“All was tranquil, easy, serious, discreete and profitable, so as besides Mr. Hobbes, whose hand was against everybody and admired nothing but his owne, Francis Linus excepted (who yet with much civility wrote against him), I do not remember he had the least antagonist.”[349]
The brother and sister had both been ill in the late autumn of 1691, when Boyle wrote to Dr. Turberville at Salisbury, begging for a further prescription for his eyes. “Sight is a thing dear to all men,” he wrote, almost apologetically, “and especially to studious persons.” His eyes had been troubling him very much of late, especially by candle-light. “When the candles are newly snuffed,” wrote this great experimental philosopher, “I see far better for a little while:” but they very soon wanted snuffing again.[350]
Evelyn was out of town on December 23, when Lady Ranelagh died; and he did not hear of her death, or of her brother’s serious illness immediately after it, till it was too late. “For it was then,” says Evelyn, “he began evidently to droope apace.” When Evelyn returned to town, it was to stand by his old friend’s grave. Robert Boyle had survived his sister only seven days: he died on December 30, 1691.
He was buried near to Lady Ranelagh, in the Chancel of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.[351] Burnet, now Bishop of Salisbury, preached the funeral sermon “with that eloquence natural to him on such and all other occasions,” taking for his text the words, “For God giveth to a man that is good in His sight, wisdom, and knowledge, and joy.”[352] “Something too,” says Evelyn, “was touched of his sister, the Lady Ranelagh.” But indeed it was not necessary. Her intellect and character were known to all those who stood about the grave. Her high standards and strong judgment would have been a gain to the statecraft of her day. But she was a woman; and if for more than twenty years her life had been a rich and beautiful thing as the sister of Robert Boyle, for nearly forty years before that she had been the brave but unhappy wife of Arthur Jones—“the foulest churl in the Worlde.”
By Boyle’s own direction, his funeral was “without the least pomp”; but round his grave there stood, besides his own many relatives, “a greate appearance of persons of the best and noblest quality.”
Most of his Irish lands were entailed, and went to the eldest brother, the Earl of Burlington and Cork. “It does not afflict me,” so runs the will, “that I have not children of my own to inherit my entailed lands, since they are, by that defect, to return to him, the truly honoured head of our house and family.” The Manor of Stalbridge went to Frank, the Lord Viscount Shannon, together with Robyn’s best watch and an affectionate message. Frank would notice that the Manor House had been kept up “for his sake,” though Robyn had had no mind to live in it. Mrs. Melster, the niece who had married the valet de pé, is included among Boyle’s “honoured and dear nieces,” and is remembered more sumptuously than the others, not because there is any difference of affection, but because of her “peculiar circumstances.” There were other lands in Ireland, and many bequests and legacies to relatives, friends, and servants besides the charitable bequests left in the hands of trustees.[353] “Our Society” and the happy days at Gresham College were not forgotten. Dr. King was to have a silver standish, and to Robert Hooke, the “perfecter” of the beloved air-pump, was left “my best microscope, and my best loadstone.”
When Robert Boyle made his will in the summer of 1691 he evidently had not thought it possible that Lady Ranelagh would die before him. He had made her one of his executors, and he had left her all his manuscripts and his “collections of receipts.” But he had left her something else. At the very beginning of his will, first and foremost of all his worldly possessions, Robert Boyle puts a small ring:
“And as touching my temporal estate, wherewith God of His goodness hath been pleased to endow me, I dispose thereof in manner and form following; that is to say—
“I give and bequeathe unto my dear sister, the Lady Katharine, Viscountess Ranelagh, a small ring, usually worn by me on my left hand, having in it two small diamonds with an emerald in the middle, which ring being held by me, ever since my youth, in great esteem, and worn for many years for a particular reason, not unknown to my said sister, the Lady Ranelagh, I do earnestly beseech her, my said sister, to wear it in remembrance of a brother that truly honoured and most dearly loved her.”
But Lady Ranelagh was dead—seven days before Robert Boyle. What became of the small ring? And what was its story? Why had Boyle worn it on his left hand ever since his youth, holding it in great esteem? Lady Ranelagh knew—and Lady Ranelagh was dead. What was the “particular reason”? The story of the little ring, if not the ring itself, is buried in the Chancel of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.