several of the major Irish towns. But poets' access to publication did not markedly improve: these presses were strictly controlled, and were most often used for official business.5But, throughout the 1650s, and on both sides of the confessional division, English verse published in Ireland did make occasional appearances, and in all manner of literary contexts. At the beginning of the decade, Frances Cook, wife of the regicide judge John Cook, succeeded in finding a publisher for her verse in Cork, though her work, like that of her husband, was later reprinted in London. …

Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, and the Gift of Tears

The sermon Anthony Walker expanded into the life of Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, eulogizes 'the most Illustrious Pattern of Sincere Piety, and Solid Goodness this Age hath produced'.1 His effusive praise of 'our noble Mary' is not simply the conventional hyperbole of seventeenth-century commemorations. Walker had known the countess for thirty years, first as the household chaplain of her father-in-law and then as a spiritual advisor and close friend. Both he and Anne Woodrooffe, another valued friend of Rich, attest to the pious life she lived as the wife and dowager widow of the fourth Earl of Warwick, Charles Rich; each also stresses the fervent weeping so dominant in the 1300 manuscript folios of the diary she began in 1666 and continued writing until her death in April 1678. Walker recalls that while she prayed 'sighs and groans would eccho from her Closet at good distance' and that on other occasions tears would flow from her eyes 'more fluid than the springs of Pisgah'.2 While she appeared to others dry-eyed in 'tear-moving circumstances' that affected her personally, Walker and Woodrooffe testify that the countess was determined to shed tears only for her sins.3 The entries in the diary, however, reveal that sins were not the only cause of the copious tears that flowed often twice, even three times a day. Although linked with piety, the tears are emblematic of her worldly and spiritual sorrows. Where other contemporaries noted in their daily lives divine deliverances from adversity,4 in the spiritual ledger that is her diary, tears are not simply a measure of affliction; they are ultimately an accounting of God's beneficence and a testimony of her faith. Hers is a distinctive yet paradoxically traditional religious sensibility that merits appreciation in the contexts not only of her life but also of seventeenth-century teachings about repentance and godly sorrow.Mary Rich's life was not a reclusive one of simple piety. The daughter of the first Earl of Cork, Richard Boyle, and the mother of two children, both of whom predeceased her, she came from an English family of some prominence in Ireland and married into a more established family in Essex.5 For the first sixteen years of their marriage in 1641, the Riches often lived in the household of her father-in-law, Robert Rich, second Earl of Warwick, who welcomed a number of religious ministers to his Essex estate in Leighs and supported the parliamentarian position in the civil war. Both he and Mary Rich's brother Roger Boyle, Baron Broghill, served the interregnum government, though their relationships with Oliver Cromwell did not later compromise her position in the Restoration. Rich knew Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York, quite well; entertained Anne's father, Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde; and dined at Clarendon House with him as well as at Whitehall with the Lord Chamberlain, Edward Montagu. She also appeared at court where she was on familiar terms with Queen Katherine.6 Closer bonds existed throughout Rich's adult life with her sister Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, and her brother Robert Boyle. Lady Ranelagh was among the foremost women intellectuals, and Robert was an eminent natural philosopher who dedicated two of his works to his older sister Mary and may have influenced her writing of the numerous occasional meditations that survive in a manuscript quarto.7 The appearance of her name in the prefaces of other books and the entries in her diary further indicate her association in Essex and in London especially with a number of religious figures, including prelates in the Established Church, latitudinarian divines, and nonconformist ministers. The books that Rich notes in the diary, the sermons that she summarizes, and the company of clergy and religious she mentions create some sense of a serious, devout woman who found the time for long periods of morning and evening mediation amidst her many family, domestic, and social responsibilities. An inseparable part of her religious life are the tears sanctioned by well-established tradition. …

The Geraldine ambitions of the first earl of Cork

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?

