And Dungarvan had made such good progress with his wooing that in July a pretty little letter, neatly wax-sealed on floss-silk, had come to the Earl of Cork, beginning: “My Lord,—Now I have the honour to be your daughter.” In September 1634 the indefatigable Ninth Whelp brought Dungarvan and his bride to Ireland. The Earl met them at their landing, and drove them back in triumph—three coaches full—to his town house in Dublin. All the available members of the family, little Robert Boyle included, were gathered to welcome the new sister-in-law. It was a great alliance, in which Wentworth himself, by marriage a kinsman of the Cliffords, had lent a hand. For the time being, it was to draw the Lord Deputy into the circle of the Earl’s family, though the personal relations between the Deputy and the Earl were to become even more strained.
CHAPTER III
SCHOOLDAYS AT ETON
“Where the Provost at that time was Sir Henry Wotton, a person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very well skilled in the art of making others so.”—Robert Boyle’s Philaretus.
In December 1634, after nearly seven years’ absence, the Earl of Cork and his family returned to the House of Lismore. They had not been gathered there, as a family, since the April of 1628, when the Earl and his wife and daughters set out on their journey to London. But Parliament was adjourned, and Dungarvan and his wife were with them, and everything pointed to their spending Christmas in their home of homes: “And there, God willing, wee intend,” wrote the Earl the day before they left Dublin to Lady Clifford at Skipton Castle in Yorkshire—“to keep a merry Christmas among our neighbors, and to eate to the noble family of Skipton in fatt does and Carps, and to drinke your healthe in the best wyne wee can gett....” His new daughter-in-law, he says, “looks, and likes Ireland, very well.” She was every day winning the affection and respect of the “best sort of people”—her husband’s and her father-in-law’s most of all. Incidentally—for he was treading on delicate ground owing to the family connection between Wentworth and the Cliffords—the Earl mentions that he is being “sharply persued” in his Majesty’s Court of the Star Chamber about his titles to the college and lands of Youghal; and he is only sorry that “this attempt” should be made upon him just at the time of his daughter-in-law’s arrival in Ireland.
It is not two hundred miles by rail from Dublin to Lismore; but in those days travelling was slow and difficult; and the Cork cavalcade—the family coach and the gay company of horsemen surrounding it—were four days upon the road. Robert Boyle never forgot that eventful journey.[34] The English daughter-in-law and her attendant lady, and the old Earl and all his five sons, were of the party, the youngest, Robert, not eight years old. Each night they “lay” at hospitable houses on the road, and all went well till, on the fourth day after passing Clonmell, as they were crossing the “Four Miles Water”, their coach was overturned in mid-stream. Robyn remembered every detail of the adventure: how he had been left sitting alone in the coach, “with only a post-boy,” and how one of his father’s gentlemen, “very well horsed,” recognising the danger, rode alongside and insisted on carrying the little fellow—very unwilling to leave the apparent safety of the inside of the coach—in his arms over the rapid water; how the water proved so much swifter and deeper than anybody had imagined that horses and riders were “violently hurried down the stream,” and the unloaded and empty coach was quickly overturned. The coach horses struggled till they broke their harnesses, and with difficulty saved themselves by swimming.
So much for the memory of a little sensitive eight-year-old. The Earl’s diary record is brief and to the point. His coach was “overthrown”, his horses were “in danger of drowning”, but they all, God be praised, arrived safely at Lismore, and the journey had cost him £24.
Christmas was kept at Lismore, and the last two days of the old year at Castle Lyons, where the Earl’s son-in-law, Barrymore, feasted them most liberally. He could scarcely have done less, after that eighteen-months’ visit to the Earl’s town house in Dublin. And so this year ended.
With the New Year 1635 came the Claytons from Cork, bringing Mary and little Peggie on a visit to their father. A week or two later the Earl went back alone to Dublin for the last session of Parliament, leaving Dungarvan and his wife to keep house at Lismore; and the four boys—Kynalmeaky, Broghill, Frank and little Robyn—were all left under the charge of their tutor, Mr. Wilkinson, who was also the Earl’s chaplain.