Nobody could have been very glad to see Robert Boyle come back again; least of all Tom Murray, whom the old Earl had left in charge, and who proved himself to have been, during his reign there, as untrustworthy as Mr. Perkins the London tailor. “The roguery of Tom Murray” was one of the first difficulties that faced the young squire. Two other pieces of business, however, could have admitted of no delay. Marcombes was to be repaid; and partly to that end, apparently, in August 1645, as soon as Robert Boyle could put his hands on some of his own money, he set out from Stalbridge, “the necessities of my affairs,” as he explained in a letter to his brother Broghill, “calling me away (according to the leave the Parliament has given me) into France.”[126] By August 1645, the New Model had done extraordinary things. In the spring, Cromwell and Waller had been in the west of England. Naseby had been fought in June, and the King’s private correspondence taken and published. In July, George Goring had been badly beaten in the west; Bath had surrendered on July 30. Was Robert Boyle still at Stalbridge on August 15, when Sherborne Castle was stormed and battered—Sherborne Castle, where the old Earl and his sons had killed that buck and dined the very day that Lady Ranelagh’s baby had been born? Probably not. It was probably wise that he should absent himself, “according to the leave the Parliament had given him.” At any rate, he was well away from English shores again when on September 10 there came “the splendid success of the storming of Bristol.”[127] It is not known if Robert Boyle went so far as Geneva, or whether he actually saw his old governour again; but in any case his visit was a brief one. His business was done, and he was back in London before the end of that year, staying with Lady Ranelagh, and able to attend to the other business that remained to be done—if indeed it had not been done before he left Stalbridge in August.