CurlError: error:1407742E:SSL

[ZigTheZig]

I'm new to Reutils and R so no doubt I am missing something simple. Apologies.
Using Rstudio on Windows. Installed rtools40 and added to path.

install.packages("reutils")
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/xxx/Documents/R/win-library/4.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/reutils_0.2.3.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 372418 bytes (363 KB)
downloaded 363 KB
package ‘reutils’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

all attempts to call a function give CurlError. like this

library(reutils)
pmid <- esearch("Chlamydia psittaci[titl] and 2013[pdat]", "pubmed")
Warning: CurlError: error:1407742E:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:tlsv1 alert protocol version
pmid
Object of class ‘esearch’
[1] "CurlError: error:1407742E:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:tlsv1 alert protocol version"

or this

plasmid <-efetch (uid="NZ_CP010175.1",db="nuccore", retmode="text", rettype="fasta")
Warning: CurlError: error:1407742E:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:tlsv1 alert protocol version
plasmid
Object of class ‘efetch’
[1] "CurlError: error:1407742E:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:tlsv1 alert protocol version"
EFetch query using the ‘nuccore’ database.
Query url: ‘https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?=efetch&db=nuccore...’
Retrieval type: ‘fasta’, retrieval mode: ‘text’

any help appreciated
TheZig