Boyle, CHARLES, fourth Earl of Orrery, was born in 1676, succeeded to the title in 1703, in 1721 was imprisoned in the Tower as a Jacobite, and died in 1731. In the Battle of the Books (1695-98), the great controversy on the Letters of Phalaris, he was Atterbury's stalking-horse against Bentley (q.v.); and in his honour the name 'Orrery' was given to the scientific apparatus of that name by its inventor, Graham, to whom he had been kind. Of his poems, even Sir Richard Blackmore said :
After his foolish rhymes, both friends and foes
Conclude they know who did not write his prose.