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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Michael Hunter and Lawrence Principe for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Thanks also to the audience, organizers and fellow speakers at the Robert Boyle Seminar at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin (December 2011) and the Robert Boyle Summer School in Lismore, Waterford (July 2012) for their questions and suggestions.
Notes
1 Burnet, A Sermon Preached, 32.
2 Webster, The Great Instauration, 62.
3 Lynch, “The Incomparable Lady Ranelagh,” 25–35; Hunter, “Sisters of the Royal Society,” 178–197; Hutton, “Jones [née Boyle], Katherine, Viscountess Ranelagh (1615–1691).”
4 For more information on the provenance of Boyle's manuscripts, see Hunter et al., The Boyle Papers.
5 DiMeo, “Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh,” introduction and Ch. 4.
6 Pal, Republic of Women, Ch. 5; Connolly, “A Proselytising Protestant Commonwealth”; Connolly, “‘A Wise and Godly Sybilla”; E. A. Taylor, “Writing Women, Honour, and Ireland.”
7 Sir John Leeke to Sir Edmund Verney, 13 September 1638, in Verney and Verney, Memoirs of the Verney Family, I, 124.
8 Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science, 21.
9 James Butler, First Duke of Ormonde to Lord Arlington, 24 August 1681, in Calendar of the Manuscripts, Vol. 6, 138.
10 Quoted in Verney and Verney, Memoirs of the Verney Family, I, 206.
11 Lady Katherine Jones to the Earl of Cork, 13 October 1640, Chatsworth House, Cork MSS, Box 21, Letter 61.
12 The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom states that Viscount Ranelagh was “one of the Captains in the army of the Commonwealth, having declared for the Parl[iament] in Mar[ch] 1642.” See Complete Peerage, X (1945), 731–32. Also see Hutton, “Jones [née Boyle], Katherine.”
13 Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science, 57.
14 British Library Sloane MS 4229, fol. 68r, printed in Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 25.
15 Boyle to Lady Ranelagh, 2 August 1649, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 80.
16 Boyle to Lady Ranelagh, 30 March 1646, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. I, 34.
17 Boyle, Early Essays and Ethics, 157–159 and 164.
18 Ibid., 179.
19 Boyle to Lady Ranelagh, 13 May 1648, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. I, 68.
20 Boyle to Lady Ranelagh, 13 November [1648?], Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. I, 76.
21 Boyle, Early Essays and Ethics, 203, n. 1.
22 Ibid., lviii, n. 78. For composition and publication dates, see xx.
23 Hartlib Papers 33/1/13A, Letter, Robert Wood to Hartlib, 8 April 1657; Hartlib Papers 51/102A–106B, Letter, John Beale to Hartlib, 26 March 1659; British Library Sloane MS 649, fols. 203–205; Hartlib Papers 26/13/1A–2B, Copy Questions & Letter in Scribal Hand, Lady Ranelagh to Hartlib.
24 Webster, “Benjamin Worsley,” 213–35.
25 Pal, Republic of Women, Ch. 5.
26 Hunter, “Robert Boyle's Early Intellectual Evolution: A Reappraisal,” in this volume of Intellectual History Review.
27 This is based on my own analysis of Ranelagh references in the Hartlib Papers. It also aligns with Charles Webster's wider analysis of chemistry in the Hartlib Circle. See Webster, “Benjamin Worsley,” 218–19.
28 Hartlib Papers 28/1/24B, Ephemerides April–August 1649, Part 2.
29 Greengrass, “Archive Refractions,” 44.
30 Boyle to Lady Ranelagh, 6 March 1647, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. I, 50.
31 Boyle, Works, Vol. 1, 1–12, and Boyle, Early Essays and Ethics, xx. Also see Hunter, “The Reluctant Philanthropist.”
32 Principe, Aspiring Adept, 149.
33 Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. I, 80.
34 Pal, Republic of Women, Ch. 5; DiMeo, “Openness vs. Secrecy.”
35 Lady Ranelagh to Boyle, 12 October [1655], Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. I, 193.
36 Shapin, “The House of Experiment.”
37 On Boyle and alchemy, see Principe, Aspiring Adept.
38 Hartlib Papers 39/3/25A–27B, with Enclosure, 5 July 1659. Words in < ··· > are Hartlib's additions to the letter. All Hartlib Papers quotations are taken from the transcriptions in Hartlib Papers. The letter is also available in Oldenburg, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 270.
39 Hall & Hall translate the title of this enclosure as “The Method in the Philosophical Work of Vitriol.” I quote from their English translation of the Latin. See Oldenburg, Correspondence, I, 275–277.
40 On secrets, see Eamon, Science and the Secrets, and Leong and Rankin, eds., Science and Knowledge.
41 Within the Hartlib Papers archive, there is a reference to Dr Butler in a letter dated one month earlier than Lady Ranelagh's narrative. See Hartlib Papers 33/1/48A–49B, Letter Robert Wood to Hartlib, 21 March 1659: “I heare there is one Mr. Butler (son to one Dr. Butler of Ireland, but not the famous Dr Butler of Cambridge who as I take it died unmarried) now living at Galoway, I have wrot to him <by a friend of mine & his> to the tenor of what you desire & what answer he returnes shall be transmitted to you.” A letter from Oldenburg to Freiherr von Friesen, 26 April 1649, also mentions a man near Montpellier who was trying to prepare “Butler's stone.” See Oldenburg, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 233–238.
