The Earl of Cork himself, in the early stages of his struggle with Wentworth, had thought of going to London, to “justify himself” once again, as he had done when he was a young man, and Elizabeth was Queen. But he was no longer a young man, and Charles I was not Queen Elizabeth, and the Lord Deputy, when he found it out, had objected strongly to the Earl’s little plan. On the contrary, the Lord Deputy had gone to England himself, in the summer of 1636; and though Sir Henry Wotton was under “a kind of hovering conceypt” that the Earl of Cork was coming over, and there was even a rumour that he was to be offered the Lord Chancellorship of England, the old Earl was to remain for two more years in Ireland. He was busy as usual, moving about, on assize and other duties, between Dublin and Lismore and Cork; paving the terrace at Lismore with hewn stones, dedicating the free schools and almshouses there, setting up an old servant in Dublin in a “tobacko” business, and paying Mr. Perkins’s bill for those little scarlet suits and cloth-of-silver doublets that Frank and Robyn were wearing in their Whitsuntide holidays. Sir Henry Wotton was able to tell the Earl that Lady Lettice would see Frank in better health and strength than he had been in either kingdom before, while Robert would “entertayne her with his pretie conceptions, now a greate deale more smoothely than he was wonte.”
The Earl had not given up his English project; on the contrary, it was to mature into the purchase of a little bit of England for his very own; and his choice had fallen on a “capitall howse, demesne, and lands” in Dorsetshire. Accordingly in the autumn of 1636 he bought the Manor of Stalbridge, and sent over a steward, Thomas Cross, to take possession. At Stalbridge the Earl would be a near neighbour of the Earl of Bristol—his son-in-law Digby’s uncle—at Sherborne Castle.
The year 1636 had been a trying year; and one of the first expenses in the New Year 1637 was a fee to Mr. Jacob Longe, of Kinsale, “my Jerman physician,” for plaisters and prescriptions, “to stay the encrease of the dead palsy which hath seized uppon all the right side of my boddy (God helpe me) £5.” And though the returns for the year shewed a “Lardge Revenew,” and the diary record for the year ended in a note of triumph, with a triple “Amen, Amen, Amen,” there was yet sorrow in store that no revenue, however large, could avert. For Peggie, the Earl’s youngest daughter, was ill. The Earl had paid £5 to Mr. Higgins, the Lismore doctor, to give her “phisick, which he never did”; and either because of this, or in spite of this, Little Peggie did not get well. She died in June 1637, in Lady Clayton’s house in Cork, where she and Mary had lived all this time together. The Lady Margaret Boyle, youngest daughter of the Earl of Cork—eight years old when she died—was buried in the family tomb at Youghal.
It was not till Midsummer 1638, when the last instalment of the mighty fine had been paid, that the Earl began his preparations for a prolonged visit to England. He revoked all other wills, and again made a last will and testament; and at the end of July he actually set out for England, taking with him his daughter Mary, Lord and Lady Barrymore, and several of the grandchildren.
The parting was a sad one between Mary Boyle and Lady Clayton, who had just lost her husband, and, a childless woman herself, had been a real mother to “Moll” and “Peggie.” But the Earl had a grand marriage in view for his daughter Mary; and he had yet to discover that Lady Mary had a will of her own: that of all his daughters it was she who had inherited his own indomitable pride. Hitherto, she had been a child, brought up away from him; to be gladdened from time to time by a happy visit or a New Year’s gift. But even these are indications of the little lady’s tastes and character. It was to Mary the Earl gave the “ffether of diamonds and rubies that was my wive’s,” long before he could have known how defiantly she would toss that little head of hers. She must have been a fair horsewoman already at nine years old; for it was to her that the Earl sent the dead mother’s saddle and saddle-cloth of green velvet, laced and fringed with silver and green silk; and it is certain she inherited the Earl’s love of fine dressing, from the choice of various small gowns of figured satins and rich stuffs of scarlet dye. Of even more significance is the old Earl’s gift of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, “To my daughter, Mary Boyle,” when this imperious young creature was only twelve years old. Do little girls of twelve read Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia to-day? There was to come a moment when, if the Earl had ever read it himself, he must have heard in “Moll’s” voice, as she answered him, some echo of Sidney’s teaching—
“... but a soule hath his life
Which is held in loue: loue it is hath ioynd
Life to this our Soule.”
After the usual delays at starting, the Ninth Whelp made a good passage; and the Earl and his party reached Bristol safely on Saturday August 4. As usual, presents were dispensed to the ship’s captain and company, together with what remained of a hogshead of claret wine. Next day, Sunday, the whole family went obediently to church; and on Monday morning, leaving the others to follow with the servants and luggage, the old Earl, riding a borrowed horse, set off by himself to find his way to Stalbridge.[54]
A wonderful peace and stillness falls on the Dorsetshire uplands at evening after a long, hot summer day. Up hill and down dale and up hill again go the Dorsetshire lanes, between their tangled hedges, through a country of undulating woods and downs and soft green pastures. The lark sings, high up, invisible: a far-away, sleepy cock-crow or faint bark of sheepdog breaks the silence; the grazing cattle bend their brown heads in the fields.