“No,” said the irrepressible Petty, “I had rather have had it been St. Thomas’s Day, for he would not believe till he had seen and putt his finger into the holes, according to the motto, Nullius in Verba.”[274]
CHAPTER XV
THE PLAGUE AND THE FIRE
“It hath commonly been looked upon as very strange that a diligent Cultivator of Experimental Philosophy should be a zealous Embracer of the Christian Religion; and that a great Esteem of Experience and a High Veneration for Religion should be compatible in the same Person; but....”—Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso.
“The hottest day that ever I felt in my life ... I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there....”—Pepys’s Diary, June 7, 1665.
“... it still encreasing, and the wind great ... and all over the Thames, with one’s faces in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops ... saw the fire grow; and as it grew darker appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the city, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame ... one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge.... The churches, houses and all on fire and flaming at once ... and a horrid noise the flames made and the cracking of houses at their ruine....”—Pepys’s Diary, September 2, 1666.
The year 1661 saw the publication not only of Boyle’s Physiological Essays[275] already mentioned, but of his epoch-making Scepticall Chymist.[276] It was the first year of “Our Society’s” existence; a year of immense interest and activity among its members; but Boyle himself was not always in London, and not indeed wholly occupied with the claims of experimental science. In 1662 he found himself unexpectedly in possession of more Irish land, a grant of “forfeited impropriations” having been obtained from the King in Robert Boyle’s name, though without his knowledge. To Boyle, the gift seems to have been somewhat in the nature of a white elephant, and he applied for advice in the matter to his friend the Bishop of Lincoln.[277] He was not sure if he ought to take the grant at all, and still less decided as to what he ought to do with the proceeds. He did not wish to “reflect upon those persons of honour” who had done him the kindness unasked, and he would dearly have liked to spend the proceeds, if he did take the grant, in “the advancement of real knowledge.” Ultimately he did decide to accept it, and to spend two-thirds of the proceeds in Ireland on the relief of the poor and the maintenance of the Protestant religion; while the other third was to go to the purposes of the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, of which the King had lately appointed him governor. This, too, had been done without Boyle’s knowledge.
“So that the main benefit I intend to derive from the King’s bounty,” says Boyle laconically, “is the opportunity of doing some good with what, if my friends had not obtained it, might have been begged by others, who would have otherwise employed it.”[278]
The matter settled—to nobody’s entire satisfaction—Boyle went on with his work in Oxford, sending his communications to the Royal Society through the secretary, Henry Oldenburg. Present or absent, Mr. Boyle was the hero of the hour at Gresham College, and his air-pump the chief attraction of its meetings.[279]
“I waited on Prince Rupert to our assembly,” says Evelyn, “where we tried severall experiments in Mr. Boyle’s vacuum. A man thrusting in his arm upon exhaustion of the air had his flesh immediately swelled so as the blood was neare bursting the veins: he drawing it out we found it all speckled.”[280]