But Geneva and its Mars’ Field lay behind him. And in front? Robert Boyle must have heard something of what had been happening at home. Accounts had reached him from time to time of the “dreadful confusion of affairs” in England, Ireland and Scotland. During those last two years in Geneva he must have heard all kinds of rumours of the struggle that was going on between the Parliament and the Crown, between the Prelates and the Presbyterians. His friends in Geneva must have talked of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the Great Assembly of Divines that was meeting in Westminster; and of Archbishop Laud, then still alive, still in prison, his trial still deferred. But it takes seeing to realise civil war. When Robyn arrived in England it was to find a kingdom in arms against itself, a nation divided into two great opposing armies; husbands and wives taking different sides, fathers and sons in opposite camps, brother against brother. The king’s headquarters were at Oxford; Prince Rupert with his Royalist army was in Lancashire. York was defended by the Marquis of Newcastle against the combined Parliamentarian forces under Manchester, Fairfax and Cromwell. Robert Boyle had arrived in England almost on the eve of the battle of Marston Moor. And what to do? There was only one thing at this moment that the great Earl’s Benjamin could think of doing. He was no soldier, this dreamy youth, with his books and his bows and arrows; but force of heredity—a kind of force of inertia—would have carried him into the Royalist camp. His brothers were all soldiers; though it is doubtful if he knew, when he came home, where they were and what they were doing. The very politics of the various members of this scattered family, the “sides” they were taking in the quick march of political events, must have been a puzzle to him. And so it was Robert Boyle’s intention to join the army, where he told himself he would find, besides his brothers, “the excellent King himself, divers eminent divines, and many worthy persons of several ranks.” But he knew also that “the generality of those he would have been obliged to converse with were very debauched, and apt, as well as inclinable, to make others so.” If Robert Boyle had joined the King’s army! It is difficult to think of him in “armor of prooff,” and quite impossible to picture him as a laughing Cavalier. He disliked “customary swearing”; he drank water; he did not smoke; he dearly loved to point a moral; and he never adorned a tale. It is certain no officers’ mess would have endured him for ten minutes, in the rôle either of sceptical chymist or of Christian virtuoso. And what would have become of the Invisible College, and the Royal Society?