Thus we see Harvey continuing engaged in that study of the mysteries of reproduction and development to which he devoted so many years and so many toils. He must have commenced his studies on this subject at least early in Charles’s reign. In 1645, while the King and his physician still remained at Oxford, Sir Nathaniel Brent having quitted Merton College, of which he was Warden, and taken the Covenant, Harvey was appointed Warden in his place by virtue of a royal mandate. He had indeed lost more than his time in following the royal fortunes, and deserved any reward the King could bestow upon him. At the close of the sixty-eighth section of his treatise on Generation Harvey says, “Let gentle minds forgive me if, recalling the irreparable injuries I have suffered, I here give vent to a sigh. This is the cause of my sorrow: whilst in attendance on his Majesty during our late troubles and more than civil wars, not only with the permission but by the command of the Parliament, certain rapacious hands stripped not only my house of all its furniture, but what is subject of far greater regret with me, my enemies abstracted from my museum the fruits of many years of toil. Whence it has come to pass that many observations, particularly on the generation of insects, have perished, with detriment, I venture to say, to the republic of letters.”[10] The Wardenship of Merton was not long Dr. Harvey’s, for when Oxford surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in July 1646, he quitted the university and returned to London, and Sir Nathaniel Brent was reinstated in his former position. Nothing has been ascertained of the reason for Harvey’s cessation of personal attendance on the King at this period, but it is certain that he took refuge in the homes of his brothers, each of whom, whether in the City, at Lambeth, at Roehampton, or at Combe, kept special apartments reserved for him. It is most pleasing, indeed, to note the great brotherly affection existing in this family. The earliest of them to die, Thomas Harvey, in 1622, has the following inscription on his monumental tablet. “As in a Sheaf of Arrows. _Vis unita fortior._ The Band of Love the Uniter of Brethren.” Thus, leaving his financial concerns in charge of his brother Eliab, William devoted himself, at the age of sixty-eight, more fully to his researches on Generation, which his friend Dr. Ent extracted from him at Christmas 1650.