The Life and Times of John Wilkins

[Illustration: WARDEN WILKINS. ]

Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge;and Bishop of Chester

BY

P. A. WRIGHT HENDERSONWARDEN OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD

William Blackwood and SonsEdinburgh and London1910

_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_

_DEDICATED TO THE MEMBERS OF WADHAM COLLEGE. _

PREFACE. 

This little book is written as an offering to the Members of WadhamCollege for the Tercentenary of its foundation. The writer makes nopretensions to learning or research: the title of the book would bemisleading and ridiculous if taken to imply a profound study of thetimes of Bishop Wilkins, from his birth in 1614 to his death in 1672, the most important, perhaps, certainly the most interesting, in thehistory of Great Britain. It has been attempted only to touch on thegreat questions and events which shaped the life and character of aremarkable man. Use has been made freely and often, without dueacknowledgment, of the 'History of Wadham College, ' written by Mr T. G. Jackson, R. A. , one of its Honorary Fellows and distinguished alumni; ahistory of the building and architecture of the College, which no onebut he could have written, --a history also of its social and academicallife from its beginning to the present day. 

Nor has less use been made of Mr J. Wells' History of the College, ofwhich he is a Fellow. He will, I am sure, pardon my impertinence insaying that in his book are combined diligent research and a sense ofhumour and of the picturesque, excellences rarely found together inhistorians. Mr R. B. Gardiner, formerly Scholar of Wadham, has earnedits gratitude by his invaluable 'Registers of Admissions, ' which, it isto be hoped, he will bring down to 1910 or later: they will make easythe work of some member of the College, who will doubtless arise towrite a _magnum opus_, the history of the College in everyaspect--architectural, social, and academical. 

For it the writer will use, as I have done for this little book, thenotes and comments of Mr Andrew Clark on Wood's 'Life and Times, ' andother volumes published by the Oxford Historical Society. 

My thanks are due also to Dr Butler, the Master of Trinity, Cambridge, for his kindness in telling me what little there is to tell of Wilkins'short tenure of the Mastership. 

The Bishop of Chester, Dr Jayne, formerly a Scholar of Wadham, nowBishop of the Diocese which Wilkins held, has helped me with informationabout the short episcopate of his predecessor. For it I am grateful tohim, as well for the suggestion or command which led to my firstattempt, made four years ago, to write something about Wilkins. 

The too short article in the 'Dictionary of National Biography' has beenof much service: it gives the bibliography of the subject, or anequivalent, for no life of Wilkins has been written till now, andindicates the sources of information about him: it also puts in clearorder the events of his varied life. Mr Sanders must know much which heshould be gently forced to tell. 

Fain would I acknowledge to Wood and Aubrey the debt I owe to them, especially to Wood, and ask his pardon for occasional ill-naturedremarks about him, as ill-natured nearly as his own about most of hiscontemporaries. 

The only merit claimed for this _libellus_ is its brevity--no smallrecommendation in this age of "exhaustive treatment" when, inbibliography especially, it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. It is an inadequate expression of the writer's affection for the Collegein which he has spent more than forty years of his life, and theunvarying kindness and indulgence which he has received from pupils andcolleagues. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE

 I. HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE FROM ITS FOUNDATION TO THE BEGINNING OF WILKINS' WARDENSHIP 1

 II. WILKINS' LIFE TILL HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE WARDENSHIP 30

III. WILKINS' WARDENSHIP 54

 IV. WILKINS AFTER HIS LIFE AT OXFORD 105

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

 PAGE

WARDEN WILKINS _Frontispiece_

NICHOLAS WADHAM 12

DOROTHY WADHAM 16

ADMIRAL BLAKE 28

WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE WARDEN'S GARDEN 48

WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE COLLEGE GARDEN 78

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN 100

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN WILKINS. 

CHAPTER I. 

HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE FROM ITS FOUNDATION TO THE BEGINNING OF WILKINS'WARDENSHIP. 

Wadham College was founded in 1610, when on July 31st thefoundation-stone was laid; and opened in 1613, when, on April 20th, theWarden and Fellows elected by the Foundress were admitted; the Warden, by the Vice-Chancellor of the University in St Mary's Church; thefifteen Fellows by the Warden in the College Hall; the fifteen Scholarsby the Warden and Fellows in the same place. All of them, from theWarden to the Junior Scholars, were sworn to obey the Statutes of theCollege, save three of the Scholars, who were supposed to be too youngto understand the nature of an oath. 

A site had been found on the ground where had stood the Priory of theAugustine Friars, founded in 1268--suppressed in 1540. It had beengradually removed or destroyed by time and plunder of its materials: notraces of it are left, except on the west side of the Warden's garden, apostern-gate which he maintains was used by the friars for variouspurposes. Another memorial of the Priory survived till 1800--the phraseof "doing Austins. " Up to that date, or near it, every Bachelor of Artswas required once in each year to "dispute and answer ad Augustinenses, "and the chapel or refectory of the Priory were convenient places inwhich to hold the disputations. In the University no official title, noname indeed of any kind, escapes abbreviation or worse indignity, instances of which will readily suggest themselves to the mind of anyOxford reader. 

The founders were Nicholas Wadham and Dorothy, his wife, of Merrifieldand Edge in the county of Somerset. He was a squire of good estate andhigh degree, the last male descendant of the main line of Wadhams. Bornin 1532, he was educated at Corpus or at Christ Church: there is aconflict of testimony on this point, but Corpus was probably hiscollege. At the age of twenty-three he married Dorothy Petre. She wastwo years younger than her husband, born in 1534, the daughter of SirWilliam Petre of Writtle in Essex, near which much of the Collegeproperty now lies. For his zeal in suppressing the monasteries SirWilliam had been rewarded by the grant of a large estate, and Wadham, solong a Whig and Evangelical College, was by the vicissitudes of fortunebuilt both pecuniarily and materially on the ruins of the Roman CatholicChurch. 

