Perhaps Some Details From The Education Of Robert Boyle Will Serve To
Illustrate The Manner Of Taking The Grand Tour.
His father, the great
Earl of Cork, was a devoted adherent to this form of education and
launched his numerous sons, two by two, upon the Continent.
He was, as
Boyle says, the sort of person "who supplied what he wanted in
scholarship himself, by being both a passionate affecter, and eminent
patron of it."[335] His journal for 1638 records first the return of "My
sones Lewis and Roger from their travailes into foreign kingdomes,...
ffor which their safe retorn, god be ever humbly and heartely thancked
and praised both by me and them."[336] In the same year he recovered the
Lord Viscount of Kynalmeaky and the Lord of Broghill, with Mr Marcombes,
their governor, from their foreign travels into France and Italy. Then
it was the turn of Francis and Robert, just removed from Eton College.
With the governor Marcombes, a French servant, and a French boy, they
departed from London in October 1639, "having his Majestie's license
under his hand and privy signett for to continew abrode 3 yeares: god
guide them abrod and safe back."[337]
Robert, according to his autobiography, was well satisfied to go, but
Francis, aged fifteen, had just been married to one of the Queen's Maids
of Honour, aged fourteen, and after four days of revelry was in no mood
to be thrust back into the estate of childhood.[338] High words passed
between him and his father on the occasion of his enforced departure for
Paris.
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