Robert Boyle

“ Robert Boyle speaks of his mother’s “free and noble spirit”—which, he adds, “had a handsome mansion to reside in”—and of her “kindness and sweet carriage to her own.” [16] The hopeful children came quickly. Roger, the first, born at Youghal in 1606, was sent at seven years old to England, at first to his uncle John, then Dr. John Boyle, a prebendary of Lichfield, and a year later to his mother’s relatives, the Brownes, of Sayes Court, Deptford. There was an excellent day-school at Deptford, to which Roger Boyle was sent ”

“ The baby Peggie was brought from England with her nurse and maid; and sometime in 1631 the two youngest boys, Francis and Robert, were brought home; and “my children,” their little black satin doublets, and “Mownsier,” their French tutor, began to find a place in the Earl’s diary. It was then, too, that the Earl began to make those settlements, the first of many, in various counties, on “Robyn”, and that a son of one of the Earl’s own old servants was engaged “to attend Robert Boyle.” The minute philosopher, at five years old, had his own valet. ”

“ Burlington—Orrery—Shannon. Robert Boyle, in Oxford, was, of all the great Earl’s sons surviving, to remain “Mr. Boyle”—a virtuoso and an “Honourable Person.” He could have been a peer, he could have been a bishop, he could have been Provost of Eton. It is said he repeatedly refused a peerage. He certainly, not long after the Restoration, declined to take Orders with a view to a Bishopric. “He was treated with great civility and respect,” says Birch, “by the King as well as by the Earl of Southampton, Lord High Treasurer, and the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor of England.” ”

“ There could have been no Rebellion in Ireland, said Cromwell, if every county had contained an Earl of Cork.
Other members of the Boyle family were back in Ireland. The eldest brother, Dungarvan, now Earl of Cork, the good-natured head of the family, and his no less good-natured Countess were living at Lismore or in Dublin. Frank and “black Betty,” as [172] Robert Boyle had dubbed the little sister-in-law, were living near Castle Lyons; and there also was Lady Barrymore, whose “wild boy,” so lately Milton’s pupil in the Barbican, was now a very young married man. ”

“ However pleasant the visit to Moore Park may have been, it was soon over. Early in August Robert Boyle was staying with his sister Mary at the Earl of Warwick’s house of Leeze, in Essex, and there finishing his treatise on “Seraphick Love.” It purported to be written “by one young gentleman to another”—to that Lindamor, in fact, the “learned youth both well-born and well-bred,” who makes the fourth of the little quartet in the Reflections. The manuscript was handed, “almost sheet by sheet,” as it was written, to the enthusiastic Mary ”

“ Robert Boyle, the son of an Earl, and with all moneyed appliances to help him, was one of the early promoters and founders of the Royal Society I spoke of; a noticeable man every way in that epoch of the Ethereges and the Buckinghams and the Gwynnes—devoting his fortune to worthy works; estimable in private life; dignified and serene; tall in person and spare—wearing, like every other well-born Londoner, the curled, long-bottomed wig of France, and making sentences in exposition of his thought which were longer and stiffer than his wigs. ”

“ Francis and Mary were quite young children in the nursery; and now Robert, the fourteenth baby, as soon as he “was able without danger to support the incommodities of a remove,” was to be carried away from Lismore in the arms of his “Country Nurse.” [18] The Earl, so Robert Boyle says, had a “perfect aversion to the habit of bringing up children so nice and tenderly that a hot sun or [17] a good shower of rain as much endangers them as if they were made of butter or of sugar.” Lady Cork’s opinions do not seem to have been asked ”

“ Robert, he was “an Eale”, tall for his age, and big proportionably. They rose betimes, loved to ride abroad, and always came home with “a very good stomacke.” And as Marcombes assured the Earl that they went regularly to church, and in private also “sarved God very religiously”, it may be supposed that the months of “tedious perplexity”, of which Robert Boyle speaks in his Philaretus and of [101] which Marcombes and Frank knew nothing, were drawing to a close. There came a day, indeed, when Robyn no longer excused himself from receiving the Sacrament by reason of his “yonge age.” ”