The young couple were wealthy and lived their lives in state atMerrifield, where they kept an open house, "an inn at all times fortheir friends, and a court at Christmas. " Yet, owing probably to themanagement of Dorothy, a notable and prudent wife, they saved money, andthe childless pair determined to devote their wealth to "the purposes ofreligion, learning, and education. " Their creed, like that of manywaverers in those days of transition, was by no means clear, possiblyeven to themselves. The Wadhams were suspected of being Recusants, andDorothy was presented as such, even in the year 1613 when the Collegewas completed. This may have given rise to Antony Wood's story thatNicholas was minded to found a College at Venice for Roman Catholicstudents, but the balance of probabilities is against its truth. 

It has been pointed out by Mr Jackson, on the suggestion of Mr Thorley, the late Warden, that "the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 mayhave weakened his (Wadham's) attachment, in common with that of manyliberal and loyal Catholics, to the cause of the old faith"; further, that "the Venice scheme comes very near, if it does not amount to, anoffence which the law had anticipated and actually forbidden, and itwould have exposed its author to the direful penalties of Pramunire, which by a Statute of 27 Elizabeth were denounced against any personcontributing to the support of any College of Jesuits, or Seminary, erected, or hereafter to be erected, beyond the sea": and finally, MrJackson dwells on many evidences from facts that the Founder was in hislater years strictly conformable to the Reformed Church. These areweighty arguments, and to them may be added others worthy ofconsideration. To a daughter of Sir William Petre her husband's design, if he ever entertained it, would have been more than distasteful, forits fulfilment would have meant a confession of sacrilege committed byher father and acquiesced in by herself: it would have meant also theestablishment of a college beyond the sea, removed from the Founder'ssupervision and control. No one who knows human nature, or daughters, or Dorothy Wadham, can regard the story as more than an interestingfiction. And yet, is there no foundation for Wood's circumstantialnarrative? Does the fact that the Foundress was presented as a Recusantmean nothing? The problem is one worthy of the industry and ingenuity ofMr Andrew Lang. 

The Founder died at the age of seventy-seven years in 1609. He wasburied in "Myne Ile at Ilminster, where myne ancestors lye interred. "The funeral was one befitting, in the estimation of those days, theobsequies of an important country gentleman: it cost £500, equivalentnow to a sum sufficient for the public funeral of some great statesman. It is easy to condemn our ancestors; but their modes of extravagancewere less frivolous than ours, if equally irrational. 

The building accounts have been preserved in the account-book treasuredin the College archives: in it is recorded "every item of stone, wood, or metal used, and every workman's name and weekly wages, " an importantcontribution to the history of prices. The architect was WilliamArnold, who combined in himself, as did architects in the middle agesand later, the functions of head workman, master mason, architect, andclerk of works in one--a master builder. The stones came from thequarries at Headington and Shotover; the slates from Stonesfield andBurford. Part of the beauty of the College is due to the soft colouringof the silver-grey stone, honeycombed and crumbled, on the south andwest especially, where sun and wind and rain beat on it, giving it theappearance of indefinite antiquity; an appearance due, alas! also to thefact that stone from Headington is very friable, and little able toresist the Oxford air. 

One of the true College stories runs to the effect that Warden Griffithsused the account-book to refute the contention of a great historian ofBritish architecture that Wadham College must have been built atdifferent dates, because its architecture is of different styles--animproper combination of Jacobean and Perpendicular. Dr Griffiths was thekindliest of men, but the most accurate, and it gave him, for he washuman, great pleasure to correct mistakes. He listened silently to thegreat man's argument: next morning, at a large breakfast party given inthe College Common Room to the members of the British Association whichmet at Oxford in the year 1847, he quietly laid the Account-Book besidethe plate of the unhappy dogmatist. The fact that the Chapel isPerpendicular while the Quadrangle is late Gothic has been explained bythe late Mr J. H. Parker's reasonable, perhaps fanciful, suggestion that"the architect desired to emphasise by this variation of style thereligious and secular uses of the several structures. "[1]

Wadham has been described by Ayliffe, and without much protest, as being"in respect of beauty the most regular and uniform of any in theUniversity. " It is the best specimen of that late Gothic style whichmakes the charm of Oxford, and which Mr Jackson has helped to preserveby his work there and elsewhere. 

The beauty of Wadham is of a singularly quiet and simple kind, theeffect of proportion, of string-courses and straight lines, marred bylittle decoration. Except for buildings annexed from time to time, soplain that they are no disfigurement, the College stands as it stoodthree centuries ago. Mr Andrew Lang has remarked that it is "the onlyCollege in Oxford which has not been fiddled with"; this is high praise, and gratefully accepted. One defect the College has: the resources ofthe Founders sufficed to build only one quadrangle; they had not countedthe cost of the stately Chapel and Hall, and little was left for Collegerooms. When will our benefactor come? But it would be ungracious inWadham men to criticise the Founders of their College, to whom they owethe most beautiful of homes. It stood fifty years ago almost in thecountry, with nothing north or east of it save the Museum and greenfields. It is still in a great measure what it was called, the CountryCollege; for though it has neighbours close to it in Mansfield andManchester Colleges, yet these and the cricket-grounds, which liebetween Wadham and the Cherwell, and further north, the Parks, make onespacious region of almost country, --a region of grass and trees andsilence, broken only by the sounds of birds, and the shouts of MatthewArnold's "young barbarians all at play. "

It is a quiet old College, --not old as age is reckoned in Oxford, --likesome great Elizabethan or Jacobean country-house turned into a College, splendid yet homely, possessing that double charm which no palace orcastle or cathedral possesses in the same degree, --the charm of statelybeauty and the charm of human interest which belongs to the home ofgenerations who have spent there the happiest years of life, preparingfor themselves distinction and success, or obscurity and failure. As youstand in the well-known College garden, one side of which is bounded bythe chapel and long line of wall and gables showing half-white half-greyagainst the sward from which they rise, you might fancy, if you were aPlatonist, that here Plato might have realised the dream of hisRepublic, and made a home for the chosen youths who were to rule anddefend his state; here amid things beautiful "from which come effluenceswholesome for the soul, like a breeze bringing health from blessedregions. "

The Educated Woman, with her unerring perception of the fitness ofthings, has already, it is whispered, marked Wadham for her own when theday of reckoning comes, and men will have to share with women not merelydegrees but buildings and endowments. She has chosen well, for Tennysoncould have imagined no fitter home for the Princess and her companions. 

