ABSTRACT
Of the two lists by made by Henry Miles, one is dated 10 February 1743 and the other is undated. The reason for the existence of the two separate lists can almost certainly be explained in terms of what we know about the history of the Robert Boyle archive in the early eighteenth century. The lists thus bear witness to a continuing process of sorting and tabulating Boyle's papers in the generation after his death, first by Wotton and then by Miles. The losses witnessed by the Miles lists, however, are only part of the story. A considerable amount of material had clearly been lost, dispersed, or destroyed even before Miles began gathering Boyle's literary remains in the 1730s. We turn to the content of Miles' inventories. Miles' 'List of Papers' itemises a series of bundles – the 'marks' to which the title refers must have been the cover-sheets to these bundles, which occasionally survive scattered through the Boyle Papers.
