CHAPTER IV. The Manor of Stalbridge

THE MANOR OF STALBRIDGE

“... He would very often steal away from all company, and spend four or five hours alone in the fields, and think at random: making his delighted imagination the busy scene where some romance or other was daily acted.”—ROBERT BOYLE’S Philaretus.

After the boys went to Eton, the Earl had very unpleasant things to think about. Wentworth was pressing him hard. It is true that the little dinner-parties and card-parties and private theatricals at the Castle were going on as if there were no Star Chamber behind them. In January 1636 the Lord Deputy was inviting himself to supper at the Earl’s Dublin house, and bringing Lady Wentworth with him. Lady Dungarvan’s baby was born in March, a “ffair daughter”, to be christened Frances, and to figure in the old Earl’s diary as “lyttle ffranck”; and the Lord Deputy himself stood sponsor, though he had just lost his own little son, and the Dungarvan christening had been postponed till the Wentworth baby had been buried. But the Lord Deputy’s “sharp pursuit” of men was going on all the same. In February, before the death of Wentworth’s child and the Dungarvan christening, Lord Mountmorris had been degraded from the office of Vice-Treasurer, “tried by a Commission and sentenced to be shot, for no other crime than a sneer” against Wentworth’s government. The sentence was not to be carried out; but it became every day more evident that “whatever man of whatever rank” opposed Wentworth, or even spoke disrespectfully of his policy, “that man he pursued to punishment like a sleuth-hound”.

At the beginning of that year, the Earl of Cork had made his “Great Conveighance,” by which he entailed all his lands upon his five sons. Wentworth had taken exception to the conveyance of some of these lands to the Earl’s eldest son, Lord Dungarvan; and in February a “sharp and large discourse” had taken place between the Lord Deputy and the Earl. In April the Star Chamber Bill against the Earl, dealing with his titles to the churchlands of Youghal, was still under discussion; and Wentworth was now pressing for the payment of money, by way of ransom, which was at first to be £30,000, but was afterwards reduced to £15,000.

The Earl was still asserting his right to his lands, and unwilling to compound—no-one had ever heard the Earl of Cork, he said, “enclyned to offer anything.” Things were at this pass when at the end of April Lady Dungarvan, six weeks after her baby’s birth, fell sick; and the next day, “the smallpockes brake owt uppon her.” On that very day, under pressure from his friends and from his son Dungarvan, who went down on his knees before his father, the Earl of Cork gave way. Very unwillingly, on May 2, he agreed to pay the £15,000 “for the King’s use,” and for his own “redemption out of Court”—though his “Innocencie and Intigritie” he declared, writing in his own private diary, were “as cleer as the son at high noon.” The old Royalist, even then, believed that if his King only knew how undeservedly the mighty fine had him imposed, “he would not accept a penny of it.” The Earl was hard hit, though his great Conveyance was at last signed and sealed, and he could talk of drinking a cup of sack “to wash away the care of a big debt.” It is comforting to note that he had meantime cash in hand not only to tip Archie Armstrong, the King’s Jester, who seems to have passed through Dublin, but to pay for two knitted silk waistcoats for his own “somer wearings.”

While all this was going on, Kynalmeaky and Broghill were enjoying what the Earl called their “peregrination.” A tutor had been found to accompany them on their foreign travels; a M. Marcombes, highly recommended to the Earl by Sir Henry Wotton, as a man “borne for your purpose.” Sir Henry wrote from London, where he had been spending a week or two, and was returning next day “to my poore Cell agayne at Eton”; but he gave the Earl a careful account of Marcombes, whom he had seen in London. He was “by birthe French; native in the Province of Auvergne; bredd seaven years in Geneve, verie sounde in Religion, and well conversant with Religious Men. Furnished with good literature and languages, espetially with Italian, which he speaketh as promptly as his owne. And wilbe a good guide for your Sonns in that delicat Piece of the Worlde. He seemeth of himself neither of a lumpish nor of a light composition, but of a well-fixed meane.”

M. Marcombes had already won golden opinions in the family of Lord Middlesex, a former Lord Mayor of London; and was well known to the then Lord Mayor, Mr. Burlamachy, who also wrote to the Earl about him. And Mr. Perkins, the tailor, seems to have put in a word; for there had been a meeting in the “fumie citie” between Sir Henry Wotton and M. Marcombes and Mr. Perkins, at which Sir Henry had found the French tutor’s conversation “very apposite and sweet.”

So in the early spring of 1636 Kynalmeaky and Broghill, with their governor M. Marcombes, had set out from Dublin on their foreign travels, stopping long enough in London to kiss the King’s and Queen’s hands, and obtain the royal licence and passport to travel; and they took letters also to Sir Henry Wotton at Eton, and to Frank and Robyn, and poor unmeriting Carew.

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.

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.

