t Seal. Selden
subscribed the Covenant in 1643, and was made Keeper of the Rolls and
Records in the Tower. In 1645 he was appointed a Commissioner of the
Admiralty, and in the same year he was elected Master of Trinity Hall,
Cambridge, an office he declined to accept. Parliament voted him five
thousand pounds in 1647 as compensation for his sufferings during the
monarchy; but Wood states that 'some there are that say that he refused
and could not out of conscience take it, and add that his mind was as
great as his learning, full of generosity and harbouring nothing that
seemed base.' Although he remained in Parliament after the execution of
the King, he almost entirely withdrew from public affairs, and, it is
said, refused to write a reply to the _Eikon Basilike_ when requested to
do so by Cromwell. Selden died on November 30, 1654, at Friary House,
Whitefriars, the residence of Elizabeth, Countess Dowager of Kent, to
whom it was reputed he had been married. He was interred in the Temple
Church, where a monument was erected to his memory.

Selden collected a very fine library, 'rich in classics and science,
theology and history, law and Hebrew literature,' of which about eight
thousand volumes were eventually added to the Bodleian Library. Selden
had bequeathed his books to the Bodleian; but it is said he was so
offended with the University for refusing the loan of a manuscript
except upon a bond for one thousand pounds, that he revoked the
bequest, and left them to the free disposal of his executors. They
offered the collection to the Society of the Inner Temple, but as no
building was provided for its reception, they carried out the original
intention of Selden, and gave it in 1659 to the Bodleian, stipulating at
the same time that all the books should be chained, and L25, 10s. was
expended for that purpose. There is no doubt, however, that a
considerable number of the manuscripts came into the possession of that
library soon after Selden's death, and the entire affair is involved in
some obscurity. The Rev. W.D. Macray, who, in his _Annals of the
Bodleian Library_, goes very fully into the matter, gives another reason
for Selden's displeasure. 'In July 1649,' he writes, 'the new intruded
officers and fellows of Magdalene College found in the Muniment-room in
the cloister-tower of the College a large sum of money in the old
coinage called Spur-royals, or Ryals, amounting to L1400, the equivalent
of which had been left