Scribleriana Transferred: MSS &amp; Rare Books, 1999–2001

98 representative demons include Spenser, Pope, Conrad, and the World Bank. Unlike the founding myths of most other cultures, the naissance of any Western European power repeats the founding of Rome by Aeneas. Agriculture enters this pattern as a justification of what is civilized, although, as Mr. Waswo points out, civilization is, in effect, warfare. The ancient portrayal of civilization connecting agriculture and cities means thatthere is no place for ‘‘hunters, gatherers, and nomads’’—of course not, because they are the barbarians that ‘‘we’’ once were. This leads Western civilization to create itself in history and literature at the expense of others. Windsor-Forest is thus a celebration of ‘‘a national myth.’’ More startling, the poem ‘‘offers a virtual blueprint for both the theme and the outcome of Clarissa’’because Pope introduces the classical trope of Apollo chasing Daphne and the attendant idea that death is the consequence of possession. Mr. Waswo’s sweeping narrative is about the power of the ‘‘culture-bringer’’ to invade other people’s land and oblige ‘‘them’’ to do with it what ‘‘we’’ want them to do, not only at key historical moments but in the fabric of everyday history . Although he avoids merely repeating a succession of identical instances,he cannotavoid theproblemofhisambitious scope: likeeveryoneelse,Richardsonand Pope seem to have little to say except what is in the service of the imperial, colonizing , self-interested, destructive, ethnocidal , triumphalist theme that is Western civilization. The theme is important, and Mr. Waswo really shows its versatile omnipresence, but still it is not the only one. SCRIBLERIANA TRANSFERRED: MSS & RARE BOOKS, 1999–2001 James E. May MANUSCRIPTS On 11 Nov. 1999 Bloomsbury Book Auction (BBA) sold a MS account of ‘‘Fees for the Funerall of the Hon.ble Joseph Addison Esq in [Westminster’s] King Henry the 7th Chappell’’ in two hands signed ‘‘John Battely,’’ receiver of Westminster Abbey 1723–1729, dated 22 June 1719, 1 1/2 pp. folio (sold to C. L. Edwards for £420). The document records that the Countess of Warwick paid £54, 8 s., ‘‘by ye hands of Mr. Tho. Beckington,’’ for the funeral’s ‘‘full’’ bill. Also offered was a one-page ALS of Addison to Lord Warwick dated 20 January 1709, wishing ‘‘many happy Birth-days’’ and enclosing a ‘‘silver pen,’’ and another from Addison to Warwick of 3 pp., dated Dublin Castle, 19 May 1709, with news from Dublin and the remark ‘‘we are here very much pleas’d with a paper call’d the Tatler’’(Steele’s first issue had appeared 12 April). Addison’s copy of a New Testament in Greek (L, 1764), annotated throughout in Addison ’s hand and, interleaved, with an MS essay, sold at Waddington’s, 8 July 1999. Still available from Edwards’s 17 is Addison’s ALS (autograph letter signed) to the Earlof Warwick ([Dublin]20 Jan. 1709),1p.,publishedinGraham’sLettersofAddison. John Wilson’s Cat. 88 (Nov. 2000) listed a deposition by Johanna Riches relating to 99 a smuggling suspect witnessed by Addison as Commissioner of Appeals, signed ‘‘Feb. 17. 1707/8 兩 Jurat. coram me/Jos. Addison.’’ The Bolingbroke’s ALS to an unnamed gentleman, dated 7 June 1725 and touching on Mons. de St. Victor’s ‘‘Horse given him by my Lord Godolphin,’’ was sold from Edwards’s 18 to a collector inclined to donate it to Pembroke College, Cambridge. Christie’s on 3 June 1998 offered a presentation volume by John Boyle, fifth Earl of Cork and Orrery, with two very rare editions of Orrery’s verses on the death of Edmund Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham: Verses by a young Nobleman, on the Death of His Grace the Duke of B—, privately printed [London, 1736] for the Duchess of Buckingham , 8vo, Foxon B354 citing only 1 copy, and A Poem to the Memory of Edmund Sheffield (D: G. Faulkner, 1741), 8vo, Foxon B355 citing 1. This interleaved volume has a five-page autograph preface by Orrery addressed to his daughter Lucy Boyle and conveying the poem’s publication history, noting that it preceded the folio edition (as Foxon suspected). Drawing on that preface or other MS notations, Christie’s remarks that the second edition in the volume ‘‘was printed from a copy...

