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. CHAPTER XVII THE HOUSE IN PALL MALL “... Only this methinks I am sure of, that it is a brave thing to be one of those, that shall lift up their heads with joy in expectation of a present redemption, when all these ruins and confusions shall be upon the Earth; and such brave men and women are only true Christians. Therefore, my dear brother, let us endeavour for that dignity, though in maintaining it we take courses, that have the contempt of the world heaped upon them; for to be contemned by the contemptible is glorious in the opinion of your K. R.”—LADY RANELAGH to ROBERT BOYLE, September 14 (1653?). “The Book of Nature is a fine and large piece of tapestry rolled up, which we are not able to see all at once, but must be content to wait for the discovery of its beauty and symmetry, little by little, as it gradually comes to be more and more unfolded or displayed.”—ROBERT BOYLE, Second Part of the _Christian Virtuoso_, Aphorism xxi. The intellectual atmosphere of Oxford, when Robert Boyle said good-bye to it, was not the same “ayre” that he had weighed so pleasantly in 1659. Indeed, he must have been rather glad to be out of it before the great occasion of the opening of the Sheldonian at the _Encænia_ of 1669. Evelyn, who was present, was scandalised, not only by the University Orator’s “malicious and indecent reflections on the Royal Society as undermining of the University,” but by the performance of the University Buffoone, “which, unless it be suppressed,” he says, “it will be of ill consequences, as I afterwards plainly expressed my sense of it both to the Vice-Chancellor[321] and severall heads of houses, who were perfectly ashamed of it and resolved to take care of it in future.” The “old facetious way” had given place to ribald and libellous attacks: “In my life,” says Evelyn, “I was never witnesse of so shamefull entertainment.”