Renowned for their deeds, as farre from home,
For Christian seruice, and true Chiualrie,
As is the sepulcher in stubborne Iury
Of the World’s ransome, blessed Marie’s Sonne.
This Land of such deere soules, this deere-deere Land,
Deere for her reputation through the world....”
Shakespeare’s Richard the Second (First Folio, 1623).
Shakespeare was a little out of date in the summer of 1648, when Robert Boyle came to town from Stalbridge to the lodging in St. James’s taken for him by his sister Ranelagh. “This England” was then still in the throes of civil war; was, in fact, at the moment plunged in what is known as the Second Civil War.[156] When Robert Boyle arrived in town, everybody was talking of the risings in the English counties (Dorsetshire itself among them), and the revolt of the fleet off the Kentish coast. The King was in the Isle of Wight: since Robert Boyle had written his letter to Marcombes in October 1646, the King had been bandied about from the Scots to the English, from the Parliament to the Army, from Holmby House to Hampton Court; and now, having escaped into the Isle of Wight only to find himself virtually a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, he was yet in secret negotiation with Ormonde in France, and with Hamilton and the Royalists in Scotland. Just at this time, “in spite of Argyle and the Scottish Clergy”, a Royalist army was marching into England. The Queen and Prince and the Royalist Court at St. Germains were on tip-toe of expectation; while the young Duke of York had escaped from London abroad, disguised in girl’s clothes.[157] Ormonde was with the Court in France, and Inchiquin in Ireland had declared himself a Royalist. There had been also successive Royalist risings in Wales and in the English counties. Of the Parliamentary Party, Lambert was in the north, Cromwell in Wales; and Fairfax and Ireton—the Kentish rising crushed—were now besieging Colchester.
And what was Robert Boyle doing during this London visit? After all, London was in the circumstances the most civilised place to be in. Robert Boyle was listening to the Earl of Warwick’s very full account “from his own mouth” of his recent negotiations with the rebellious fleet;—the Earl of Warwick, who was Mary Boyle’s father-in-law. And then, when the Earl of Warwick himself was hurrying off to Portsmouth to deal with the “disobedient ships” there, Robert Boyle was supping quietly with the ladies of the Warwick family at Warwick House in Holborn, and hearing from them all the latest gossip about the Essex rising, and the behaviour of his brother-in-law Charles Rich. By their account, Charles Rich had been the “grand agitator in this Essex business.” And the young Squire was much amused to hear also that the newly chosen Admiral of the revolting ships was none other than one Kemb, a minister,—“a mad, witty fellow,” Robert Boyle calls him, “whom I have often been very merry with, his wife being sister to the honest red-nosed blade that waits now on me.”[158]
Times had changed, indeed, since England was the royal throne of Kings, another Eden, and a demi-paradise. No doubt the Invisibles met as usual in Wood Street, and Robert Boyle was often in congenial company with Hartlib and the others there or at Gresham College. Young Lord Barrymore was no longer with Milton in the Barbican. Milton had given up his school, and he and his wife and their one little girl were living in High Holborn—very near to Warwick House—and Milton was now leading a literary life, but keenly watching the doings of Parliament and Army; it was some months before he was made Secretary of Foreign Tongues to the Council of State. The young philosopher in St. James’s, who had his own ideals, was watching them too, as keenly; though exactly how Robert Boyle felt about the trend of events it is very difficult to guess. His “exact evenness of carriage” never deserted him: to use his own words, “The point of a mariner’s needle shows its inclination to the Pole both by its wavering and rest.” Royalists, Parliament-men, Army-men, Churchmen, Presbyterians, and Independents,—he was in the midst of them all, bound to many of them by ties of friendship and kinship, but steadfastly going his own way. If he was in the company of Mary’s father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, he was also in Archbishop Usher’s study, listening to a very different kind of exposition, and he was writing affectionately to “dear Broghill” in his difficult position in Munster. If he spoke of “Our Masters” at Westminster, he spoke also of “Our Brethren” across the Borders. On the whole, like Milton in Holborn, but from quite another standpoint, Robert Boyle seems to have fixed, if not his faith, his expectations, upon the New Model. “Victory,” he wrote, “is as obedient as the very Parliament to the Army.”[159]