There were, it will be remembered, certain deeds in a sealed box left by the old Earl in the hands of Mr. Peter Naylor of New Inn. But they were duplicates. The originals had been left with Lord Howard of Escrick, the father of “My Robyn’s yonge Mrs.” and the uncle of Broghill’s wife, Lady Pegg. They embodied the old Earl’s last effort in family match-making; a fitting match for the youngest son of the great Earl of Cork, which would further unite the families of Cecil, Howard, and Boyle; already intermarried, as Broghill’s wife was a niece of Lord Edward Howard, Lady Salisbury his sister, and Lady Dungarvan’s mother a Cecil. The old Earl had done his very best for his Benjamin. And it is a mistake to suppose it probable that the children had never met. They may very well have made shy advances to one another during those weeks in the autumn of 1639 when Frank and Robyn were in London, just before Frank’s wedding. The House of the Savoy and Salisbury House were very near each other; the families were often together; and little Ann Howard—her mother dead—was often with Lady Salisbury. The two children may even have made a pretty and much-admired pair at Frank’s wedding in Whitehall, and hence may have come the old Earl’s confident “My Robyn’s yonge Mrs.” But there it had ended: the children, if they met then, had never seen each other since; and in five years they had both grown up. It was in 1642 that the old Earl commissioned Lady Pegg to carry to her little cousin the ring “besett rownd with diamonds”; but now it was 1645, and many things had happened. The vast Irish estates had been devastated in the Rebellion. Dorsetshire had been scourged by civil war; and Robyn had come back penniless and foreign-looking from Geneva, and was returning to his “ruined cottage in the country” to examine and administer his disordered affairs as best he could. A boy of eighteen, Robert Boyle had come back heart-whole. Evelyn has left it on record that there were very few fair ladies in Geneva, when he and Captain Wray[128] and the poet Waller stopped there on their homeward journey, in 1646. “This towne,” wrote Evelyn, “is not much celebrated for beautifull women, for even at this distance from the Alps the gentlewomen have something full throats; but our Captain Wray ... fell so mightily in love with one of Mons. Saladine’s[129] daughters that with much persuasion he could not be persuaded to think on his journey into France.” Robert Boyle had not fallen in love with any of M. Saladine’s daughters; and his views on the subject of marriage would scarcely have been understood by Captain Wray. “Marriage,” wrote Robert Boyle from Stalbridge when he was scarcely twenty, “is not a bare present, but a legal exchange of hearts;—and the same contract that gives you right to another’s, ties you to look upon your own as another’s goods, and too surely made over to remain any longer in your gift.”