“ Was this the heroine of Boyle’s love story—the Hermione whose “cold usage” sent him to write his Seraphick Love at Leeze?—the woman whose views on a Marriage State found their way into his Martyrdom of Theodora and of Didymus? It will probably never be known. Whoever the lady, whatever the reason, the affair seems to have been, in modern parlance, “off” before the end of 1648. And yet, a whole year later, in December 1649, Robert Boyle was in London again, scorching his wings at the flame. ”

“ On reaching London, Robert Boyle resided for some time with his sister, Lady Ranelagh, and was thus prevented from entering the Royalist Army. Later on he returned for a short time to France; visited Cambridge in December, 1645, and then took up his residence at Stalbridge till May, 1650, where he commenced the study of chemistry and natural philosophy.
It was in October, 1646, that Boyle first made mention of the "invisible college," which afterwards developed into the Royal Society. ”

“ And when “C. S.” was actually back in London and the Restoration was a fait accompli, Robert Boyle and his air-pump were in London also, both to be received with open arms by the Invisibles, and especially by Evelyn and the good Hartlib, now old and ill, and [233] very poor, since his pension under a Commonwealth Government had stopped.
“I went to Chelsey to visit Mr. Boyle,” writes Evelyn, [250] “and see his pneumatic engine perform divers experiments.” And, “To visite Mr. Boyle in Chelsey, and saw divers effects of the Eolipile for weighing aire.” ”

“ THE services of Robert Boyle to science are described in the National Biography as "unique, notwithstanding occasional failing on the side of credulousness"—a failing which Sir Henry Ackland excuses as due rather to the age than to the person. ”

“ I would emphasize that Boyle was in essence a man of great faith. He had great faith in religion, and was a deeply religious man. He was a great supporter of so-called "natural religion" and tried to reconcile the doctrines of natural philosophy with those of traditional religion. Westfall [71] has considered in detail the religious attitudes of late seventeenth-century writers, Robert Boyle in particular. The "proofs" alleged by the proponents of natural religion have, of course, little cogency. As Westfall points out, they examined nature in order to find what they already believed. ”

“ If the fair lady who talked so delightfully, were indeed a “beautifull and ingenious daughter” of the Earl of Monmouth, Robert Boyle’s love-story goes into a nutshell. For just a month later came the Countess of Monmouth’s letter to Lady Ranelagh, which so confounded the young squire with its civilities, and contained the invitation to Moore Park. The two young people had already met, and been attracted to one another: the lady’s name had been already spoken of among their mutual friends as that of a possible bride for the young Squire ”

“ Some strong attraction, then, in or near London, there undoubtedly was, and Robert Boyle’s family knew of it; but all their thrusts were successfully parried in what Sir Henry Wotton had called Robyn’s “pretty conceits.” In company Robert Boyle was to “prate” with “pure raillery” of “matrimony and amours.” He was to pity those who “dote on red and white.” He never could deplore the lover who “by losing his mistress recovers himself.” He was to declare that he had “never known the infelicities of love except by others’ sufferings” ”

“ I pensiori stretti, was the advice he handed on in his charming letter to Milton,—ed il viso sciolto; while to all young Etonians travelling [67] in diplomacy he used to say, Always tell the truth; for you will never be believed.
It is hard to say how much Robert Boyle may have owed to the guidance and talk of Sir Henry Wotton. Boyle remembered him as a fine gentleman who possessed the art of making others so; and it was John Harrison’s methods of teaching that had impressed the boy. ”

“ May it have been through this Diodati-Milton-Hartlib connexion that Robert Boyle and his sister Ranelagh were brought together?
But London was not so large a place in 1644. Cousin Croone was presumably still at the Nag’s Head in Cheapside, and people met in Cheapside in those days. Had not Dr. John Diodati himself, on his one visit to London in 1627, run up against the very man he most wanted to meet—Mr. Bedell, [131] afterwards the Bishop—in Cheapside? Whatever the “accident” was, Lady Ranelagh received her young brother with open arms. ”

