Indeed, Marcombes was a very good governor, as Robert several times assured the Earl of Cork, and allowed them to lack for nothing.  In the spring he bought them saddle-horses so that after their studies they might take the air and see their friends.  Since a governor had charge of all the funds, it was a great test of his honesty whether he resisted the temptation to economize on the clothes and spending-money of his pupils, and to pocket the part of their allowance so saved.  This is why Marcombes often lets fall into his letters to the Earl of Cork items such as these:  “I have made a compleat black satin sute for Mr Robert:  ye cloake Lined with plush, and I allow them every moneth a peese ye value of very neare two pounds sterlings for their passe time."[347]

The only disturbing elements in the satisfactory state of Marcombes and his pupils were the Killigrews.  Thomas Killigrew, he who afterwards became one of the dramatists of the Restoration, had then only just outgrown the estate of page to Charles I., and in strolling about the Continent he paid the Boyles a visit.[348] As the brother of the wife whom Mr Francis had left at home, and on his own account as a fascinating courtier, he cast a powerful but baleful influence upon the household in Geneva.  Marcombes was at first very guarded in his remarks, writing only that “Mr Kyligry is here since Saturday Last ... but I think he will not Stay long:  which perhaps will be ye better for yr sons:  for although his conversation is very sweet and delectable yet they have no need of interruption, specially Mr francis, which was much abused in his Learning by his former teachers:  and although he hath a great desire to redime ye time, yet he cannot follow his younger brother, and therefore he must have time, and avoid ye company of those yt care not for their bookes."[349] But when it appeared that Killigrew had told the Earl of Cork that Marcombes kept the brothers shabbily dressed, the governor unfolded his opinion of the rising dramatist as “one that speakes ill of his own mother and of all his friends and that plays ye foole allwayes through ye streets like a Schoole Boy, having Allwayes his mouth full of whoores and such discourses, and braging often of his getting mony from this or ye other merchant without any good intention to pay."[350] His company fomented in Mr Francis a boastful spirit, “never speaking of any thing but what he should doe when he should once more command his state, how many dogs he shoulde keepe; how many horses; how many fine bands, sutes and rubans, and how freely he would play and keepe Company with good fellowes, etc."[351]

Thomas Killigrew’s sister, the wife of Mr Francis, was also a very disturbing person.  She would correspond with her husband and urge him to run away from his tutor, and suggested coming to the Continent herself and meeting him.[352] These plots she made with the assistance of her brother, whom she much resembled in disposition.[353] There is no knowing what havoc she would have made with the carefully planned education of the Boyles, for Francis at the end of two years became dangerously restive, had not their tour been decisively ended by the first rumblings of the Civil War at home.