which were under control of Parliament (rather than the king). Ward also gave over a considerable amount of his own salary to Greaves. Later life and death But Greaves' private fortune more than sufficed for all his wants till his death; he retired to London, married and occupied his leisure writing and editing books and manuscripts. He died in London aged 50, and was buried in the church of St Benet Sherehog, which was destroyed during the Great Fire of London. His brother Nicholas Greaves was his executor. He left his cabinet containing his coin collection to Sir John Marsham, and his astronomical instruments to the university, for the use of the Savilian professors. Two of his astrolabes (inscribed by his brother Nicholas) are in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford. (see External links) Greaves' astronomical instruments Greaves had entrusted his will to his friend and fellow-traveller in the Levant, the scholar of Arabic Edward Pococke. The will had originally stipulated that Greaves' collection of astronomical instruments (astrolabes, quadrants, telescopes etc.) was to be left to Oxford university. But by 1649 Greaves (who was staying at Sir John Marsham's house in Rochester, Kent) had become increasingly exasperated with the academic situation at Oxford since the civil war. He wrote to Pococke asking to him to send the will to blot out his gift of his instruments to the university (which had cost him more than a hundred pounds), because he "so far despaired of any future encouragement to learning and ingenuity in Oxford." Greaves repeated his request a few months later, asking Pococke to open the will and strike the words out himself. Pococke seems to have eventually complied with Greaves' wishes, since after Greaves' death in 1652 his executor and brother Nicholas Greaves kept hold of his late brother's collection. However, when the Commonwealth ended with the resignation of Richard Cromwell in 1659, Nicholas Greaves (in accordance with his late brother's original intent) presented the instruments - suitably inscribed - for the use of the Savilian Professors of Astronomy. They were kept in the professor's room at the top of the Eastern Tower of the Oxford Schools, now the Bodleian Library. A list of them appears in the 'Old Catalogue' of the Bodleian MSS In 1710 the collection was held in the Museum Savilianum. The instruments had disappeared by the 1920s when R. T. Gunther, the first