If the year 1667 ended anxiously for the Boyle family, the year 1668 was to prove more anxious still. Lord Orrery had returned to Ireland to take up his presidency of Munster, and was living in great splendour at Charleville; but he and the Lord Lieutenant, Ormonde, disagreed; and in the autumn of 1668 Lord Orrery had resigned the presidency and was back in England. He had “been advised,” says Morrice, “that his credit at Court had begun to decline,” and that it would be wise for him to be on the spot.
He was very much on the spot when Pepys met him, in October, at Lord Arlington’s house. In spite of his gout, the urbanity of the Boyle family had not forsaken him. He “took notice” of Pepys, and began a “discourse of hangings, and of the improvement of shipping”; and Pepys presently discovered that Lord Orrery was paying “a mighty compliment” to his abilities and ingenuity, “which I am mighty proud of, and he do speak most excellently.”
But later in November came a rude awakening. It was now my Lord Orrery’s turn to be impeached in the House of Commons, “for raising of moneys by his own authority upon his Majesty’s subjects.”
When the summons came, Lord Orrery was laid up with a severe attack of gout; and when he was well enough, a few days later, to answer the summons in person, he could scarcely manage to get up the steps from Westminster Hall to the Court of Request. A friend, passing by, remarked that my Lord of Orrery walked with difficulty and pain. “Yes, sir,” said Orrery, “my feet are weak; but if my heels will serve to carry me up, I promise you my head shall bring me safe down again.”
And it did. He made an able defence—sitting, because of his gout; and at the psychological moment, so the story runs, the King put an end to the proceedings by proroguing both Houses.[320] Impeachments might be as thick as blackberries; Lord Orrery might discourse cheerfully of “hangings” at a dinner party at Lord Arlington’s house; but, after all, it was only five-and-twenty years since the old Earl of Cork had died in harness with all his sons in the field. It would have been inconvenient to overlook such services and such sacrifices as the great Boyle family in Ireland had rendered to their Kings.
No further steps were to be taken against Lord Orrery. “I am glad the House dismissed that foolish impeachment against my Lord Orrery,” wrote Mr. Stubbe, of Warwick, to Robert Boyle. Morrice says that, while the affair was in progress, Lady Pegg had been sent by her husband to Ireland “to secure the estates.” She had performed her mission “with great dexterity and expedition,” so that “if he had been impeached, his family would have been safe.” As it was, Lord Orrery returned to Ireland and Lady Pegg—to occupy himself with repairing his last great home of Castle Martyr, and to write his Art of War. And in December 1668 another new play—Tryphon—a tragedy taken from the First Book of Maccabees, was produced with great success at the Duke’s house. Mr. and Mrs. Pepys, on this occasion, “put a bit of meat in their mouths” and hurried off, to find the theatre crowded, and to sit out the performance in the eighteenpenny seats above-stairs—“mighty hot.”
So ended 1668. During the last half of the year, at any rate, Robert Boyle had been away from Oxford and in the family circle. It is probable that he was not far from “dear Broghill” in his hour of trial. After the family anxiety on this brother’s account had quieted down, there came news from Ireland that Lord Ranelagh was dead. His death can have brought little outward change to the house in the Mall. Dick Jones—whose life at Court with Grammont and the rest of the gallants must have caused Lady Ranelagh many a heartache, had been for some time employed in Irish politics and in Ireland. Ormonde had brought about a reconciliation between Lord Ranelagh and his son; and the young Pyrophilus had been member for the county of Roscommon in the Irish Parliament before his father’s death raised him to the Upper House. It is suggestive that Lord Ranelagh’s nuncupative Will left the two unmarried daughters, Elizabeth and Frances, a sum of money, subject to their marrying with the consent of the eldest sister, Lady Mount-Alexander. It is a question whether “the girls” received any money as a result of these nuncupative paternal intentions. Elizabeth, who became Mrs. Melster, must have been the heroine of a humble love-story, for her husband is described in the old peerages as a valet de pé. This did not mean exactly in those times what it means to-day, nor was it exactly what might have been expected for a granddaughter of the Great Earl of Cork. And yet, it must be remembered that the old Elizabethan Peer had always about him a little entourage of cousin-commoners, as staunch as they were unobtrusive,—Naylors of Gray’s Inn and Croones of Cheapside.
Frances, the delicate daughter—the baby born prematurely at the manor of Stalbridge—does not seem to have married at all. Lady Ranelagh had nursed “my poor Franck” through many illnesses—smallpox, of course, among them. She suffered from headaches; and nothing did them so much good as the little packets of tea—a costly luxury in those days—that Lady Ranelagh was able to procure for her by the kindness of the Oxford uncle. Elizabeth and Frances were both probably still “the girls,” and living with their mother, when Robert Boyle, in 1669, left Oxford for good. Their uncle Robyn, the “deare Squire”—was long ago turned philosopher; something of a valetudinary; a virtuoso of an European fame. Philosophers of all nations flocked to see Mr. Boyle’s experiments. The Royal Society—all intellectual London—was waiting for his coming.
With his books and instruments and standish—but, alas! no longer his bows and arrows—he once more, as in the old-young days of 1644, took up his residence with Lady Ranelagh in the house in Pall Mall.