The Earl was in England again, the land of his birth. It was perhaps not altogether a prosperous and satisfied England, in August 1638. The heavy hand of taxation was on even these pastoral uplands. The heart of England was throbbing with political unrest. But on that evening, at least, there could have been only the lark’s ecstasy, and the sweet smell of wild thyme and woodsmoke in the air. Ireland, the distressful country of his adoption, lay behind the old man, and with it the memories of fifty strenuous years;—all that was hardest and proudest and tenderest in a lifetime.

Lord and Lady Dungarvan were already at Stalbridge with “lyttle ffrancke.” There was another baby-daughter now, but it had apparently been left at Salisbury House, in London. Dungarvan had ridden some six miles upon the road to meet his father. It was still daylight when, riding together—the old man must have been pretty stiff in the saddle, for he had ridden nearly sixty miles that day—they came in sight of the Elizabethan manor standing among elms and chestnut trees, surrounded by park lands and hayfields and orchards: “My owne house of Stalbridge in Dorcetshier; this being the firste tyme that ever I sawe the place.”

After this, the movements of the Earl and his family read rather like a Court Circular. Not much is heard of the life that must have been going on in the little town itself, with its Church and market Cross; but the mere presence of this great Irish family among them must, by the laws of supply and demand, have wrought many changes in the little market town. The Earl paid his love and service to his neighbour and kinsman, the Earl of Bristol, at Sherborne Castle, and the Earl and Countess of Bristol, with all their house-party, immediately returned the visit; after which the whole family at the Manor were “feasted” for two days at Sherborne Castle. The Earl of Cork and his house-party rode to “the Bathe”, and return visits were received at Stalbridge from friends at “the Bathe”. And a week or two later the Earl, attended by Dungarvan and Barrymore, rode to London, and was graciously received by the King and “all the Lords at Whitehall.” The King praised the Earl’s government of Ireland, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was particularly friendly.

Lady Barrymore and Lady Dungarvan had between them undertaken to ease the Earl from the “trowble of hows-keeping,” and for this purpose were allowed £50 a week, and more when they wanted it; and the cellars and larders at Stalbridge were replenished from time to time with gifts. A ton of claret wine and six gallons of aqua vitæ arrived as a New Year’s gift from Munster, and “veary fatt does” from English friends; while among his assets the Earl counted, besides the produce of his Stalbridge lands and woods, the twenty stalled oxen, the powdered beef, the bacon and salted salmon that were sent from his Irish estates.

Thomas Cross, his steward, became “seneschal”;—perhaps there was a seneschal at Sherborne Castle; and there was a Clerk of the Kitchen and a large staff of household servants, men and women, and a long list of rules for the management of the household drawn up and signed by the Earl himself. And of course the “re-edification” of the Manor House began at once. There was water to be carried in leaden pipes; new furniture to hasten home from the London upholsterer, who dwelt at the sign of the Grasshopper; a red embroidered bed, a tawny velvet carpet, couch and chairs. There was a new coach to buy, and the paths and terraces at Stalbridge were to be stone paved exactly like the paths and terraces at Sherborne Castle. Stairs with a stone balustrade, and carved stone chimney-pieces were to be added to the Manor;—one at least carved with the Earl’s coat of arms “compleate,” and reaching nearly to the ceiling, “fair and graceful in all respects.” There was a limekiln to build, and pit coal to procure and cane apples to be planted in the orchard. But charity only began at home; and in this case it did not prevent a subscription being sent—“a myte” of £100—to help the Archbishop of Canterbury in his scheme of “re-edifying Pawle’s Church in London.”

Meantime, all the Earl’s daughters and sons-in-law, except Dorothy and Arthur Loftus, who remained in Ireland, seem to have found their way, separately or together, to the Manor of Stalbridge; while grandchildren, nieces and nephews and even “cozens” were welcomed under its roof. The Dungarvans made their headquarters there, and the Barrymores, and the little Lady Mary, who was now fourteen, and to be considered a grown-up young lady, with an allowance of £100 a year “to fynde herself.” And they were presently joined by the Kildares, and Katharine and Arthur Jones. Even the plaintive Lettice and her lord stayed for some time under the Earl’s roof. And in March 1639, after an absence of three years, Kynalmeaky and Broghill, with M. Marcombes, returned from their “peregrination”. They found Frank and Robyn already at Stalbridge, though not in the great house itself. For their father had taken the boys away from Eton on his return journey from London in November 1638, and since then they had been boarded out with the Rev. Mr. Dowch at the Parsonage, scarcely “above twice a musket-shot” distant from their father’s house. Their three years at Eton had cost, “for diett, tutaradge and aparell,” exactly £914 3s. 9d.

When the Earl of Cork visited Eton and took his two boys away, Sir Henry Wotton must have been already ill. Since his return after the summer breaking-time of 1638 the old Provost had suffered from a feverish distemper, which was to prove the beginning of the end.

It is possible that during the Provost’s illness extra duties had fallen on Mr. Harrison, the Rector; in any case the two boys had been removed from the care of their “old courteous schoolmaster,” and handed over to “a new, rigid fellow;” and things were not going quite so happily for them at Eton as heretofore. Moreover, poor Carew, the romance of the underbaker’s daughter nipped in the bud, had, from overmuch fondness for cards and dice, come utterly to grief.

