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I must now make a break in the regular line of narrative, to interpolate a chapter, without specifying any particular dates, as the visits of which this portion of my story treats were spread over a large space of time, and intersected many of the different passages of the life I have hitherto recorded.

To begin with Marston, the property of my uncle Lord Cork, and the early home of my dear father. Marston Bigot was a pretty place and had been purchased by our direct ancestor, Richard Boyle (surnamed the “great Earl of Cork”) from Sir John Ippisley, the representative of an old Somersetshire family in the neighbourhood. This ancestor of ours had a very large family, of whom four were sons, and every one created a peer, with the exception of the youngest, Robert, who declined the honour, and whose name is immortalised as the “Divine Philosopher of the World.” To Roger Boyle, his second son, Lord Cork gave an estate in Somersetshire; this gallant soldier and loyalist was first created Baron Broghill and afterwards Earl of Orrery. He was much attached to the royal cause, but during the Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell, who had a great admiration for his military genius, sent for him one day and placed two alternatives before him, namely, the command of an expedition against the Irish rebels, or a lodging in the Tower of London. “The choice is open to you,” he said; “in serving in this campaign you will be acting the part of a patriot, but if you prefer the walls of a prison, I have no more to say.”