Once again, evidently, the Boyle family had done their best for a Puritan friend in trouble. “I have learnt during this Commitment,” says Oldenburg to Boyle, “to know my real friends. God Almighty bless them, and enable me to convince them all of my gratitude. Sir, I acknowledge and beg pardon for the importunities I gave you at the beginning; assuring you that you cannot lay any commands on me that I shall not cheerfully obey to the best of my power.” But the news of Oldenburg’s release—though Boyle must have been glad to hear of it—had come at an anxious time. A few days before Boyle received Oldenburg’s letter the Lord Chancellor Clarendon had been required to resign the Seals. The Boyle family must have known something of what was happening: the Burlingtons and the Clarendons were next-door neighbours in the two great palaces in Piccadilly, and their children were married,—“Lory Hide” to Henrietta Boyle. “Dear Broghill”—now my Lord Orrery—had been in England by the King’s wish for some little time, having left Munster under the care of a Vice-President. “Lord Orrery,” says his chaplain, Dr. Morrice, quaintly, “saw thoroughly into the tempers of people and the consequences of things.” And he had foreseen Clarendon’s fall, and had already warned Clarendon in vain. In August, Lady Clarendon had died: “the mother of all his children and the companion in all his banishment, and who had made all his former calamities less grievous by her company and courage.” Lady Clarendon had been buried in Westminster Abbey; and alone, in his new palace, among his pictures and books, the widower had received his Majesty’s visit of condolence. And then, only a few days later, had come the King’s message, carried by the Chancellor’s son-in-law the Duke of York. It was desirable “on various grounds, but especially for his own safety,” that Clarendon should resign the Seals. During the next day or two the Duke of York, the Duchess—Clarendon’s daughter—and Archbishop Sheldon, and various other people, interceded for Clarendon with the King. And on the morning of August 26 Clarendon was sent for to Whitehall. The audience lasted two hours, in the King’s own chamber, and then the Chancellor was dismissed and departed, “looking sad,” through the private garden of Whitehall, which was “full of people” waiting to see him come out. Lady Castlemaine, in her smock, looked down upon the garden from her aviary window, laughing with the gallants below, and “blessing herself at the old man’s going.” Next day Evelyn called on the Chancellor at his house in Piccadilly. “I found him,” says Evelyn, “in his bedchamber, very sad.” The tide had turned against him: the Parliament had accused him, and he had enemies at Court; “especialy the buffoones and ladies of pleasure, because he thwarted some of them and stood in their way.”