The later chapters of biography are of necessity a chronicle of losses. The death of the great admiral, the Earl of Sandwich, at the battle of Solebay, on May 28, 1672, removed the other splendid father-in-law of the Burlington family. His funeral, “by water to Westminster, in solemn pomp,” must have affected the inmates of the house in Pall Mall as well as the families in the two Piccadilly palaces. “They will not have me live,” Lord Sandwich had said sadly to Evelyn, before he sailed. It is very certain that the whole trend of politics at this time—the crypto-catholic movement, burrowing its way into Protestant England; the _capuchins_ flitting about between Whitehall and St. James’s; the alliance with the French against the Dutch, and the prolonged war with Holland; the plottings and placings of the _Cabal_, and the quarrels and changes in the royal harem, which had pushed up to the very door of the house in Pall Mall—must have been utterly distasteful to Robert Boyle and his passionately Puritan sister. Poor Charles Rich, my Lord of Warwick, who had been ill for a long time, died at Leeze in 1673, leaving Mary, a childless great lady, still surrounded by chaplains, to administer her husband’s property and to see all the three “sweet young ladies,” her nieces, married to satisfactory husbands of her own choosing. A more personal loss to Robert Boyle was the sudden death of Henry Oldenburg in September 1677. He and another old friend, Dr. Worsley of the “mountain-bellied conceptions” for the good of mankind, died almost at the same time. Oldenburg had worked hard for the Royal Society since he came out of the Tower in the autumn of 1667. He had carried the Society through the troublesome time that followed the Fire of London, after the loss of its _Transactions_ and during its sojourn in Arundel House. He had seen it reinstated in Gresham College, and a great collation given in its honour by the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London. He had been overworked and underpaid, and had added to the small gains he made out of the Society’s _Transactions_[328] by doing a good deal of work for Boyle personally, in proof-correcting and in translating Boyle’s books into Latin. And Boyle had tried to obtain for him the Latin Secretaryship—the very post that Milton had held—but in this he had failed. One of the last glimpses of Oldenburg and Boyle together is at a little scientific supper-party in February 1676, given by Sir Joseph Williamson, who later became President of the Royal Society when Lord Brouncker resigned. Boyle was well enough to be at this supper-party; and Evelyn and Wren and Petty and one or two others were there, and “our Secretary, Mr. Oldenburg.”[329] Lady Ranelagh was away from home on a visit when the news of Oldenburg’s death reached her; and, knowing how much her brother would feel his death, she wrote Boyle one of her most comfortable letters, and made arrangements to return home at once.[330]