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.