42 I am quoting from the 1662 English translation: Van Helmont, Oriatrike, Or Physick Refined, 585–596.
43 Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, 221–222.
44 Webster, “Water as the Ultimate Principle”; Boyle, Works, Vol. 3, 347–348, 392–393.
45 Oldenburg to Boyle, 7 May 1659 in Oldenburg, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 252–254. (Also in Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 348–350.)
46 Yale University, Beinecke Library, James Marshal and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Document 38.
47 Newman, Gehennical Fire, 5.
48 John Winthrop had a life-long interest in alchemy, which he saw as an important element in his plans for social reform. Woodward, Prospero's America.
49 Hartlib Papers 7/7/1A–8B, Copy Letter, Hartlib to John Winthrop the Younger.
50 Ranelagh's more casual note to Hartlib is written on a separate piece of paper and includes typical epistolary conventions. The Butler narrative, however, is written with a wider audience in mind: it is more formal, is separated from casual correspondence, begins with “What I know of Buttlers story is this,” and ends with a large careful signature. It also includes Hartlib's corrections to punctuation and spelling, not found in the accompanying casual note.
51 Boyle, Works, Vol. 3, 348.
52 Boyle, Works, Vol. 3, 348, note c. In addition to the Higgins reference, Boyle's description of the narrative itself also matches Ranelagh's story. Therefore, though the “Butler's stone” Ranelagh describes is chrysopoetic and that described by Van Helmont is medicinal, Boyle himself drew a direct parallel between them.
53 Boyle, Works, Vol. 5, 63.
54 Boyle to Lady Ranelagh, 2 August 1649, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 79–82.
55 Hartlib Papers 42/10/1A–4B, William Rand to Hartlib, 15 August 1656. William Rand (1617–1663) was a chemical physician associated with the Hartlib Circle who split his time between England and the Netherlands. Charles Webster has argued that Rand's society was a forerunner to the Society of Chemical Physicians that was founded after the Restoration. See Webster, “English Medical Reformers.”
56 Lady Ranelagh to Robert Boyle, 14 September [1652], in Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 135–138. Also see DiMeo, “Rhetoric of Medical Authority.”
57 On the traditional role of early modern gentlewomen as medical practitioners, see Fissell, “Introduction: Women, Health, and Healing.”
58 Ranelagh to Robert Boyle, 3 December [1659], Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 396. All but the last sentence of this paragraph is a direct quotation from Oldenburg's original letter, though no longer extant. See Oldenburg, Correspondence, Vol. 1, 336.
59 Hunter, Science and Society, esp. Ch. 2.
60 Hunter, The Royal Society.
61 Robert Hooke lived in Ranelagh's home in the early 1660s until he was allocated accommodation in Gresham College in August 1664. Jardine, “Hooke the Man,” 198, n. 6. For John Evelyn, see note 89, below.
62 John Beale to Boyle, 26 [June] 1682, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 5, 303. Also see John Beale to Boyle, 27 November 1671, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 4, 228.
63 Lady Ranelagh to Boyle, 13 November 1666, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 3, 269. For Oldenburg's report to the Royal Society, see Birch, History of the Royal Society, Vol. 2, 121.
64 Lady Ranelagh to Boyle, 29 July 1665, Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 2, 498.
65 British Library Add. MS 75354, fols. 70–73, Lady Ranelagh to Lord Burlington, 25 May [1667]; British Library Add. MS 75354, fols. 97–98, Lady Ranelagh to the Earl of Burlington, 30 July [1667].
66 Boyle, Works, Vol. 3, 416 and 431.
67 DiMeo, “Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh,” Ch. 4 and 5.
68 Boyle, Works, Vol. 3, 346, 368, 538.
69 Ibid., 384–385.
70 Ibid., 430–431.
71 Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, 220–222.
72 Boyle, Works, Vol. 3, 393.
73 Ibid., 416.
74 Ibid., 538.
75 Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 3, 234.
76 Quoted in Hunter, “The Reluctant Philanthropist,” 203.
77 Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 3, 270.
78 Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science, 166.
79 Jardine, Curious Life of Robert Hooke, 91.
80 Robinson and Adams, Diary of Robert Hooke, 341.
81 Shapin, Never Pure, 191.
82 Lady Ranelagh to Boyle, 11 Sep. [1677], Boyle, Correspondence, Vol. 4, 454–455.
83 West Sussex Record Office, Petworth House, Orrery MS 13219. Unpaginated. While the letter is undated, it must date after Elizabeth Boyle married Folliott Wingfield, later Viscount Powerscourt, which probably happened in 1662. See Lynch, Roger Boyle, 113.
84 British Library Add. MS 75354, fols. 61r–62v, Lady Ranelagh to the Earl of Burlington, 27 April 1667.
85 Boyle, Works, Vol. 10, 42.
86 Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science, 131, and see Ch. 12.
87 Fitzsimon, “Conversion, the Bible and the Irish Language.”
88 Ibid., 170.
89 John Evelyn to William Wotton, 29 March 1696, printed in Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 90.
90 Maddison, Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 258.