The books — Naas, Co. Kildare
The Boyles of Naas
The books
The Boyles of Naas trilogy
Volume One
By Richard Boyle
Volume 2
By Richard Boyle
Volume 3
By Richard Boyle
Three volumes covering the Boyle family across generations, the town of Naas from the Moate to its medieval streets, and the academic and archival record.
[TITLES, COVERS AND PUBLICATION DETAILS TO BE CONFIRMED] Cover photographs will replace the placeholders on the left.
Art, faith & culture
The Institute
Research and travel across the Italian Renaissance, sacred art, and the architecture of the places behind them — Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Florence and Treviso among them.
Written from first-hand visits rather than compiled from reference works.
The author
Richard Boyle
Richard Boyle was born in Kent in 1566, the second son of a Herefordshire-born father and a mother from Canterbury. He studied at Cambridge alongside his elder brother but left without a degree, going on to gain legal and clerical experience in London before crossing to Ireland in 1588 to seek his fortune — the move that would set the family's Irish story in motion.
In Ireland, Boyle worked his way up through minor administrative posts before purchasing Sir Walter Raleigh's estates across Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary in 1602, laying the foundation of the vast landholdings that would make his fortune. He continued to rise both socially and politically over the following decades — becoming Earl of Cork in 1620 and Lord Treasurer of Ireland in 1631 — and by the time of his death in 1643 he was regarded as one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in 17th-century Ireland.