Four days before his death Nicholas Wadham told his nephew, Sir JohnWyndham, what were his objects in founding his College, and what werethe provisions he wished made to effect them. His "instructions, " two ofwhich seemed strange to his nephew, and to need careful wording, ran asfollows: "The one was that he would have an especial Statute to be madethat neyther the head of the house, nor any of the fellowes should bemarried; the other that he would not tye any man to any profession, aseyther devinitie, lawe, or phisicke, but leave every man free to professwhat he liked, as it should please God to direct him. He then told methat after they weare Masters of Arte of a competent number of yeares, that then he would have them absolutely to departe the Colledge, and notlive there all theire lives like idle drones, but put themselves intothe world, whereby others might growe up under them, his intente beingchiefly to nourishe and trayne up men into Learninge. On the 19th ofOctober, when he sealed the deede, I told him howe necessary it was forhim to have a visitor of his Colledge, all the Colledges of Oxfordhaving some Bishoppe appointed by the Founder for seeinge of theStatutes put in execution; and that in my opinion there was none fitterthan the Bishoppe of Bathe and Welles, which he much applauded, andthanked me muche for putting him in minde of him; he also then saydhe would have his Colledge to be called Wadham Colledge. "

[Illustration: NICHOLAS WADHAM. ]

Our ancestors knew what they meant and how to express it in goodEnglish, though their spelling was irregular. In his instructions theFounder anticipated reforms made by the Commissioners of 1853 and 1882. They had the benefit of two and a half centuries' experience of nationaland academical life to guide them: Nicholas Wadham foresaw things andneeds not foreseen or understood by his contemporaries or predecessors. His Fellowships were to be, all of them, open to laymen, and terminableafter a tenure of years in which a young lawyer, of physician, mightmaintain and prepare himself till he had made a practice: eighteen yearswere allowed for that purpose, instead of the scanty seven with which aPrize Fellow must now content himself. It may be that Nicholas gave toomuch and the Commissioners gave too little; but that is a doubtfulquestion. 

The Wardenship, as well as the Fellowships, could by the Founder'sintention, and in the first draft of the Statutes, be held without thecondition of Holy Orders. The Foundress, in this matter only, disobeyedher husband, and at the wish of the Society altered the Statutes, and bybinding the Warden to take his Doctorate in Divinity made the officeclerical for two hundred and sixty years. In all other points shefollowed the instructions which she may herself to some extent haveinspired. Her Visitor was to be the Bishop of the diocese in which shehad spent her life; her Warden was to be "a virtuous and honourable manof stainless life, not a bishop, nor a foreigner but born in Britain":the last word is significant. It was inserted in the Statutes by JamesI. In place of "England": even Dr Griffiths is known to have spoken ofEngland as the kingdom in which he lived: further, the Warden was to be"thirty years old at least, and unmarried. "

There is nothing in Dorothy's grim features to suggest that she wouldhave approved of one of the reforms or perversions of her Statutesordained by the Commissioners, which gives a place in her College to amarried Warden and to married Fellows, much less that she would havebeen willing to marry one of them herself. Thereby hangs a tale whichmight suggest a new situation to our exhausted novelists. The Foundress, so the story runs, chose for her first Warden a clergyman, Dr RobertWright, whose _beaux yeux_ touched the heart of the lone widow: sheloved him, and would fain have married him and reigned with him afterthe necessary alteration of the Statutes; but he was cold andirresponsive: the obligation of celibacy, save in the case of WardenWilkins, remained incumbent on a Warden of Wadham till 1806, when it wasremoved by a special Act of Parliament. Modern criticism respects alove-story no more than it respects the Pentateuch. A comparison ofdates shows that Dr Wright was fifty-four years old at the time of hisappointment in 1613, and the Foundress was then seventy-nine. Thedifference of a quarter of a century makes the truth of the story notindeed impossible but improbable; the coy Warden held his office onlyfor two months: the cause of his resignation or expulsion is not known, but was probably not "spretæ injuria formæ": the hero of the storywished to marry somebody else, and resigned his post because he was notpermitted to do so, as Mr Wells informs us, adding a prosaic explanationof the lovers' quarrel, a disagreement about the appointment of anunder-cook. Therefore "Dorothy's Romance" must take its place among themany College stories in which Oxford abounds, and become a forsakenbelief. Wright was the first on the long roll of Wadham bishops, andplayed a not inconsiderable part at a crisis in English history. InDecember 1641, as Bishop of Lichfield, he was one of the twelve bishopswho presented to Charles I. The famous protest against their exclusionby mob violence from the House of Lords, declaring all proceedings intheir absence null and void: for this they were sent to the Tower asguilty of high treason. Wright was soon released, and died two yearslater defending his episcopal seat, Eccleshall Castle, against theParliamentarians, --a member of the Church militant like Ancktill. 

