Question Using Old R Packages

In case anyone else is having similar problems, it turns out it may have been
an issue with the interface I was using (R Studio). When I close R Studio
and tried it again through R it installed without the error message.

You should report this as a serious bug to the R Studio developers.  It 
sounds as though it is looking in the wrong location for packages to 
install.  You were "lucky" in that rgl wasn't in that location, but in 
other cases it may be finding the wrong version.

Duncan Murdoch