Corisco Island, the largest of the group, is some 3 m. long by 1¾ m. in breadth and has an area of about 5½ sq. m. The surface of the island is very diversified. On a miniature scale it possesses mountains and valleys, rivers, lakes, forests and swamps, grassland and bushland, moorland and parkland. The forests supply ebony and logwood for export. The natives are a Bantu-Negro tribe called Benga. There are among them many converts to Roman Catholicism and a few Protestants. Corisco and the other islands named are Spanish possessions and are governed as dependencies of Fernando Po.
See Mary H. Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, ch. xvii. (London, 1897); E. L. Perea, "Guinea española: La isla de Corisco," in _Revista de geog. colon. y mercantil_ (Madrid, 1906).
CORK, RICHARD BOYLE, 1ST EARL OF (1566-1643), Irish statesman, second son of Roger Boyle of Faversham in Kent, a descendant of an ancient Herefordshire family, and of Joan, daughter of Robert Naylor of Canterbury, was born at Canterbury on the 3rd of October 1566, and was educated at the King's school and at Bennet (Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1583. He afterwards studied law at the Middle Temple and became clerk to Sir Richard Manwood, chief baron of the exchequer; but finding his position offered little opportunity for advancement he determined to make a new start in Ireland. He landed in Dublin on the 23rd of June 1588, as he relates himself, with £27, 3s. in money, a gold bracelet worth £10, and a diamond ring, besides some fine wearing apparel. He began to make his fortune almost immediately. In 1590 he obtained the appointment of deputy escheator to John Crofton, the escheator-general, and in 1595 he married Joan, daughter and co-heiress of William Appsley of Limerick, who died in 1599, having brought him an estate of £500 a year.
Meanwhile he had been the object of the attacks of Sir Henry Wallop and others, incited, according to his own account, by envy at his success and increasing prosperity, and was apprehended on various charges of fraud in his office, being more than once thrown into prison. He was on the point of leaving for England to justify himself to the queen, when the rebellion in Munster in October 1598 again reduced him to poverty and obliged him to return to London to his chambers at the Temple. He was, however, almost immediately taken by Essex into his service, when Sir Henry Wallop again renewed his prosecution, with the result that Boyle was summoned before the star chamber. His enemies appear to have failed in substantiating their accusations, and in the course of the inquiry, at which he had secured the presence of the queen herself, he was able to expose several instances of malversation on the part of his opponent, who was dismissed in consequence from his office of treasurer, while Boyle himself, who had favourably impressed the queen, was declared by her as "a man fit to be employed by ourselves" and was at once made clerk of the council of Munster. He brought to Elizabeth the news of the victory near Kingsale in December 1601, and in October 1602 was again sent over by Sir George Carew, the president of Munster, on Irish affairs; and on this occasion, at the instance of Carew, he bought for £1000 the whole of Sir Walter Raleigh's lands in Cork, Waterford and Tipperary, consisting of 12,000 acres with immense capabilities of development. This offered a splendid opportunity for the exercise of his genius for business and administration. Manufactures were established, the breeding of cattle and fish introduced, mines opened, colonists from England encouraged to come over, the natural resources of the land developed, bridges, harbours and roads constructed, and towns settled, order being maintained by 13 castles garrisoned by retainers.