Providence and posterity: a letter from Lord Mountnorris to his daughter, 1642

The political career of Sir Francis Annesley, Lord Mountnorris, is well known to historians. A first-generation settler, he held plantation lands in Ulster and Munster; as vice-treasurer of Ireland he became a rival of the Boyle faction in the Dublin administration in the early 1630s; and after a spectacular fall from grace in 1635 he became one of Lord Deputy Wentworth’s bitterest enemies and spoke against him at his trial in 1641. Yet, unlike his rival, the first earl of Cork, there is little information about Mountnorris’s personal attitudes, his religious views or his family life, other than what can be gleaned from official sources, and from the (mainly hostile) comments of contemporaries. The discovery, therefore, of a cache of family papers in the Public Record Office at Kew provides a unique opportunity to flesh out the bones of his political career. It also allows a comparison between the Annesleys and the Boyles, whose extensive archive has moulded our view of the New English in general. Perhaps the most interesting of these documents is Mountnorris’s letter to his daughter, Beatrice Zouche, dated 5 February 1641[/2], in which he outlines how he expects her to order her day with prayer and meditation and domestic concerns appropriate for a godly matron. This letter reveals a great deal about Mountnorris’s own religious beliefs and his attitudes to his children, and provides some important clues about the mindset of the New English in Ireland.

Review: Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift. By John Boyle, Fifth Earl of Cork and Orrery

1Yale Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift. By John Boyle, Fifth Earl of Cork and Orrery João Fróes 462 Newark University of Delaware Press London Associatd University Presses 2000 £45

Robert Boyle (1627–91): a suitable case for treatment?

It is hard to think of a better subject for the exercise of retrospective analysis with which we are here concerned than Robert Boyle, the leading British scientist of his day, and arguably the most significant before Newton. A prolific and influential author, Boyle was lionized in his time both for his scientific achievement and for his piety and philanthropy. Of late, he has been the subject of attention from a variety of viewpoints which, as we shall see, raises the issue of how he is best understood. In particular, I want to argue that, for all his eminence, there are complications about Boyle's personality that cry out for scrutiny, and it is on the implications of these that I will dwell in the latter stages of my paper.Boyle was born into one of the most privileged aristocratic families in England. His father, Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, was Lord High Treasurer of Ireland before the Civil War, and Robert, the youngest – and, as he himself claimed, favourite – son, was brought up in an opulent, privileged setting, surrounded by servants and with an entrée at the royal court. His elder brothers were suave and active figures, only too ready to be involved in the fighting of the Civil War – in which one, Viscount Kinalmeaky, was killed, though two others, Lords Dungarvan and Broghill, survived to go on to high state office under both Cromwell and Charles II. This background undoubtedly had a significant influence on Boyle, giving him an aristocratic demeanour to which his contemporaries almost automatically deferred. It also made him familiar with the mindless social milieu of landed society, in which it was all too easy (in Boyle's own words) to ‘squander away a whole afternoone in tatling of this Ladys Face &amp; tother Lady's Clothes; of this Lords being Drunke &amp; that Lord's Clap; in telling how this Gentleman's horse outrun that other's Mare’.