“ Petty and Robert Boyle’s own relations in Dublin were at this time a little anxious about Boyle’s health and spirits; and urged by the relatives, Petty had written in the [184] character of physician and friend, offering Boyle some sound advice. He wrote to “dissuade” him from “some things which my lord of Cork, my lord of Broghill, and some others of your friends think prejudicial to you; one of which is your continual reading.” Too much reading, Petty thought, “weakens the brain,” which weakness “causeth defluxions” and these “hurt the lungs.” ”

“ For the sake of her boy, and to arrange this alliance satisfactorily, Mary had gone to London, leaving “the sweet quiet of the country for the horrid confusion [259] of the town”; and from there she had written to Robert Boyle at Oxford, whom she still always called her “dearest, dearest squire,” in great spirits: “We are like to be very great,” she said, “for the lad is like to be a successful lover.”
After the marriage, the bridegroom had been sent to travel in France, and the bride taken home by her husband’s parents to Leeze ”

“ But romance was at this time nearer to the boy’s heart than chemistry; their way had lain through a part of the French Arcadia, “the pleasant Pays de Forest, where the Marquis d’Urfé had laid the scene of the adventures and amours of that Astrea with whom so many gallants are still in love, long after both his and her decease.” [81]
Lyons itself, where they stayed for a time, seemed to Robert Boyle “a town of great resort and trading, but fitter for the residence of merchants than of gentlemen.” ”

“ And then there was Lady Katharine—wife of Arthur Jones;—the one of all the Earl’s daughters with the finest intellect, the finest character, and, according to report, the most beautiful face. Weighed down as she was by a miserable marriage, she was to rise above all the trials of life, to be remembered by later generations as “Milton’s Friend,” the “Incomparable Lady Ranelagh”, the “dearest, dearest, dearest sister” of Robert Boyle. “A more brave wench or a Braver Spiritt you have not often mett withall,” Sir John Leeke wrote of her in the summer of 1639 ”

“ In the middle of Salisbury Plain they were surrounded by a party of horse, who would have searched them for “Malignant Letters” such as “use to be about the King’s Picture in a Yellow-Boy.” [134] But the [142] States-Messenger carried them safely through, and they rode on, past weary troops of foot, “poor pressed countrymen,” goaded on by the party of horse. “Amongst them,” wrote Robert Boyle, “I saw one poor rogue, lacqueyed by his wife, and carrying a child upon his shoulders.” Even then, as now, “new models” leave much to be desired. ”

“ Even his country neighbours were prevented from making their usual “visitations.” Robert Boyle was depressed: Stalbridge was not so lively as London. “My stay here,” he says, “God willing, shall not be long.”
There were still troops in the neighbourhood, and the plague had “begun to revive again”; there had been cases at Bristol, and at Yeovil, only six miles off. Dorsetshire was suffering from “fits of the Committee”; [135] and at the Manor itself there were [143] many calls on the Squire’s slender purse. ”

“ Delicious Leeze, in Essex, where Charles and Mary lived, was not far from London. “You shall be absolute master of your own time,” Mary assured him—conscious, no doubt, that Charles did not know much about the New Philosophy. And at Marston Bigot, in Somersetshire, dear Broghill and Lady Pegg, when they were in England, were most excellent company. Marston was not far from Stalbridge, and though Boyle did not now often stay at his manor-house, he liked to keep it in perfect order, for Frank’s sake, who might have it after him. ”

“ Where were the King and Queen, whose hands Frank and he had kissed? And the gay Court that had clustered about them? And his Father! There was no “Great Earl of Cork” any more; no “greatest family in all London,” living “extraordinarily high,” in the House of the Savoy; no child weddings in the royal chapel at Whitehall. What had become of Frank’s wedding shoes, that had been lent afterwards to poor Kynalmeaky?
There can have been little but troops, and talk of troops, on the dusty summer roads, as Robert Boyle [123] came towards London ”

“ They are about an universal laboratory, to be erected after such a manner as may redound, not only to the good of this island, but also to the health and wealth of all mankind.”—Samuel Hartlib to Robert Boyle, May 1654.
Lord Broghill had laid aside his Parthenissa. The story goes that in the autumn of 1649 he was meditating, under cover of a course of treatment for the gout, a visit to Spa, which would take him into the neighbourhood of the “royal orphan”; and one account, at least, of how Cromwell intercepted Broghill in London is too picturesque to be discarded. ”