John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork
Anglo-Irish writer (1707–1762)
John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and 5th Earl of Orrery, FRS (13 January 1707 – 16 November 1762) was an Anglo-Irish writer and a friend of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson.
Boyle was the only son of Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery, and his wife Lady Elizabeth Cecil (1687–1708), daughter of John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter. He was born at Westminster and attended Christ Church, Oxford. In 1743, he was one of several leading Tories who communicated with the French government through Francis Sempill in order to elicit French support for an invasion to restore the Stuart line. He published a translation of the letters of Pliny the Younger in 1751, 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 1773.
Family
He was married twice, first to Henrietta, daughter of George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney and his wife Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Orkney. His eldest son, Charles Boyle, Viscount Dungarvan, predeceased him and he was succeeded as Earl of Cork by his younger son Hamilton, who died in 1764 and passed the earldom to John's next son, Edmund. Elizabeth (b.1731), 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. His second wife was Margaret Hamilton, daughter of John Hamilton of Caledon and Lucy Dopping.
The public source identifies “John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork” as anglo-Irish writer (1707–1762). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Boyle and Earl.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1032335. VIAF identifies the subject as 808154329447026970009. The Library of Congress control number is n84213449. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1707, 1762, 1687 and 1708.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.