Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/226

 Laboratory. In 1892 he was made a K.C.B. and in 1893 he was promoted to be permanent secretary of the board of trade. That post he held till his sudden death at his London residence, 11 Granville Place, on 19 May 1901. While he was head of the board of trade the present commercial intelligence branch first came into existence; he was chairman of the inter-departmental committee which was appointed to consider the subject.

As an official Boyle was a very hard worker, coming to his office at abnormally early hours. He was clear and practical and a great believer in method, as is shown by his little books, 'Hints on the Conduct of Business, Public and Private' (1900) and 'Method and Organisation in Business' (1901). He made a very good chairman of a committee. His Irish descent may account for his versatility. He was not only a strong and capable official but a scholar with much aptitude for writing in prose and verse, a man of society with a great gift for after-dinner speaking, and a sportsman. He kept up his interest in cricket in later life, advocating cricket reform in 'The Times' under the pseudonym of 'An Old Blue.' Fishing was his favourite sport in later life, and when at the board of trade he worked hard for the improvement of the salmon fishing laws and was largely responsible for a royal commission on the subject. He edited in 1901 'Mary Boyle, her Book,' autobiographical sketches by an aunt. He married in 1876 Lady Muriel Campbell, daughter of the second earl of Cawdor, but left no children. He was buried at Hampton, Middlesex.

 BOYLE, EDWARD, first baronet (1848–1909), legal writer, born in London on 6 Sept. 1848, was elder son of Edward O'Boyle, civil engineer, of London, by his wife Eliza, daughter of James Gurney of Culloden, Norfolk. He was educated privately for the army, but finally became a surveyor, and was elected a fellow of the Surveyors' Institution in 1878. After some twenty years' practice of that profession, he forsook it for the bar, to which he was called at the Inner Temple on 17 Nov. 1887. He rapidly acquired a lucrative practice as an expert in rating and compensation cases, utilising the experience gained in his former profession, and took silk in 1898. Interesting himself in politics, he contested as a conservative Hastings in 1900 and Rye in 1903 unsuccessfully. He was created a baronet on 14 Dec. 1904. In the arbitration as to the purchase by the Straits Settlements government of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in 1905 Boyle acted as the arbitrator nominated by the company under the authority of a special ordinance (Straits Settlements Ordinance vii. of 1905, s. ii.). At the general election in Jan. 1906 he was returned M.P. for Taunton. Ill-health compelled his retirement from parliament in 1909. He travelled widely and was a F.R.G.S. He died at his London residence, 63 Queen's Gate, on 19 March 1909. Portraits by the Hon. John Collier and in the robes of a K.C. by Herbert Olivier are in the possession of his son, who presented a replica of the latter picture to the Surveyors' Institution.

Boyle married on 18 March 1874 Constance Jane, younger daughter of William Knight, J.P., of Kensington Park Gardens, senior partner of Knight & Sons, soap manufacturers, of Silvertown, E., and had issue a son, Edward (b. 12 June 1878), who succeeded him in the baronetcy, and a daughter.

Boyle was joint author of three important legal treatises: 1. ‘Principles of Rating,’ with G. Humphreys Davies, 1900; 2nd edit. 1905. 2. ‘Railway and Canal Traffic,’ with Thomas Waghorn (d. 1 Dec. 1911), 3 vols. 1901. 3. ‘The Law and Practice of Compensation,’ with Thomas Waghorn, 1903.

 BOYLE, GEORGE DAVID (1828–1901), dean of Salisbury, born at Edinburgh, on 17 May 1828, was eldest child of David Boyle, Lord Boyle [q. v.], Scottish judge, by his second wife, Camilla Catherine, eldest daughter of David Smythe of Methven, Lord Methven. As 'a small, shy child' he saw Sir Walter Scott in his father's study (Recollections, p. 2). Educated first at Edinburgh Academy and by a private tutor, he went in 1843 to Charterhouse. In June 1846 he matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, went into residence in April 1847, and graduated B.A. in 1851, M.A. in 1853. In London, as at Edinburgh, family connections brought him, while a schoolboy, the acquaintance of persons of literary distinction and he developed a precocious interest in the Oxford movement; but the influence of John Campbell Shairp [q. v.], whom he met first in 1838, and who became a lifelong 