[Illustration: DOROTHY WADHAM. ]

The history of the College from its foundation to the beginning of theCivil War is uneventful, one of great prosperity. Among the Fellowsadmitted in 1613, three, Smyth, Estcott, and Pitt, became Wardens: fourof the Fellows were drawn from Exeter, then, as now, a west-countryCollege like Wadham, though it has, more than Wadham, maintained itsconnection with the West of England. The Foundress showed her resolvethat her husband's countryside should be well represented among thefirst members of the foundation: of the fifteen Fellows, eleven--of thefifteen Scholars, ten, came from western counties, especially fromSomerset; the Commoners also were many of them western men. The value toa College of a local connection, not with a village or a small school, but with a county or a large town, was not understood by theCommissioners of 1853: they were under the tyranny of the formulæcurrent in their day, when "open competition" was supposed to be thesolution of all the difficulties of life. 

In the first year of the College now opened for work, fifty-oneundergraduates, including the Scholars, were admitted. The number of itsinmates, from the Warden to the latest freshman, was thereforesixty-nine, including the two chaplains. The rooms were larger than mostof the rooms in the older colleges, but fewer, and those available forundergraduates were not more than about forty: the freshmen of 1613 musthave been closely packed, the Scholars especially, who had rooms threetogether, sleeping in the large chamber and working in the _muscoelæ_or small studies attached, now used as bedrooms, or as scouts' pantries. In the nine years following the admissions were necessarilyfewer--averaging twenty-seven. It is probable that till the depletion ofOxford, when the Civil War began--_i. E. _, during the first thirty yearsof its life--Wadham numbered on an average between eighty and ninetyundergraduates, all of them resident in College, as was then required bythe Statutes of the University. This estimate is based on imperfectdata, and Mr Gardiner has pronounced that materials for any accuratecalculation are not to be found. We do not know what was the usuallength of undergraduates' residence at that time; some resided only fora year, some proceeded to a degree. Nor is it clear whether the Wardenused all the rooms, eight in number, assigned to him, or gave, perhapsrented, some of them to undergraduates. The estimate, which can neitherbe confirmed nor disproved, is worth making only as helping us toimagine the condition of the College in its early days. One thing iscertain, that Wadham was popular and fashionable, to use a moderncurious name, as is shown by the record of admissions. 

Life, both for graduates and undergraduates, was harder then than it isnow. The Fellows were required to reside for forty-six weeks, theScholars, and probably the Commoners, for forty-eight weeks in eachyear. All undergraduates had to attend lectures or disputations fortwenty-four hours in every week. These tasks were arranged with carefulmalignity to begin at 6 A. M. , and resumed at 2 P. M. And 6 P. M. Nor wereexaminations wanting. The Bible was to be read during dinner in Hall bya Bible Clerk or Scholar, and heard attentively and reverently. Latinwas to be spoken in Hall, and English only when the presence of anunlearned person or of a member of another college justified its use. The Chapel Service was held between 5 and 6 A. M. And between 8 and 9P. M. ; and attendance twice a-day was required from bachelors andundergraduates, and rigidly enforced. Attendance at roll-call as asubstitute for chapel was unheard of in those days, when all members ofthe colleges were, or were presumed to be, members also of the Church ofEngland, nor would conscientious scruples have been treated with muchcourtesy. In other matters discipline was no less strict; clothes andboots were to be black, and gowns were to be long. No undergraduate wasallowed to go out of College unaccompanied by a "discrete senior" ofmature age as a witness to his good behaviour, unless to attend alecture or a disputation: nor might he keep dogs, or guns, or ferrets, or any bird, within the precincts of the College, nor play any gameswith dice or cards or of any unseemly kind. Yet the Foundress showed atenderness for human weakness by permitting the Fellows and Scholars toplay cards in Hall on some of the Gaudy days for "moderate stakes and attimeous hours. " Moreover, she ordained that £30 from the Collegerevenues should be spent on College banquets to be held on Gaudy days, by which were meant the great Church festivals, the election days ofFellows and College officers, All Saints' Day, and, on what at firstsight seems strange, the anniversary of her husband's death; but thestrangeness disappears if it be remembered that October 20th comes closeto All Saints' Day. 

This seems, in some of its provisions, Draconian legislation, but it wasmade for the government of boys, many of them only fourteen or fifteenyears of age: how far it was, even in early days, unflinchinglyenforced, we cannot tell. It began to fall into abeyance after theRestoration, if we are to believe Antony Wood. His statements arealways to be received with caution; but they are on this point confirmedby other testimonies, and by the antecedent probability of a strongreaction against the Puritan _régime_. Eighteen months after the King'sRestoration, he writes of the decay of learning and discipline in theUniversity. "Before the warr wee had scholars that made a thoroughsearch in scholasticall and polemicall divinity, in humane authors, andnaturall philosophy. But now scholars studie these things not more thanwhat is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of theirrespective Colleges and the Universitie. Their aime is not to live asstudents ought to do--viz. , temperat, abstemious, and plaine and gravein the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, toturne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, toswash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c. , and the theologists toride abroad in grey coats with swords by their sides: the masters havelost their respect by being themselves scandalous, and keeping companywith undergraduates. " We cannot believe that Wadham escaped thecontagion, and remained what its Foundress meant it to be. It would beinteresting--but lack of space forbids--to compare the disciplineprescribed with that administered in Wadham now. Sufficient to say--whatindeed might go without saying--that the lapse of three hundred yearshas made changes desirable and necessary. 

The Foundress died on May 16, 1618, aged eighty-four. For five years shehad watched over the infancy of her College, and had seen it grow into avigorous child, with the promise of a robust manhood. The mythopoeicfaculty is strong in all of us, and in Wadham has grown up a traditionthat Dorothy was a strong-minded woman, and her husband a submissive manwithout character and will. The myth rests only on the science ofphysiognomy working on portraits, --a most insecure foundation. TheFounders' portraits depict him as a gentle, placid person withmelancholy eyes; her as a hard-featured woman with a long upper lip andan almost cruel mouth. Against the testimony, always dubious, ofportraits, must be set the known facts of her loyal devotion in carryingout his wishes with scrupulous fidelity, and the sacrifices she made indoing so, of money and of laborious supervision in the last years of herlong life. 

