Editing Robert Boyle (section)

===Later years===
[[File:boyle-hooke.jpg|thumb|right|[[Shelley Memorial#Boyle-Hooke plaque|Plaque]] at the site of Boyle and Hooke's experiments in Oxford]]
In 1669 his health, never very strong, began to fail seriously and he gradually withdrew from his public engagements, ceasing his communications to the Royal Society, and advertising his desire to be excused from receiving guests, "unless upon occasions very extraordinary", on Tuesday and Friday forenoon, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. In the leisure thus gained he wished to "recruit his spirits, range his papers", and prepare some important chemical investigations which he proposed to leave "as a kind of Hermetic legacy to the studious disciples of that art", but of which he did not make known the nature. His health became still worse in 1691,<ref name=EB1911/> and he died on 31 December that year,<ref>{{cite book|last=Hunter|first=Michael|title=Robert Boyle Reconsidered|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521892674|page=xvii|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qTq1Kr7fr6QC&pg=PR17|edition=Reprint}}</ref> just a week after the death of his sister, Katherine, in whose home he had lived and with whom he had shared scientific pursuits for more than twenty years. Boyle died from paralysis. He was buried in the churchyard of [[St Martin-in-the-Fields]], his funeral sermon being preached by his friend, Bishop [[Gilbert Burnet]].<ref name=EB1911/> In his will, Boyle endowed a series of lectures that came to be known as the [[Boyle Lectures]].