Borlace, Master of the Ordnance, and one of the Lords-Justices criticized so severely by Clarendon) was born in Dublin, and is stated to have been educated at Trinity College. He took his degree of medicine at Leyden in 1650, and settled in Chester, where he practised with success until his death in 1682. Amongst other well known works, he published, in 1680, The History of the Execrable Irish Rebellion of 1641, a work that tended much to perpetuate the exaggerations concerning the War of 1641-'52. The opinion that he plagiarized from Clarendon is endorsed by Ware. 80 339
Boulter, Hugh, Archbishop of Armagh, was born in London in 1671. Educated at Oxford, he became chaplain to George I., Bishop of Bristol in 1719, and Archbishop of Armagh in 1724. His position was more political than ecclesiastical, and he was a strong upholder of the English interest. Writing to Lord Townsend, he says: "But whatever my post is here, the only thing that can make it agreeable to me, who would have been very well content with a less station in my own country, is if I may be enabled to serve His Majesty and my country here, which it will be impossible for me to do according to my wishes if the English interest be not thoroughly supported from the other side." With these sentiments he had but a sore time of it, between Swift, Wood's halfpence, and a rather fractious Commons. The plan of Government purchasing off opposition did not meet his views; and the quantities of goods smuggled from the Isle of Man, and consequent loss of revenue, were a great concern to him—"The only remedy we talk of here for this evil is, if His Majesty were to buy the island of the Earl of Derby." During the nineteen years of his. primacy, the real weight of the government policy with regard to Ireland rested on him. He died in London, September 1742, aged about 71, leaving upwards of £30,000 for the purchase of glebes for the Irish clergy, and the augmentation and improvement of small benefices. His efforts to found schools for the conversion of Catholics did not come to much. "I can assure you," he wrote to the Bishop of London, "the Papists are here so numerous that it highly concerns us in point of interest, as well as out of concern for the salvation of those poor creatures, who are our fellow-subjects, to try all possible means to bring them and theirs over to the knowledge of the true religion; and one of the most likely methods we can think of is, if possible, instructing and converting the young generation; for instead of converting those that are adult, we are daily losing several of our meaner people, who go off to Popery. … The ignorance and obstinacy of the adult Papists is such that there is not much hope of converting them." 196 212 339
Bourke, Miles, sat as Viscount Mayo in the Parliament of 1634, and when the War of 1641-'52 commenced, was appointed governor of Mayo; however he soon went over to the side of the Confederates, and joined the Catholic Church. He did his best to lessen the acerbities of the war, and is said to have retired from the Council in 1644. He died in 1649; and three years later his son and successor in the title was tried by the Commonwealth Commissioners at Galway, for complicity in the rebellion, condemned and shot by their order, and his estates (50,000 acres) were forfeited; these latter were afterwards restored to the family. 196 216
Bourke, Richard, the husband of Grace O'Malley, was in Queen Elizabeth's reign the head of the Bourkes of Galway; he sided with the English in their expeditions, and held his lands under renewed gift from the Crown. In 1576 he is thus described by Sir Henry Sidney, who knighted him: "I found him very sensible; though wanting in the English tongue, yet understanding the Latin; a lover of quiet and civility." He died in 1605. 196
Bourke, Richard Southwell, Earl of Mayo, was born in Dublin, 21st February 1822. The Bourkes of the County of Kildare, whom he represented, were connected by ties of family and property with the county since the War of 1641-'52, when their ancestor, having held a captaincy of horse under the Marquis of Ormond, settled at Kill. The Earl was educated at Trinity College, taking his degree of B.A. in 1844: LL.D. was subsequently conferred upon him. He travelled in Russia in 1845, and published his experiences in a work entitled St. Petersburg and Moscow. In 1849, on the death of his uncle, and his father becoming Earl of Mayo, the honorary title of Lord Naas devolved upon himself. During more than twenty years he sat in Parliament—for Kildare from 1847 to 1852; Coleraine, 1852 to 1857; and Cockermouth, 1857 to 1867—when, upon the death of his father on 12th August, he became Earl of Mayo. He was an earnest and consistent Conservative, and as such held the post of Chief-Secretary for Ireland in each of the three Derby administrations—March to December 1852, February 1858 to June 1859, June 1866 to 1868. In 1868 he was appointed Governor-General of India, and Knight of St. Patrick. During the Fenian disturbances he had displayed signal ability and statesmanship; nevertheless his suita-