The College may do well to remember the closing of one of her lastletters to the Warden and Fellows: "Above all things, I would have youto avoid contentions among yourselves, for without true charity therecannot be a true Society. "--(Wells' 'History of Wadham, ' p. 44. ) She wasburied beside her husband in the Wadham aisle at Ilminster. 

Only a few months after her death a question arose in which she wouldhave taken a keen interest, and have supported her College to theuttermost. In October 1618 James I. Set an example, which his grandson, James II. , followed, of that contempt for law which proved fatal to theStuarts. He wrote to his "trusty and well beloved, the Warden andFellows of Wadham College, bidding them elect Walter Durham of StAndrews a Fellow, notwithstanding anything in their statutes to thecontrary. " Durham had not been a scholar, and the vacancy had beenfilled up by the Foundress, for whose death "their eyes were still wet. "It is possible that Durham's being a Scotchman was another objection tohis reception as a Fellow in those days when his aggressive countrymenhad found the high-road to England: this objection the Society did notput before the King, but pleaded only the obligations of the statutes. Supported by the Earl of Pembroke, the Chancellor of the University, their resistance was successful. To Wadham belongs the honour of beingthe earliest Oxford champion of legality in the struggle of seventyyears: as to Magdalen belongs the honour of the resistance which broughtthat struggle nearly to its close. From 1618 onward till--who can saywhen? the College has been on the popular or constitutional side, savein 1648. The portrait of James I. , who gave the College its Charter, hangs in the Hall; there are no portraits there of Charles I. , CharlesII. , James II. 

Among the admissions of this time the most illustrious name is that ofRobert Blake, who matriculated at Alban Hall, but took his B. A. FromWadham in 1618, a few months before the Durham incident. The greatadmiral and soldier may therefore have learnt in Wadham the opinionswhich determined his choice of sides in the Parliamentary wars. TheCollege possesses his portrait, and four gold medals struck tocommemorate his victory over Van Tromp in 1653. It has never left thecustody of the Warden, save when it was sent, concealed on the person ofProfessor and Commander Burroughs, to the Naval Exhibition some yearsago; and last year, when after an interesting correspondence between theCollege and Colonel Maxse commanding the Coldstream Guards, leave wascordially given to that distinguished regiment to have an electrotypemade of the Blake medal for its own exclusive use, and to be kept _inperpetuum_ among the memorials of its long history. It is the oldestregiment in the service, the only survivor of Cromwell's New Model; itwas commanded by Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, when he crossed theborder to march to London, perhaps with no definite intention to restorethe Monarchy--perhaps also prompted by his brother Nicholas, a Wadhamman, to solve the great problem in that simple way. The rest of the NewModel were disbanded after the Restoration, but, doubtless in deferenceto Monk, the Coldstreams were reformed, and became the King's Bodyguard. To Monk, who like Blake was half soldier, half sailor, one of the fourmedals had been awarded for his services against the Dutch. It was lost, and the replica will take its place. The other three medals arepreserved--one in the possession of the representatives of the Pennfamily, one in the British Museum, one in Wadham: the last was sent tothe British Museum for reproduction: it was carried by our historian MrWells, returned by him, and it now lies in the Warden's lodgings, in thecabinet of treasures bequeathed by Dr Griffiths, our benefactor in manyways unknown but to his friends. This tie of courtesy and historybetween a regiment and a college, arms and the gown, is worth recordingand probably unique. 

No other name of real distinction than Blake's occurs in the registersof 1613 to 1648. But Colonel Henry Ancktill, "the priest and malignantdoctor, " as he was known among the Roundheads, one of the first Fellows, ought to be remembered, partly on his own account, for he was a vigorousand devoted Royalist, a fighting man when his cause was hopeless; partlybecause he may have been the original of Dr Rochcliffe in 'Woodstock. 'Sir Walter Scott read the 'Athenæ Oxonienses, ' and the resemblancebetween Ancktill and Rochcliffe is striking; but who can say what agreat writer finds or creates in fiction or in history!

[Illustration: ADMIRAL BLAKE. ]

A perusal of the register shows that in Wadham both of the great partiesin Church and State were represented. There were represented also allclasses of society, from Dymokes, Herberts, Russells, Portmans, Strangways, to the humblest _plebeiorum filii_, a fact which proves thefalsity of the assertion made forty years ago, that Oxford was once aplace for "gentlemen only. "

The history of the College at this time was not one of unbroken peace:occasional quarrels between members of the governing body arerecorded, --evidences of the unrest of a time when greater questions thanthe interpretation of a Statute or the disputed election of a Collegeofficer were already in the air. The only dissension of any interest wasone which led to an appeal to the Visitor: the Visitor was Laud, theBishop of Bath and Wells, who showed great gentleness and patience indealing with a person even more provoking than he found the worst ofScotch Presbyterians. 

We have now reached, "longas per ambages, " the times of Wilkins'manhood: he was born a year later than the opening of the College whichhe was to rule. 

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See Messrs Peel and Minchin's 'Oxford, ' p. 130. 

CHAPTER II. 

WILKINS' LIFE TILL HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE WARDENSHIP. 

In the Common Room of Wadham College hangs the portrait of John Wilkins, Warden from 1648 to 1659. It is probably a faithful likeness, forWilkins is described by Aubrey as "a lustie, strong-grown, well-set, broad-shouldered person, cheerful and hospitable; no great-read man, butone of much and deepe thinking, and of a working head; and a prudent manas well as ingeniose. " In the portrait these characteristics, physicaland mental, are well displayed: sanity of mind--that is, clearness, shrewdness, courage, kindliness, the contentment which makes the best ofgood and evil fortune, are, to the imaginative mind, written in theface, as presented in his picture, of this great man. His greatness fellshort of genius, for it was the effect of ordinary qualities, rarelycombined and tempered into one character; but more effective for usefulwork in the world than genius without sanity. 

