Boyle, Murrough (1648–1718), 1st Viscount Blessington and MP, was born in Cork, son of Michael Boyle (qv), later Church of Ireland archbishop of Armagh (1678–1702) and lord chancellor (1665–85), and Mary Boyle (née O'Brien), daughter of Dermot O'Brien, 5th Baron Inchiquin, and sister of Murrough O'Brien (qv), 1st earl of Inchiquin. He matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) (1662) and was awarded a Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree(1682). He was MP for Kilmallock in Charles II's Irish parliament (1665–6), was created Baron Boyle and Viscount Blessington (1673) and appointed to the Irish privy council (1675), and was governor of Limerick and constable of Limerick castle (1679–82). Blessington's political prominence did not come till the 1690s, and was then brief. He was a leading figure in the political faction-fighting in the Irish parliaments of the 1690s. From 1695 he associated with the allies of the then whig lord deputy, Henry Capel (qv). His brother-in-law, Lord Mountrath (qv), was also prominent in this faction. In the 1695 parliamentary session, he was involved in proposing two anti-catholic measures, one for suppressing monasteries and convents and banishing bishops and regular clergy, and another ‘for securing the honours and estates of protestants’, aimed at ensuring that catholic landowners could not disinherit protestant heirs. Both proposals formed the basis of future penal laws. Blessington's political alignments made him a key figure in the intrigues that followed Capel's death (May 1696). To limit the power of his arch-rival, the lord chancellor Sir Charles Porter (qv), the ailing Capel had appointed Blessington and William Wolseley, the master of the ordnance, as lords justices. This was looked on as of doubtful legality, and the majority of the judges and king's counsel gave a legal opinion that their commission to govern expired on Capel's death. A divided privy council, two days after Capel's death, elected Porter as lord justice by 12 votes to 5, provoking a hysterical protest to England by Wolseley, who regarded Porter as sympathetic to Jacobitism. Blessington remained active in Irish parliamentary politics, but never again served as a lord justice or regained such prominence. He was a commissioner of the great seal in 1697 during one of Lord Chancellor John Methuen's (qv) absences from the country. He was also the author of a tragedy, ‘The lost princess’, described as ‘truly contemptible’ by the drama critic Baker. He died 26 April 1718 at Islandbridge, Co. Dublin, and was buried at St Patrick's cathedral. He married twice: first, Mary (d. 1668), daughter of Archbishop John Parker (qv) of Dublin; second (1672) Anne Coote, daughter of the 2nd earl of Mountrath.
Sources
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, De Ros MS D638; Journals of the house of lords of the kingdom of Ireland (8 vols, 1779–1800); Calendar of state papers, domestic series, 1696; Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (eds), The dictionary of national biography (66 vols, 1885–1901); G. E. C[ockayne], The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom (13 vols, 1910–59)