He was however appointed Physician extraordinary to _James_, and subsequently Physician in ordinary to king _Charles_ the 1st; by the latter he was highly esteemed and favoured, having been appointed during the residence of the king at Oxford to the Mastership of Merton College, vacant by the secession of the Warden, _Dr. Brent_, to the Parliamentary party; this appointment however, he did not hold long, being in turn displaced by his predecessor. Some time about 1652, the College having removed from their ancient house in Knight Rider Street to one at Amen Corner, _Dr. Harvey_ built them a library and public hall, which he granted for ever to the College, with his library and a valuable collection of instruments. _See 1 Stowe’s London_, 131. In 1654 _Harvey_ was unanimously elected President of the College of Physicians, but he excused himself on account of his age and infirmities; such however was his attachment to that body, best evinced by _donationes inter vivos_, that in 1656 he made over his personal estate in perpetuity for its use. He died in 1658, in the eightieth year of his age; his works were published by the College in 1766, in quarto, to which edition his life is prefixed, to which we refer, as also to _Aikin’s Biog. Mem. of Med._; _Halleri Bibl. Anat._; _Aikin’s Gen. Biog._ and the _Preface to Goodall’s Proceedings_. We should exceed our limits and wander from our purpose if we entered more fully into the biography of the many celebrated men who have since graced the College[70]; it is enough for us to have directed the reader’s attention by the preceding memoirs to the very rapid improvement which the science of Physic appears to have undergone immediately after its institution. The profession gained much in respectability by their incorporation, which afforded a unity of interest among its legitimate professors, at the same time that it armed them with extraordinary powers against their opponents: it also gave additional means to the learned of mutually communicating their researches and discoveries, at a time when the comparative scarcity of printed books rendered such intercourse doubly valuable. The dissolution of the monasteries, and the consequent dispersion of a host of ecclesiastical empirics, with the destruction of their prejudices and superstitions, as inconsistent with the progress of liberal science, as degrading to religious principle, completed the triumph which the foundation of the College had begun. The consequence is evident. England, which in the beginning of the sixteenth century had been behind all the then civilized world in medical knowledge, finds herself in the commencement of the nineteenth inferior to none in any branch, superior to most in some, and taking a decided lead in all the ramifications into which the science of physic and the sister arts have divided themselves.