Boyle, Narcissus Marsh and the Anglo-Irish Intellectual Scene in the Late Seventeenth Century 1

In this chapter, I want to use the career of Boyle, as an Irish-born natural philosopher, as a kind of prism to examine various aspects of Anglo-Irish relations during the second half of the seventeenth century. I will focus on the shared concerns that brought Boyle together with Narcissus Marsh in the 1680s, drawing on the 2001 edition of Boyle’s Correspondence, in which many of the letters between these two men were published for the first time. ² In particular, I will deal with the project for publishing the Bible in Irish that preoccupied Boyle and Marsh in these years, but I will also say a little about their other mutual interests – thus, I hope, shedding a small amount of new light on the background to the founding of the Dublin Philosophical Society in 1683.