John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork

Who was John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork?

John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and 5th Earl of Orrery, FRS was a writer and a friend of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson.

The only son of Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery, and his wife Lady Elizabeth Cecil, daughter of John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter. He was born at Westminster and attended Christ Church, Oxford. He published a translation of the letters of Pliny the Younger in 1751, and Remarks on the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift in the same year, and the Memoirs of Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth. His Letters from Italy was published in 1774 by J. Duncombe.

He was married twice, and succeeded as Earl of Cork by his son Hamilton, who died in 1764 and passed the earldom to John's next son, Edmund. Elizabeth, one of his daughters by his first wife, married Sir Thomas Worsley, 6th Baronet, and one of their children was Sir Richard Worsley, 7th Baronet.