Charles Boyle Viscount Dungarvan 3rd Baron Clifford Second Wife

Charting the Boyle Lineage

Genealogical research into the Boyle family of the mid-to-late seventeenth century gets messy fast. Titles cross-pollinate, secondary creations complicate things, and printed pedigree charts often omit entire branches because they were considered less important. When someone searches for Charles Boyle Viscount Dungarvan 3rd Baron Clifford Second Wife, they are usually hitting a wall of conflicting sources. I spent a afternoon wrestling with this exact problem a few years ago while reconstructing a branch of the Burlington line for a client who wanted verified descent. Here is what actually happened and how to nail down the right answer. Charles Boyle (1639-1694) held multiple titles across his lifetime. He was the second son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Burlington, and inherited the style Viscount Dungarvan by courtesy before becoming the 2nd Earl of Burlington on his father's death in 1698. He was also created Baron Clifford in his own right in 1661. The confusion with "3rd Baron Clifford" arises because the original Clifford barony (created in 1340) passed through the Stewarts and then back to the Boyles via marriage and descent, creating overlapping succession lines that many genealogical databases flatten into a single confusing entry. He was married twice. His first wife was Anne Clifford, daughter of Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland, whom he married in 1655. She died in 1670. His second wife was Elizabeth Savage, daughter of Richard Savage, 2nd Earl of Rivers, whom he married in 1673.

Charles Boyle Viscount Dungarvan 3rd Baron Clifford Second Wife

The second wife was Elizabeth Savage. She was born around 1655 and died in 1712. She married Charles Boyle on 9 May 1673 at St Mary le Strand in London. The marriage produced several children, including Charles Boyle who succeeded as the 3rd Earl of Burlington, and Richard Boyle who became the 1st Earl of Burlington of the second creation. Elizabeth is occasionally listed under variants like "Lady Elizabeth Savage" or confused with other Elizabeth Savages in the same family tree because the Earls of Rivers had multiple daughters with overlapping naming patterns. The most common error is conflating the Boyle Clifford barony with the older Clifford lineage. The Boyle family held the barony by creation in 1661, not by seniority from the medieval Clifford barons. Many online family trees that pull from Wikipedia infoboxes will list Charles as "3rd Baron Clifford" simply because he was the third holder of that specific title creation. But when you dig into the actual patent rolls and the Burke peerage records, it becomes clear that the numbering depends entirely on which creation of the barony you are tracking. Another frequent mistake involves the second wife's identity. Elizabeth Savage is sometimes recorded as the wife of Daniel Boyle instead, because Daniel (the 3rd Earl) also had a wife named Frances, and the names cycle in confusing ways through the generations. I ran into this directly when a DNA match claimed descent from Charles Boyle through a second-wife line that didn't actually exist. The person had matched against a branch descended from Elizabeth Savage's daughter Mary, who married into the Fermor family, but the paper trail the match had built attached the wrong mother to the right grandmother. It took about forty-five minutes of cross-referencing parish registers, wills, and the Harleian Society's publications to untangle it.

How to Verify This Yourself

Start with the Complete Peerage by Glenbervie, specifically the Burlington and Clifford entries. That source is still the gold standard for untangling these overlapping titles. Then move to the Harleian Society's Visitation of London records, which include the Boyle pedigree with marriage dates and offspring listed in the order they appear in the original heraldic visitation. The National Archives at Kew hold the relevant marriage licenses under the Faculty Office jurisdiction for the 1673 union. For parish-level confirmation, the St Mary le Strand registers are digitized and searchable. The marriage entry for Charles Boyle and Elizabeth Savage appears in the marry volume for 1673, though you will need to know the correct spelling variant. It appears as "Boyle" in some transcriptions and "Boyce" in others, which is a known issue with Restoration-era handwriting in the London archdeaconry records. The 1673 marriage settlement is also available through the Cambridge University Library's special collections. It lists Elizabeth's dowry and the portions settled on their future children. This document is useful because it names the children who were alive at the time of the marriage, which helps you distinguish between children from the first marriage and the second.

What the Records Don't Tell You

Elizabeth Savage's early life before the marriage is not well documented beyond her baptism record. She was the daughter of Richard Savage, 2nd Earl of Rivers, and his wife Lady Margaret Herbert. That places her in a prominent political family, but her personal circumstances during the 1670s are thin. Charles Boyle was in his thirties and already had children from his first marriage. Elizabeth was likely in her late teens. The social dynamics of that arrangement are not recorded in any surviving source I have found, and that silence is typical for women of this period in aristocratic genealogy. Her will, dated 1711 and proved in 1712, survives at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. It is surprisingly detailed for a noblewoman of that era. She left legacies to her children, her stepchildren from Charles's first marriage, and several servants. The will does not mention any dispute over inheritance, which is worth noting because succession conflicts between children of first and second marriages were common in this period and often generated paperwork that survived.

A Practical Note on Using Online Databases

If you are using Ancestry or Findmypast for this research, filter by the title "Viscount Dungarvan" rather than "Earl of Burlington" when you first search. Charles Boyle is listed under both titles depending on the year of the record. The marriage record for Elizabeth Savage often only appears under the Dungarvan style because the couple married before Charles inherited the earldom. If you search under "Earl of Burlington" you may miss it entirely. Also be aware that some third-party genealogists have entered Elizabeth Savage as the wife of Daniel Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, rather than Charles Boyle, 2nd Earl. This is incorrect but widespread enough that it appears on multiple family trees. Always verify against a primary source before accepting any connection. The primary record evidence is unambiguous once you locate it, but secondary compilations introduce this error repeatedly.

Summary of Key Dates and Relationships

Charles Boyle: born 1639, died 1694. 2nd Earl of Burlington, 2nd Baron Clifford by the 1661 creation. Viscount Dungarvan by courtesy. First wife: Anne Clifford. Married 1655. Died 1670. Their children included Richard Boyle and Mary Boyle among others. Second wife: Elizabeth Savage. Married 9 May 1673. Died 1712. Their children included Charles Boyle (3rd Earl of Burlington), Daniel Boyle, and Richard Boyle (later 1st Earl of Burlington of the second creation).

The genealogical record for this family is sufficiently documented that further doubts usually stem from database errors rather than missing sources. The Complete Peerage entry for Burlington remains the most reliable single reference, and the C1 probate records at the National Archives provide the supplementary detail that printed genealogies often skip.