in the north wall, carved and richly adorned with trefoil compartments; and over it is the inscription,

Hic Facet

Thomas

Fleming

双

It would be unpardonable to omit noticing the house of Sir Walter Raleigh adjoining the churchyard, and at present the residence of Sir Christopher Musgrave. It is long and low, the exterior plain and heavy, resembling the common English manor-house of his time. In the interior, those rooms which we saw were completely lined with small oaken pannels, and had large wooden chimney pieces, embellished with very beautiful carved work; nor should it be forgotten that potatoes were first introduced into Ireland by Raleigh, who, it is reported, brought them from Virginia, and planted them in his own garden at Youghall. However his military exploits deserve execration in the history of Ireland, the benefit conferred on the country by the introduction of this nutritive and prolific root, which at present constitutes almost the entire food of its peasantry, ought to redeem his memory and consecrate his name. A wellknown and not improbable anecdote is related respecting the person to whom the care of the first crop was entrusted: supposing that the apples, as they are called, which grow on the stalks, were the part to be used, he tasted them, but finding the flavour insipid and rather nauseous, threw them away; nor was it until he dug the ground to root out this apparently worthless plant that its value was discovered.

Amongst the distinguished names connected with the history of Youghall, the most eminent is that of Richard Boyle, or, as he is commonly styled, the great Earl of Cork, who landed in Ireland a needy and speculative adventurer, and in a short time acquired honours, titles, and wealth; by what means, affords a fair subject for inquiry,

and one which most writers have been willing to record on his own assertion, as Lord Cork has left a memoir of his success in life, written by himself, in a tone of humility that ill accords with his known arrogant and haughty demeanour, when he had no purpose to serve by a contrary behaviour.

Richard Boyle had been brought up to the law; but perceiving "that his employment would not raise a fortune," he set out for Ireland as the scene of revolutionary confusion, and landed at Dublin the 23d of June, 1583, all his wealth then being" 271. 3s. in money, and two tokens which his mother had given him, viz. a diamond ring and a bracelet of gold, worth about 107.; a taffety doublet cut with and upon taffety; a pair of black velvet breeches laced; a new Milan fustian suit laced and cut upon taffety; two cloaks and competent linen, and necessaries, with his rapier and dagger."

If the 500l. a year, obtained by marriage, be excepted, how Lord Cork acquired in a few years estates sufficient to awaken the attention of the principal officers of the Irish government, does not appear; but a representation of the number of castles and abbeys of which he had possessed himself with such limited means, was made to Queen Elizabeth, by Sir Henry Wallop, treasurer at war; Sir Robert Gardiner, chief justice of the King's Bench; Sir Robert Dillon, chief justice of the Common Pleas; and Sir Richard Bingham, chief commissioner of Connaught. Nor is it likely that these men would unite to ruin an industrious individual without sufficient cause; and it does not seem improbable that Mr. Boyle was secretly supplied with money from Spain, and employed as an agent by that government, about this time meditating the invasion of the country, to secure the principal places of strength in the south of Ireland. Be the matter as it may, Mr. Boyle immediately fled into England, where he was arrested, and confined for a short time a close prisoner; but having rendered some services to the Earl of Essex, then Lord Lieutenant of

X

Ireland, he was liberated through his influence with Elizabeth, and appointed to the office of clerk of the council of Munster, by a political arrangement resigned for the purpose, the 31st March, 1600, by Ludovic Briskett, an English author of some celebrity, and the successor of the poet Spencer in that situation.

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As clerk of the council he accompanied the Lord President of Munster in his various efforts to reduce the province to submission, and was sent over to London by the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, who assisted the President at the siege of Kinsale, with the news of the victory obtained at that place over the Irish, under the Earl of Tyrone, and the invading Spaniards, on the 24th December, 1601, " in which employment," says Lord Cork, " I made a speedy expedition to the court, for I left my lord president at Shandon Castle near Cork on Monday morning, about two of the clock, and the next day, being Tuesday, I delivered my pacquet, and supped with Sir Robert Cecil, being then principal secretary, at his house in the Strand, who after supper held me in discourse, till two of the clock in the morning, and by seven that morning, called upon me to attend him to the court, when he presented me to her Majesty in her bed-chamber," &c. This very passage, in Lord Cork's account of his fortunes, is sufficient to throw a doubt upon the other statements made by him, as the performance of a journey from Cork to London, in the space of time mentioned (thirty-four hours), must then have been a matter of impossibility, since it is now barely practicable, under the most favourable combination of circumstances; yet so miraculous a journey is dwelt upon by most of his biographers with unhesitating admiration. Mr. Budgell, in his Lives of the Boyles, adds, indeed, as a comment on this extraordinary piece of travelling, that he "should have made some difficulty of believing the fact, if he had not seen it in his (Lord Cork's) own memoirs, which are evidently wrote without the least affectation, and with a great regard to truth."