He was born in 1614 at Fawsley in Northamptonshire. His father wasWalter Wilkins, a goldsmith in Oxford, like his son "ingeniose, and of avery mechanicall head, which ran much upon the perpetuall motion, "--aproblem less hopeful than most, not all, of those which attracted hismore practical son, who inherited from him his "insatiable curiosity. "

It is from Aubrey that we derive the fullest account of the facts ofWilkins' life, as well as of his character. It is given in one of those"Brief Lives" which might well serve as models to modern biographers;lives compressed into two pages of nervous English, adorned here andthere, rather than disfigured, by quaint pedantic words and phrases, relics of the euphuism of the sixteenth century. Aubrey is credulous, appallingly frank, a strong partisan, a man of great industry andlearning, by no means trustworthy, but none the less entertaining anddelightful. He tells us that Wilkins had his "grammar learning from MrSylvester, 'the common drudge of the University, ' who kept a privateschool: that he entered Magdalen Hall from New Inn Hall in 1627 at theage of thirteen, and there was placed under the tutorship of 'thelearned Mr John Tombs, the Coryphæus of the Anabaptists. '" Tombs was aman of great ability, notable for his "curious, searching, piercingwitt, of whom it was predicted that he would doe a great deale ofmischiefe to the Church of England, as great witts have done byintroducing new opinions. " He was a formidable disputant, so formidablethat when he came to Oxford in 1664, and there "sett up a challenge tomaintain 'contra omnes gentes' the doctrines of the Anabaptists, not aman would grapple with him, their Coryphæus; yet putting aside hisAnabaptisticall opinions he was conformable enough to the Church ofEngland"; so much so that he held a living at Leominster, and was thefriend of two Bishops, Sanderson and Seth Ward. It is doubtful whetherMr Tombs would now, if he came back, move in Episcopal circles. Hiscareer gives us a glimpse into those puzzling times of confusion andcross-purposes, when compromise and toleration co-existed, both inparties and in individuals, with bitter fanaticism, more commonly thanis supposed, or can be explained. 

It is easy to see what was the influence exercised by Tombs on a cleverboy like Wilkins. He was probably trained to be a Latitudinarian; forTombs, despite his strong opinions, could admire and praise sincerity inopponents: he was heard to say that "though he was much opposite to theRomish religion, truly for his part should he see a poor zealous friargoeing to preach he should pay him respect. " Utterances of this kind, ifheard by Wilkins, would make a strong impression on a youth by naturesingularly tolerant. 

Wilkins took his B. A. Degree in 1631, his M. A. In 1634. For a few yearshe took pupils--read to pupils (as the phrase was), --the common resourcethen, as now, of young Oxonians, who think themselves qualified toteach, and must support themselves till a Fellowship comes, or till theyhave chosen a profession. 

In 1637 he took Holy Orders in the Church of England, and became curateof Fawsley, the place in which he had been born. A country living wastoo small a sphere for a young man of twenty-three, conscious of hispowers, ambitious and desirous to see the world of letters, science, andpolitics in those eventful days. Aubrey tells us that "he has sayd oftentimes that the first rise, or hint of his rising, was from goeingaccidentally a courseing of a hare, when an ingeniose gentleman of goodquality falling into discourse with him, and finding him to have a verygood witt, told him that he would never gett any considerable prefermentby continuing in the University, and that his best way was to betakehimself to some lord's or great person's house that had good beneficesto conferre. Sayd Mr Wilkins, I am not knowne in the world; I know notto whom to addresse myself upon such a designe. The gentleman replied, 'I will commende you myselfe, ' and did so to (as I think) Lord ViscountSay and Seale, where he stayed with very good likeing till the latecivill warres. "

It is not clear whether this worldly but sound advice was given toWilkins before or after he became a country clergyman, for the words"continuing in the University" might mean either residence there, oroccasional visits to it. Coursing of a hare was, perhaps is, anamusement equally of University men and of the country clergy: the lastalone can tell us whether they still "goe a courseingaccidentally"--(the word is worth noting)--and whether conversations ofthis profitable kind occur in the intervals of sport. But the date ofthe incident is of less importance than its result; it was theturning-point of Wilkins' life. When he became chaplain to Lord Say andSeale he was introduced into a sphere of politics and action. 

William Fiennes, the first Viscount, was a man of light and leading inthe Parliamentary party; "the oracle, " as Clarendon styles him, "ofthose who were called Puritans in the worst sense, and steered all theircounsels and designs. " He deserved his nickname, Old Subtlely, for hehad a clear insight into the real issues from the very beginning of thegreat quarrel: he headed in Oxfordshire the resistance to the levying ofShip-money, and was the champion of the Independents, the mostdetermined of the king's opponents. His sons, John and NathanielFiennes, were no less resolute and effective Puritans than the head oftheir house; more so indeed, for they were believed, and soon known tobe, "for root and branch. "

At Broughton, Wilkins, now chaplain and resident there, met the mostprominent men of the party which was against the Government. He musthave heard "great argument about it and about"; whether "evermore hecame out by the same door wherein he went" we cannot tell, for hepossessed to an extraordinary degree the faculty of seeing the two sidesof a question: as he stayed at Broughton "with very good likeing" forfive or six years, it may be presumed that the discreet and morigerousman concealed the difficulty which he felt in accepting some of theviews maintained at Broughton. Some light is thrown on his real opinionsby words found in the sermon preached at his funeral by Lloyd, hisfriend and pupil. "When some thought these dissents ground enough forwar, he declared himself against it, and confirmed others in theirallegiance: he profest to the last a great hatred of that horriblerebellion. " He doubtless resembled anotherLatitudinarian--Cudworth--whom Burnet describes as "a man of greatcompetence and prudence upon which his enemies did very falsely accusehim of craft and dissimulation. "

