Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh

Her siblings included the scientist, Robert Boyle, and the spiritual diarist, her sister, Lady Mary Rich, later Countess of Warwick.

[5] In 1630, Jones's mother passed away, 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.

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.

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.

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.

Hartlib collected correspondence from many intellectuals including Milton, René Descartes, John Dury, Lady Barrington, Benjamin Worsley, and Jones herself.

Jones's house often became a meeting place for people of many different political and religious backgrounds to discuss ideas.

Many people know of Jones because of her involvement in science and medicine, but her letters reveal that she was an avid political and religious philosopher.

[26] She used the connections she had with people through familial ties and friends in order to disperse information about the English Civil Wars and other politically charged situations.

She would often write to powerful acquaintances during the civil wars that held high positions in order to sway peace between both parties.

In the 1640s due to her determination to spread critical thinking throughout all of Europe, she changed her political beliefs to support a republic.

This likely had to do with King Charles I of England, who became increasingly resistant to ceding any political power to Parliament in order to achieve peace during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

[28] In the letter, she offered advice to Hyde to give to Charles on ways in which he might reconcile with Parliament to end the war quickly.

[29] Initially, Jones had sent a letter to Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, in the late 1640s to encourage her to talk to Charles, her brother.

[31] In 1648, Jones wrote to the Hartlib circle listing out seven questions total relating to the recent changes in political power.

These religious radicals, Protestants, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, banded together in order to face the opposition of the Church of England.

[33] Jones believed in respecting other people despite their religious affiliations and fought to unite nonconformist and conformists during the Great Plague of 1665.

With her aunt, the writer Dorothy King, Jones discussed how the education of girls had to be reformed to include "reason and intellect" instead of just domestic topics.

In August 1646, four years after she had arrived in London, she blatantly criticized the King (Charles) for not negotiating a peaceful compromise with parliament after defeat.

According to Lynette Hunter, Jones had a chemistry set built for her brother in her home so that he could practice scientific experiments.

[39] However, Michelle DiMeo argues persuasively that the handwriting of "Hand One" in 'Kitchen-Physick' matches more closely that of her sister-in-law Margaret Boyle, Countess of Orrery.

DiMeo emphasizes that the cookbook should be read as a multi-authored "compilation of the Orrery family's household knowledge and practice".

The techniques mentioned in these recipes range from common methods such as bruising herbs in a mortar, to highly technical skills and apparatus for distillation.

Jones's medical practice, therefore, was broad-ranging and included new and expensive scientific technologies as well as household and folk methods.

Her brother, Robert Boyle, died on 31 December 1691, and left a behind a will which named Katherine Jones as the executor and the first person on his list of beneficiaries.

At the funeral, a friend and bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet spoke in remembrance of Katherine and his words are said to be one of the most famous depictions of her.

[20] His full remembrance: "She lived the longest on the publickest Scene, she made the greatest Figure in all the Revolutions of these Kingdoms for above fifty Years, of any Woman of our Age.

She was contented with what she had; and though she was twice stript of it, she never moved on her own account, but was the general Intercessor for all Persons of Merit, or in want: This had in her the better Grace, and was both more Christian and more effectual, because it was not limited within any narrow Compass of Parties or Relations.

When any Party was down, she had Credit and Zeal enough to serve them, and she employed that so effectually, that in the next Turn she had a new stock of Credit, which she laid out wholly in that Labour of Love, in which she spent her Life and though some particular Opinions might shut her up in a divided Communion, yet her Soul was never of a Party: She divided her Charities and Friendships both, her Esteem a well as her Bounty, with the truest Regard to Merit, and her own Obligations, without any Difference, made upon the Account of Opinion.

She had with a vast Reach both of Knowledge and Apprehensions, a universal Affability and Easiness of Access, a Humility that descended to the meanest Persons and Concerns, an obliging Kindness and Readiness to advise those who had no occasion for any further Assistance from her; and with all these and many more excellent Qualities, she had the deepest Sense of Religion, and the most constant turning of her Thoughts and Discourses that way, that has been perhaps in our Age.