Having kissed the Queen's hand, Mr. Boyle returned to Ireland,

where he purchased from Sir Walter Raleigh the forfeited estates of Lord Desmond, granted to him by the crown; Sir Walter, then anxious to dispose of these barren tracts, with his ambitious mind fixed upon his American expedition, sold them to Mr. Boyle for the trifling sum of 1500l., which purchase, as it is called, was concluded on the 7th December, 1602. The transaction, however, seems to have something mysterious about it, as Lord Cork continued afterwards, from time to time, to supply Raleigh with various sums of money, money, without without any apparent return; and it is obvious from Lord Cork's general conduct, that he read character and understood the value of money too well, to bestow it, without an object, on a daring and unprincipled adventurer like Raleigh.

These estates, which Lord Cork lost no time in getting confirmed to him by the crown, included the manors of Ballynatra, Strancallie, Lysfinneen, Mogeyley, Sheane, Lismore; the new college of the Virgin Mary at Youghall, the Commendatorship of Lismore, the Abbey of Molana, and the town of Tallow, containing above 12,000 acres, in the counties of Cork and Waterford. Such indeed appears to have been the general fear of Lord Cork's grasping abilities, that a by-law was actually made by the corporation of Cork, forbidding any transaction with him in the disposal or exchange of lands, fearing that he should outwit them in the dealing.

An extract from the letter of a contemporary, Sir Christopher Wandesford, lord chief justice of Ireland, addressed to the Earl of Cumberland on the subject of his daughter the Lady Elizabeth Clifford's marriage with Lord Dungarvon, afterwards Lord Burlington, and eldest son of Lord Cork, supports the opinion I am inclined from various evidences to entertain of" the great earl."

"I pass by the remoteness of the place, cutting off a great part of that comfort indulgent parents promise to themselves, by frequent enjoying and visiting their children and grandchildren. But that a branch sprung from honorable and famous ancestors should be

grafted into a newly planted and barely rooted stocke of honor, that a considerable part of ancyent possessions acquired and preserved by noble atchevements, shold be suffred to devolve and be mingled with a hastily gotten and suspitiously kept fortune, I confess, in my judgment, requires very good conditionns to followe after, such as might probabely render a more comfortable life for the future to your swete daughter here then in another place. But, my lord, the comforts and blessings of marradg are not so plentifully sowen upon this land that wee may promiss she shall assuredly gather them, for it passeth under observation here, that from thoss nine daughters of his now living and bestowed in marradg, the comforte and fatherhoode that old age promiss to themselves from their children, is not reaped by him, and how much the quiet and composed condition of your daughter's swete and gentile affectionns may be perturbed and disordered by a harsh and incivill conversation, or what disanimation and distemper the discovery and prosecution of my Lord of Corke, by the quicke and impartiall sight of my Lord Deputy, may bring with it, I most humbly submit to your lordship's more serious consyderation; for if the day of retribution never come when the rest of his estate shal be questioned, yet it is not to be doubted that there will be a tyme given for the complaints of the church: for I am very confydent, since the suppression of abbeys, no one man in either kingdome hath so violently, so frequently layde prophane hands, hands of power, upon the church and her possessions, (even almost to demolition where he hath come) as this bold Earle of Corke. Of that 6000l. per annum estated nowe upon his sonn, I take full a third part to be spiritual deduction. Lismore, his principall house and seate, with lands worth near 20007. per annum, the possessions of the bishop of Lismore, reserving a free rent of 201. per annum for the bishop, torne from that sea by the poure of Sir Walter Rawley. Yughall (nowe to be the jointure-house of your swete daughter), a colledge consisting of a warden and eight personnes, all presentative and endowed, in value 8007. per annum, de