When the Civil War broke out Wilkins removed to London and becameChaplain to Lord Berkeley, and later to Charles Lewis, Prince ElectorPalatine, nephew of Charles I. , and elder brother of Prince Rupert. TheElector was then an _émigré_ in England, hoping to be restored to hisdominions by the aid of his uncle, who was then struggling to hold hisown inheritance. During his seven years' residence in London, Wilkinsbecame the friend, perhaps the leader, of the natural philosophers, wholater formed themselves into the Royal Society. Thus, before he hadreached "the middle of the way of life, " he had seen much of the world. Like Ulysses, whom in many ways he resembled, "he saw the cities of manymen and knew their mind. "

Dr Walter Pope, his half-brother, who wrote a life of Bishop Ward, and, curiously enough, a life also of Claude Duval, the famous highwayman, which had a wider circulation, says of Wilkins that he was "a learnedman and a lover of such; of comely aspect and gentlemanlike behaviour. He had been bred in the court, and was also a piece of a traveller. "The last sentence refers mainly to Wilkins' life after the Restoration;but he had travelled before then, and his acquaintance with theFiennes', with the Elector, and with London society, had taught him"gentlemanlike behaviour" before he became a Head of a House, --a lessonwhich, apparently, some other Heads in his time had not learnt; for Popegoes on to say, "He had nothing of bigotry, unmannerliness orcensoriousness, which then were in the zenith amongst some of the Headsand Fellows of Colleges in Oxford. " It is to be hoped that suchcriticisms would not now be made on the manners of the senior members ofthe University, and that in this respect Oxford has been reformed, tothe approval of all concerned. 

While Wilkins was experimenting and philosophising in London, events hadbeen marching rapidly in England and in Oxford. In Wood's 'Life andTimes' is written the history of the city of Oxford, of the Universityand of himself, from the day of his birth till his death in 1681. Thethree histories are mingled in a quaint and incoherent fashion. Wood isa chronicler like Aubrey, his friend, with whom he quarrelled, asantiquarians and historians do. Both were industrious, uncritical, and--Wood especially--sometimes venomous; both were vivid andpicturesque, keen observers, and had a wonderful power of saying much infew words. 

Antony Wood, the son of Thomas Wood, Bachelor of Arts and of Civil Law, was born in 1632 at Oxford, where his father lived, in the Collegiateparish of St John Baptist de Merton. He was educated at New CollegeSchool, in Oxford, and later at Thame Grammar School; was admitted intoMerton College at the age of fifteen as a "filius generosi, " and becameBible Clerk in 1650. When ten years old he saw the king, with his armyof foot, his two sons, Charles and James, his nephews, Rupert andMaurice, enter Oxford after the battle of Edgehill. The incident wasimpressed on his memory by the expulsion of his father from the housein Merton Street, and the removal of the boys of New College School tothe choristers' chamber at the east end of the College hall, "a darknasty room, very unfit for such a purpose, which made the scholars oftencomplaine, but in vaine. " From this time onward Wood, a clever andobservant boy, kept both his ears and eyes open, and accumulated fromall quarters materials for his narrative which covers fifty years, themost interesting and important half century in the history of Oxford. 

 "Your orthodox historian puts In foremost rank the soldier thus, The redcoat bully in his boots That hides the march of men from us. "

The "redcoat bully, " as Thackeray somewhat harshly calls him, figureslargely in the early pages of Wood's 'Life and Times, ' but does not hidethe march of men. In August 1642, "the members of the University beganto put themselves in a posture of defence, " and till June 1646, whenOxford was surrendered to Fairfax, it was a garrison town, the centreand object of much fighting, and of many excursions and alarms, as being"the chiefest hold the King had. "

Fain would the writer extract almost bodily Wood's description of thefour years' occupation, but some things he cannot forbear frommentioning, for they throw light on the history of Wilkins' Oxford, andon the problems with which he had to deal after the war was ended. MrHaldane would read with interest and approval how the Oxfordundergraduates of 1642 responded to a call to arms, as he hopes theirsuccessors will respond, if and when need comes. 

"Dr Pink of New College, the deputy Vice-Chancellor, called before himto the public schools all the priviledged men's arms to have a view ofthem; when, not only priviledged men of the University and theirservants, but also many scholars appeared, bringing with them thefurniture of armes of every College that then had any. " The furniturefor one man was sent by Wood's father--viz. , "a helmet, a back andbreast plate, a pike, and a musquet. " The volunteers, both graduates, some of them divines, and undergraduates, mustered in New Collegequadrangle, and were drilled in the Newe Parkes (the Parks of our day)to the number of four hundred, "in a very decent arraye, and it wasdelightsome to behold the forwardnesse of so many proper yonge gentlemenso intent, docile, and pliable to their business. " Town and gown tookopposite sides: the citizens were, most of them, ready to support theParliament, or the King and Parliament, but not the King against theParliament. Long before the Civil War began there were in Oxford and inthe kingdom, as always in our history, though called by different names, three parties, divided from each other by no very fast or definitelines; the King's, the Parliament's and the party of moderate men, towhich Wilkins belonged; the Constitutional party in the strict meaningof the word, who wished both to preserve and reform the constitution. Inthose days of confusion and perplexity, when men's hearts were failingthem for fear and for looking after those things which were to come, many knew not what to think or do. It was a miserable time both forRoundheads and Cavaliers, and most of all for those who were not surewhat they were. If Hyde and Falkland wavered for a time, how must thetimid and lukewarm have wavered? Though the great questions were fairlyclear, the way to solve them, and the end to which any way would lead, were dark and gloomy. It is an error to think that the Civil War was asudden outbreak, a short struggle on simple issues between two sharplydivided parties, assured of their beliefs and interests. The FrenchRevolution was that, or nearly that; but our revolutions are manageddeliberately, and lead to conclusive and permanent results: the art ofrevolution belongs to the English race. 

