This paper deals with the obscure adventures of a minor official and petty landowner of unremarkable birth and little influence. The details of these adventures, which have for so long been forgotten, and which were once so assiduously concealed, may seem hardly worth the labour of investigation. And yet many statesmen of the seventeenth century attempted such an investigation, including Wentworth himself. Indeed it is no overstatement to say that this examination was a major pre-occupation of the great deputy in the first two years of his appointment.

By Wentworth’s time, Richard Boyle, the minor official in question, had become earl of Cork and lord treasurer of Ireland. He had been one of the lords justices who ruled Ireland before Wentworth’s arrival and had come close to achieving the deputyship itself. He was also the leader of the planter party and enjoyed a rent-roll of £20,000 a year to give reality to his authority. In short he towered over his rivals and enjoyed an influence, founded on both position and wealth, which permeated every part of Irish society.

From 1700 to 1767 it was customary for the lord lieutenant of Ireland to reside in the country only during the period when the Irish parliament was actually in session. Before the amendment of Poynings’ law in 1782 the parliamentary session had lasted approximately six to eight months in every second year. On its prorogation the viceroy had returned to Great Britain for the intervening eighteen months, placing the government of Ireland in the hands of three prominent Irish politicians known as the lords justices. For some years before 1767 the British government had been considering the appointment of a permanently resident lord lieutenant in order to instil stability into the Irish political administration and to remove the necessity for the appointment of Irish politicians as lords justices.

In 1767 the Pitt-Grafton administration appointed George, Viscount Townshend, lord lieutenant of Ireland. On his arrival the new viceroy found that the government of the kingdom was in the hands of the great borough proprietors, many of whom were connected with the influential whig families in Great Britain. These Irish politicians were accustomed to carry through, or undertake, the king’s business in parliament in return for a generous share of administrative patronage, which they used to increase their political power and family prestige. This patronage was mainly connected with the control of the revenue board of which John Ponsonby, speaker of the Irish house of commons, brother of the earl of Bessborough and closely connected with the duke of Devonshire, was the first commissioner.