Towards the close of 1637, as it should seem, his father, who had purchased the manor of Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, took him home. In October, 1638, he was sent abroad, under the charge of a governor, with his brother Francis. They visited France, Switzerland, and Italy; and Philaretus’s narrative of his travels is not without interest. The only incident which we shall mention as occurring during this period, is one which may be thought by many scarcely worthy of notice. Boyle himself used to speak of it as the most considerable accident of his whole life; and for its influence upon his life it ought not to be omitted. While staying at Geneva, he was waked in the night by a thunder-storm of remarkable violence. Taken unprepared and startled, it struck him that the day of judgment was at hand; “whereupon,” to use his own words, “the consideration of his unpreparedness to welcome it, and the hideousness of being surprised by it in an unfit condition, made him resolve and vow, that if his fears that night were disappointed, all further additions to his life should be more religiously and watchfully employed.” He has been spoken of as being a sceptic before this sudden conversion. This does not appear from his own account, farther than as any boy of fourteen may be so called, who has never taken the trouble fully to convince himself of those truths which he professes to believe. On the breaking out of the rebellion in 1642, the troubled state of England, and the death of the Earl of Cork, involved the brothers in considerable pecuniary difficulties. They returned to England in 1644, and Robert, after a short delay, took possession of the manor of Stalbridge, which, with a considerable property in Ireland, had been bequeathed to him by his father. By the interest of his brother and sister, Lord Broghill and Lady Ranelagh, who were on good terms with the ruling party, he obtained protections for his property, and for the next six years made Stalbridge his principal abode. This portion of his life was chiefly spent in the study of ethical and natural philosophy; and his name began already to be respected among the men of science of the day. In 1652 he went to Ireland to look after his property, and spent the greater part of the next two years there. Returning to England in 1654, he settled at Oxford. That which especially directed him to this place, besides its being generally suited to the prosecution of all his literary and philosophical pursuits, was the presence of that knot of learned men, from whom the Royal Society took its rise. It consisted of a few only, but those eminent; Bishop Wilkins, Wallis, Ward, Wren, and others, who used to meet for the purpose of conferring upon philosophical subjects, and mutually communicating and reasoning on their respective experiments and discoveries.