The move from Middleton, though it released Ray from other ties and on his mother's death enabled him to devote twenty-five years to study and writing, had one serious effect. It cut him off from the collections and notes gathered during his continental tour, from books and other aids to his work. In the same letter to Aubrey he had written: ‘Mr Willughby's library remains at his house at Middleton for the use of his son and heir’, and when he was publishing the History of Fishes he complained that it was now impossible for him to get at the records or material. Later on Sloane was very good in sending him literature: the Braintree carrier was constantly taking parcels to and fro into which the kindly Irishman would put a present of sugar for the family. But the want of access to other books tended to confine Ray to botany, where he had a library of his own which he had refused even in the years of his homelessness to part with.