Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1899 (IA b24975941).pdf/17

 This made an end of the semblance of Court life. The King was now practically a fugitive and the Royal Household all adrift.

When the King's cause reached its final catastrophe in 1649, it must have brought to Harvey a deep sense of personal loss, for we have abundant proof that the physician enjoyed the absolute confidence of Charles, who at Edgehill confided to his keeping those that were dearest to him, and who chose Merton College as a safe asylum for his Queen at a time when Harvey was its warden.

From 1649 Harvey, who was now a widower, was without a home of his own; but we find him in the City, or at Roehampton, or at Combe, as the wel- come guest of one or other of his brothers, who had so well managed his worldly affairs that he was, despite the troublous times, very well off. He still retained the Lumleian lectureship. It was in 1650 that Ent, in a famous interview, obtained from Harvey the manuscripts of his work on generation. In 1651 Harvey expressed his intention of building a library and muscum for our College, which was opened in 1653; and the year following he excused himself, on the score of age, from assuming the burden of our Presidency. In 1656 he resigned the Lumleian Lectureship, which he had held for forty years, and in doing so gave us his estate at Bur- marsh; and on June 3rd, 1657, he died at the age of seventy-nine.*


 * Some eight or ten generations of men have passed away since