Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh (22 March 1615 – 23 December 1691), also known as Lady Ranelagh, was an Anglo-Irish scientist in seventeenth-century Ireland and England. She was also a political and religious philosopher, and a member of many intellectual circles including the Hartlib Circle, the Great Tew Circle, and the Invisible College. Her correspondents included Samuel Hartlib, Edward Hyde, William Laud (the Archbishop of Canterbury), Thomas Hyde, and John Milton. She was the sister of Robert Boyle and is thought to have been a great influence on his work in chemistry. In her own right, she was a political and social figure closely connected to the Hartlib Circle. Lady Ranelagh held a London salon during the 1650s, much frequented by virtuosi associated with Hartlib.
Katherine Boyle was born in New College House on Emmet Street in Youghal, Ireland, to Catherine Fenton and Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, on 22 March 1615. She was the seventh child of fifteen. Her siblings included the scientist, Robert Boyle, and the spiritual diarist Mary Rich, later Countess of Warwick. It is not clear how much education she received, although it is known that her brothers received an extensive education. She may have been tutored privately by the family chaplains and received an education in religion and manners. As a wealthy man, her father made sure that his sons were well educated and that he secured politically advantageous marriages for his daughters.
When Jones was nine and a half years old, she moved in with the Beaumont family because she was to be wedded to one of their sons, Sapcott Beaumont. When she was thirteen, Beaumont's father died; this event caused the marriage arrangements between the couple to dissolve. She moved back home and two years later married Arthur Jones, heir to Viscount Ranelagh, at the age of 15 and she became known as Katherine Jones. It was common for noble women to get married at a younger age, but normally women of this time would not get married until their twenties. As evidenced through letters to her father from her husband, it is insinuated that Arthur Jones was unfaithful to her. Their marriage was not a good one. They spent most of their time living apart, Katherine moving back and forth between Ireland and London, and Arthur spending much of his time travelling. They had three daughters and one son: Catherine, Elizabeth, Frances, and Richard. Katherine lived in Ireland until 1642 when she was trapped in Athlone Castle for four months due to the rebellions in Ireland. Frustrated, she moved to London with her four children in tow.
In 1630, Jones's mother died, causing her bereaved father to erect a monument in St. Patrick's Cathedral which depicts the Boyle family as statues with the parents in the middle surrounded by their children. After her mother's death, Jones assumed a maternal role for her younger siblings Robert and Mary. In one of his memoirs, Robert Boyle recalls a time when Katherine chastised him for eating plums that he was meant to save for his pregnant sister-in-law. Further accounts suggest that Katherine supplied similar moral guidance to her younger siblings throughout their lives and up until her death.
In the mid-1640s in London, she came to be a friend and supporter of John Milton, sending him as pupil her nephew Richard Barry in 1645. Sometime later, Milton also taught her son Richard.
Apart from Samuel Hartlib and his closest ally John Dury, she knew John Beale, Arnold Boate and Gerard Boate, Sir Cheney Culpeper, Theodore Haak, William Petty, Robert Wood, and Benjamin Worsley. Christopher Hill suggested that her house may have been the meeting place of the "Invisible College" of the later 1640s. From 1656 Henry Oldenburg was tutor to her son Richard. In the 1650s her brother Robert Boyle had a laboratory in her London house, as well as in Oxford, and they experimented together. She was also prominent in the Hartlib Circle of correspondents. She commissioned Robert Hooke in 1676 to modify her house to include a laboratory for her brother.
Her letters suggest that her influence and encouragement on Boyle's work were considerable. Boyle credited her in some of his works but using terms like "a great Lady" rather than her name. His contemporaries widely acknowledged Jones's influence on his work, but later historiographies dropped her from the record. Theirs was "a lifelong intellectual partnership, where brother and sister shared medical remedies, promoted each other's scientific ideas, and edited each other's manuscripts."
In 1656, she went to Ireland on family business, staying several years. With Arthur Annesley and William Morice she interceded for Milton, arrested after the English Restoration of 1660. In 1668 her brother came to live with her on Pall Mall. They lived together for the last 23 years of their lives and both died in 1691 within a short period of time. They are buried in the south chancel of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.
She had four children over the span of her life. Her children were:
Catherine, born 1633, who married Sir William Parsons and then in 1660 Hugh Montgomery, 1st Earl of Mount Alexander. Later on, Catherine and Hugh would have a child named Catherine Montgomery. She would go on to marry Sir Francis Hamilton, 3rd Baronet of Castle Hamilton.
Elizabeth, Jones's second daughter, was born around 1635 and would then go on to marry a footman much to her mother's dismay.
Frances, born in Stalbridge in Dorset, England, on 17 August 1639, was Jones's youngest daughter. Frances was born prematurely and was often sick. She never married and instead lived with her mother for the majority of her life.
Richard Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh, was born 8 February 1641. Richard was the only son born to Jones and her husband. He went on to marry Elizabeth Willoughby and they had three daughters together, Elizabeth, Frances, and Catherine. After Elizabeth, his wife, died he went on to marry the widow Lady Margaret Cecil. They did not produce any children together.
Katherine Jones was involved in a number of intellectual circles including the Great Tew Circle, the Hartlib Circle, and the Invisible College. These intellectual circles were precursors to the Royal Society and included natural philosophers and experimenters. The Invisible College included many of Robert Boyle's acquaintances who were geographically spread out. Also, the Invisible College would often meet at Katherine Jones's house mainly due to the fact that she was Robert Boyle's oldest sister. Although their main interest was in science, they also believed in social improvements in aspects of education, science, and technology. The Great Tew Circle was started by Jones's friend Lucius Cary, the Viscount of Falkland. Members of the Great Tew Circle included Edward Hyde, William Chillingworth, Gilbert Sheldon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Hobbes, Henry Hammond, Nicolas Culpeper and many others The Great Tew Circle's main. The Great Tew Circle which started with a couple of friends who conversed and studied together, became a place for people to go study and discuss their findings. This Circle of intellectuals was said to be a place where "liberty of conscience was preserved and respected."
Among Jones's intellectual acquaintances was Samuel Hartlib, creator of the Hartlib Circle group. She was introduced to Hartlib by her aunt Dorothy Moore when she first arrived in London in 1642. Hartlib collected correspondence from many intellectuals including Milton, René Descartes, John Dury, Lady Barrington, Benjamin Worsley, and Jones herself. It is known that Hartlib and Jones were very close. Among the collected letters of Samuel Hartlib is one in which Jones gives real estate advice to the Butlers. Hartlib even used Jones's address in London to receive letters. Jones's house often became a meeting place for people of many different political and religious backgrounds to discuss ideas.
Another one of Jones's friends was Thomas Willis, a writer and physician and member of the Oxford Club. The Oxford Club was a group of experimentalists looking to develop new and better ways to treat people's medical needs. Thomas Willis used Mayerne's Pharmacopoeia in his work of chemical experiments. Willis and Jones worked closely together on medical recipes and a few of her recipes even found their way into Willis's book, Pharmaceutice rationalis, written in 1674, although it is unclear which of Katherine's recipes he used. The Pharmaceutice rationalis is said to have pioneered the way we perceive anatomy and medicine today.