(1707 - 62), patron and author, s. and h. of 4th E. of Orrery [I]; Ch.Ch. Oxf. 1723; suc. fa 1731 as 5th E.; Univ.Coll. Oxf., MA 1743; FRS 1746; suc. cos. 1753 as 5th E. of Cork [I]; m. 1 1728 Ldy. Henrietta Hamilton (d. 1732), dau. of 1st E. of Orkney [S], 2 1738 Margaret Hamilton; author of Remarks on Swift [1751].
1754 - 5 [dep. England 20 Sep. 1754] Turin (12 - 16 Oct. 1754), Parma, Bologna (21 Oct.), Florence (23 Oct. - 7 Nov.), Pisa (7 Nov.), Florence (29 Nov. 1754 - Sep. 1755) [England by Nov.]
Driven from England by a 'scheme of economy' ('though they don't know well how to put [it] in practice', observed Horace Walpole), the Earl and Countess of Cork spent a year in Italy with their young daughter Lady Lucy Boyle (1744 - 92, m. 1765 4th Viscount Torrington).1 Although they intended to winter in Pisa, a lack of supplies and the 'dullness of the place' made them return to Florence, where Horace Mann judged them 'extreme good people'.1 By 1 May 1755 they had taken a country house at Marignolle outside Florence, and Lady Cork and her daughter attended some balls in Florence.2 On 16 September Cork presented a copy of Dr Johnson's Dictionary to the Accademia della Crusca.3 Before leaving he asked Mann to affirm that he had had no contact with the Jacobites.4
Lord Cork's principal occupation was the compilation of a history of Tuscany which dwelt upon the crimes of the Medici.5 It was never published, but parts were incorporated in his letters to William Duncombe which were printed in 1773 (Cork Letters). They contain both local observations and grand reflections. The Florentine cicisbeo, for example, who, should his charge enter into a 'particular discourse with another person ... retires into a corner of the room with the lap-dog, or sits in the window teaching the macaw to speak Italian' (x: 29 Nov. 1754), or the Grand Duke's Gallery in Florence where 'strangers are admitted to walk in the gallery all the morning, and to converse with marble gods and petrified emperors as freely as they please. The rooms within the gallery are kept under lock and key; no person is permitted to remain alone in any one of them' (viii: 30 Oct. 1754). Lord Corke recommended travel, 'not to see fashions, but states, not to taste different wines, but different governments; not to compare laces and velvets, but laws and politics'; then the traveller could 'return home perfectly convinced, that England is possessed of more freedom, justice and happiness than any nation under heaven' (xix: 5 May 1755).
1. Wal.Corr., 20:451, 457. 2. Fleming, Adam, 130, 346 - 7. 3. J.B. Hill ed., Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1:298. 4. Wal. Corr., 20:499. 5. See R. Marshall, Italy in English Literature, 40 - 4.