Selden died November 30, 1654, and was buried in the Temple church. He left behind him no immediate relations, and he bequeathed nearly the whole of his fortune, amounting to nearly 40,000_l._, to his four executors, giving only one hundred pounds to each of the children of his sister, the wife of John Barnard, of Goring. His books and manuscripts he had originally given by his will to the University of Oxford; but that body having demanded of him a heavy bond for the restitution of a book which he desired to borrow from the public library, the bequest was struck out, and they were directed to be placed “in some convenient public library or college in one of the universities.” Sir M. Hale and his other executors, considering that they were the executors “of his will, and not of his passion,” transferred them to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. To learned men Selden was liberal and generous; and there is a letter from Casaubon in Parr’s ‘Life of Archbishop Usher,’ in which that distinguished scholar with great feeling says, “I was with Mr. Selden after I had been with your Grace, whom, upon some intimation of my present condition and necessities, I found so noble, as that he did not only presently furnish me with a very considerable sum of money, but was so free and forward in his expressions, as that I could not find in my heart to tell him much (somewhat I did) of my intention of selling, lest it should sound as a farther pressing upon him of whom I had received so much.” Milton terms Selden “the chief of learned men reputed in this land;” and Whitelocke states, “that his mind was as great as his learning, being very generous and hospitable.” Clarendon, who could not regard Selden with any political partiality, though he had in early life been on terms of intimacy with him, describes him to have been “a person whom no character can flatter or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit or virtue. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages (as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings), that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability were such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breeding.”