A Social History of Truth by Steven Shapin

238 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE nine: the body divine (from biblical text to early modern saint); the body natural (from Greek treatises to Harvey); the body and destiny (from Aristotle through Freud and Masters andJohnson to a poem by W. D. Snodgrass); mind and body (from Hippocratic to Freudian, including the account of “Anna O”); disease and purity (from lep­ rosy to the germ theory); the healer (from Hippocratic Oath to Sara Lawrence Lightfoot); medical experimentation (from Jenner to Tuskegee); institutionalization and medicalization (from Pinel to Foucault); and pain, suffering and death (from preanesthetic mas­ tectomy to AIDS). Each reading is introduced with a paragraph es­ tablishing its background. There are a few minor errors in these introductions (Augustine as the Bishop of “Hatto” rather than Hippo, Marie “Zakrezewska” rather than Zakrzewska, for example), but I noted no substantial ones. Many fine black-and-white illustra­ tions (mainly from the iconographical collections of the Wellcome Institute) give the book further impact. One might ask whether this selection of readings shows the inter­ actions between medicine and culture in quite the way the authors’ introduction sets out; one might even ask if there is not a problem in essentializing the undefined categories of medicine and culture in the first place (perhaps one could ask for the plural forms, at least). The use of “civilization” in the title also harkens back to the earlier 20th century, with connotations of culture somewhat differ­ ent than the ethnographic ones specified in the introduction. Other reviewers might have equally churlish comments. But they would be beside the point. While choosing readings for an anthology7 inevita­ bly involves matters of taste and familiarity, Rothman, Marcus, and Kiceluk have chosen from truly varied and dramatic writings. The selections are almost all intriguing and important. It should make this volume not only a most welcome aid for the classroom but a book to be kept handy for moments of reflection. In that regard, it will indeed help to foster ideas about the varied meanings associated with the body and medicine. HaroldJ. Cook Dr. Cook is chair of the Department ofthe History ofMedicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches the history of medicine and writes on early modern European medicine and society. A Social History of Truth. By Steven Shapin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. xxxi +483; illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $29.95 (cloth). Most historians treat the notion of “truth” rather loosely; some philosophers treat “truth” very seriously. It is Steve Shapin’s signal achievement to engage historians, philosophers, and sociologists TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 239 with his account of the collective nature of truth-telling and knowl­ edge-making. Shapin’s aim is not conventionally “interdisciplinary,” but rather to engage a set ofphilosophical and sociological problems through detailed historical analysis. The case at hand is the gentle­ manly origins of English experimental philosophy in the 17th cen­ tury. The characters in the Royal Society’s circle range in social standing from Robert Boyle, a younger son of the vastly wealthy first earl of Cork, through Robert Hooke, the celebrated microscopist who began as a paid laboratory assistant, and down to the anony­ mous technicians responsible for building and operating the new experimental machines, including Boyle’s famous air pump. Shap­ in’s sharply etched and richly drawn collective portrait of a scientific community wrestling with how accurate knowledge about nature can be known is a rewarding read—but not a light one. The argument of this ambitious book can be stated concisely. Con­ stituting a body of reliable knowledge requires identifying trustwor­ thy agents. Working solutions to problems of credibility and trust were found in the practices of “gentlemanly culture.” These prac­ tices were the foundation of the new empirical science of 17th-cen­ tury England. Gentlemen, unlike courtiers or merchants or yeomen, were deemed truthful owing to their material independence and moral integrity. By possessing freedom of action, thanks to annual incomes of £280 or more, gentlemen literally had the freedom to tell the truth. (By contrast, persons in dependent states, including women and servants, were deemed unreliable due to their depen­ dent status.) Yet, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet...

The earl of Cork and the fall of the earl of Strafford, 1638–41

ABSTRACTThis article questions the assumption that the earl of Cork was at the forefront of the attack on the earl of Strafford in England. It is argued that, before the opening of the Long Parliament, Cork had much to gain by securing Strafford's favour because of his continuing need to secure his Irish estates and his increasing social ambitions within the English court. The earl's decision to stand as witness against the lord lieutenant in 1641 was made with great reluctance, and the trial itself was fraught with unexpected dangers for Cork as well as Strafford. Throughout the crisis of 1638–41, the earl of Cork was motivated by political and financial concerns, not by a single-minded hatred of the earl of Strafford.

The New New Irish History - Natives and Newcomers: The Makings of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641. Edited by Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986. - The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643. By Nicholas Canny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. - Reform and Revival:

The New New Irish History - Natives and Newcomers: The Makings of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641. Edited by Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986. - The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643. By Nicholas Canny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. - Reform and Revival: English Government in Ireland, 1470–1534. By Steven G. Ellis. Studies in History, no. 47. London: Royal Historical Society, 1986. - Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470–1603. By Steven G. Ellis. London and New York: Longman, 1985. - Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600–1641. By Raymond Gillespie. Cork: Cork University Press for the Irish Committee of Historical Sciences, 1985. - The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland, 1583–1641. By Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. - Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism. By Hans S. Pawlisch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. - The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670. By Philip S. Robinson. Dublin: Gill &amp; MacMillan, 1984. - Volume 27 Issue 1

Review: The Upstart Earl. A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643

Review: The Upstart Earl. A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643