Letter 4153

Hyde writes to Sloane to inform him about receiving a letter about the Countess Boromeo being admitted to the Royal Society. Hyde has mentioned this matter to Mr. Coste and Mr. Cleland and several others who all agree that it is no more than a letter of complement to a stranger who had been acknowledged by men of her own country to have merit in the learned world and has been received into the Society of that nature, and he thinks it a great benefit to women. He adds that if Sloane wishes to talk about it to himself, Mr. Coste or Mr. Cleland, they will wait for him any evening Sloane pleases. However, Hyde believes that Sloane has probably had ample time to process the information and is of the opinion that it may be right to make the Lady the complement of putting her name upon the list. He would like Sloane to let him know when he will send her a letter, as he will transmit it for him. Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, was a politician who served as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland under James II. He went into self-imposed exile to avoid arrest after falling on the wrong side of the Glorious Revolution (1688), but returned to parliamentary politics in the 1690s (W. A. Speck, Hyde, Henry, second earl of Clarendon (16381709), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14329, accessed 9 July 2013]).