It was during this last year of Robert Boyle’s schooldays—in the April of 1638, before Sir Henry Wotton’s illness, and while all was going on as usual at Eton—that Mr. Provost had entertained at his hospitable table a guest whose life was to be strangely linked in after years with that of some members of the great Boyle family. This was John Milton, then a young poet, living with his father at Horton—not far from Eton—and just about to set out on his Italian journey. Was Robert Boyle one of the “hopeful youths” selected by the Provost to dine at his table that day when Milton dined there? And did Robert Boyle listen to the talk that went on at table between Milton and his friend, the learned Hales, and Sir Henry Wotton? It was very pleasant talk. When Milton returned to Horton he ventured to send the Provost a little letter of thanks and a copy of his Comus as a parting gift; and Sir Henry sent his own footboy post-haste to Horton, to catch Milton before he started, with a pretty letter of acknowledgment and an introduction to the British Agent in Venice. It is noteworthy that the advice Sir Henry Wotton gave to Milton, and the advice he always gave to his own pupils when they were setting out on a career of diplomacy abroad, showed that, while the old man had not forgotten his experience of the Augsburg album, his kindly cynicism remained unchanged. I pensiori stretti, was the advice he handed on in his charming letter to Milton,—ed il viso sciolto; while to all young Etonians travelling in diplomacy he used to say, Always tell the truth; for you will never be believed.

It is hard to say how much Robert Boyle may have owed to the guidance and talk of Sir Henry Wotton. Boyle remembered him as a fine gentleman who possessed the art of making others so; and it was John Harrison’s methods of teaching that had impressed the boy. Yet it must not be forgotten that the Provost’s tastes were not only literary and scholarly; that he had not only surrounded himself with a library of books that Robert Boyle in his boyhood must have envied—Sir Henry Wotton was of a scientific turn of mind: he was fond of experimenting. Ever since the days when he had watched Kepler at work in his laboratory and supplied his cousin Lord Bacon with facts, he had been accustomed to occupy himself, in more or less dilletante fashion, with such little experiments as the distilling of medicinal herbs and the measurement of time by allowing water to pass through a filter, drop by drop; and it was Sir Henry Wotton whom Izaak Walton consulted about the preparation of “seductive-smelling oils” in the catching of little fishes. And who could it have been, in that last year that Robyn spent at Eton, who lent him the books that “meeting in him with a restless fancy” gave his thoughts such a “latitude of roving”? Robyn had been away from school on a visit to London, and there had fallen ill of a “tertian ague”, and had been sent back to Eton to see if good air and diet might not do more for him than all “the Queen’s and other doctors’ remedies” had done. His own phrase is that “to divert his melancholy they made him read the State Adventures of Amadis de Gaule, and other fabulous and wandering stories.” Who was the “they” at Eton? It could not have been the “new, rigid fellow”. Amadis de Gaule may have been part of Mr. John Harrison’s system of education, but one would like to believe that Sir Henry Wotton had some hand in fashioning Robert Boyle—that his whole library was open to the boy, not only the books of romance and adventure in it that gave Robyn’s thoughts such a “latitude of roving.” One would like to believe that the torch was indeed passed on from Kepler’s laboratory, and by the study of one of those three copies of Bacon’s Novum Organum, into the hands of England’s first great experimental chemist.

Be that as it may, Sir Henry Wotton was already ill when Frank and Robyn were removed from Eton in November 1638; and it was Mr. Harrison who duly sent after them to Stalbridge the furniture of their chamber—the blew perpetuana curtains and all the other things so carefully inventoried by poor Carew. And Carew himself no longer served his sweet young masters: he had been succeeded by a manservant with the suggestive name of Rydowt, who appears to have been a married man, and was accommodated with a little cottage of his own at Stalbridge, with a garden which the Earl planted with “cane apples” from Ireland. The boys were to live and learn their lessons with Mr. Dowch at the Parsonage; and that “old divine” was very soon to discover that Robyn had not learnt much Latin at Eton after all, and “with great care and civility” to proceed to read with him the Latin poets as well as the Latin prose-writers. And while the Earl gave Frank a horse of his own, and knew him to be happy and gallant in the saddle, it was Robyn who was the old Earl’s Benjamin, most loved of all his sons. The family saw a likeness in Robyn to his father—a likeness both in body and mind. It is difficult to credit the Earl of Cork with any of his youngest son’s habit of “unemployed pensiviness,” but there must have been something in Robyn when he was quite a little fellow—a quiet self-reliance—that impressed the old Earl strangely. Robyn was only twelve years old; he had as yet shown none of the traits of character that the Earl so “severely disrelished” in some of his sons and sons-in-law. And so, when he gave Frank the horse, the Earl listened perhaps with some wonderment to Robyn’s “pretie conceptions” in excellent language, spoken still not quite smoothly; and he was content to let the boy wander as he liked. He gave his Benjamin the keys of his orchard, not afraid to leave him in a very paradise of unplucked apples, “thinking at random.”