In Oxford there must have been much bewilderment and questioning amongcitizens and gownsmen when Lord Say and Seale, the new Lord-Lieutenantof the county appointed by the Parliament, came into the town onSeptember 14, 1642, and ordered that the works and trenches made by thescholars should be demolished; yet next day he "sent a drumme up anddowne the towne for volunteers to serve the King and Parliament. " Whatdid that mean? Almost any answer might have been given to the question. His lordship's opinions soon became clearer than his puzzlingproclamation; on September the 24th he sent for the Heads of Houses torebuke them for having "broken the peace and quiet of the University, "so much broken it that "they had nowe left no face of a Universitie, bytaking up armes and the like courses. " He had before this interview"caused diverse popish bookes and pictures taken out of churches, and ofpapish houses, here and abroad, to be burned in the street over againstthe signe of the Starre, where his Lordship laye. " We know not what ismeant by "papish bookes and pictures, " but the Puritan Lord Say may nothave discriminated sharply between them and the books and ornaments ofthe High Party in the Church of England. 

For seven or eight weeks before the battle of Edgehill, Oxford swarmedwith soldiers. It had been held for a fortnight by the King's men, whowere succeeded by the Parliamentary troopers brought in by Lord Say. Some disturbances took place, in which the soldiers from Puritan Londonespecially distinguished themselves: one of them, when flushed with winepresented by the Mayor "too freely, " went so far as to "discharge abrace of bulletts at the stone image of Our Lady over the church StMairie's parish, and at one shott strooke off her hed, and the hed ofher child which she held in her right arme: another discharged hismusket at the image of our Saviour over All Soule's gate, and would havedefaced all the worke there, had it not been for some townsmen, whoentreated them to forbeare, they replienge that they had not been sowell treated here at Oxford as they expected: many of them came intoChrist Church to viewe the Church and paynted windowes, much admiringeat the idolatry thereof, and a certain Scot, beinge amongst them, saidethat he marvaylled how the Schollers could goe for their bukes to thesepaynted idolatrous wyndoes. " From a Scot of that time this utterance wasnot surprising: bukes had been substituted for paynted wyndowesdestroyed in his country many years before his visit to Oxford. But tothe honour of the Puritans be it said, there were no serious outrages onperson or property in Oxford, and that its citizens had to endurenothing more than fear and discomfort: in no other country in Europe atthat time would a city occupied by troops have suffered as little as didOxford in those two months. 

In 'John Inglesant' a man of genius has drawn a picture of Oxford whenit was the residence of the King and Queen and Court. His description isso vivid that one is tempted to believe it to be history: it is that, and not mere fiction, for it is based on a careful study of facts, and, allowance made for the writer's strong Royalist bias, it is trueethically or in spirit, that highest truth which accurate and laborioushistorians often fail to reach. 

John Inglesant entered Wadham before the war began--the date of hisadmission is obviously uncertain--and lived there from time to time tillthe rout at Naseby, in 1645, brought about the surrender of Oxford tothe Parliament in 1646. It was by a sure instinct that he chose Wadham, that quiet and beautiful college, for his home. He was a dreamer, and inno place could he have dreamt more peacefully and happily than there, though sometimes perhaps, even in his first term, he must have beendisturbed by the ominous sounds of axe and hammer, pick and spade, busyon the "fortifications in making about the towne on the north andnorth-west thereof, " and, later, on the east, toward Headington Hill andclose to Wadham. A trace of them remains in the terrace on the east ofthe Warden's garden, which did not then exist for Inglesant to walkin, and muse on the problems of the day. 

[Illustration: WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE WARDEN'S GARDEN. ]

Oxford in his time at Wadham presented a curious spectacle. Huddledtogether were soldiers, courtiers, ladies beautiful, gay, and famous inmany ways, severe Divines and College Heads, to whom such surroundingswere unfamiliar and perhaps not uninteresting: masques and revels werefrequent; Christ Church meadow and the grove at Trinity were the resortof a brilliant throng, more brilliant even than the gatherings whichfill Oxford at Commemoration time in our more sober age. But beneaththis merriment there were doubtless in the minds at least of those whothought, or stopped to think, terrible anxieties and the grimmest offorebodings. It was becoming clearer every month that Edgehill had notbroken the rebellion; that the struggle would be long, and that theissue was uncertain; events soon justified these fears. On January 10, 1643, "the Kinges letters came to all the Colledges and Halls for theirplates to be brought into the mint at Oxford, there to be coyned intomoney with promise of refunding it, or payeinge for it again after fiveshillings the ounce for silver, five and sixpence for silver and gilt. "The fruitless sacrifice was made by no college with more unhesitatingdevotion than by Wadham, which preserves the letter addressed by CharlesI. To "our trusty and well-beloved ye Warden and Fellows of WadhamCollege, " and the receipt for 124 lb. Of plate from the king's officersof the mint, a liberal contribution from a college only thirty yearsold. Few relics of the ancient Collegiate plate are now to be found inthe University; in most instances pieces, either bestowed or given byspecial benefactors: the Communion vessels of the Colleges were nottaken by the king--a loyal son of the Church. Six colleges, among themWadham, retained theirs through all the confusion of the war, and stillpossess them. 

In February 1643 warning came of fresh troubles from the north: threeCommissioners representing the nobility, clergy, gentry, and commons ofScotland presented themselves to the king, "to press his Majestie thatthe Church of England might be made conformable in all points to theChurch of Scotland. " To Charles, himself a Scot, this request must haveseemed an outrageous insult, inflicted on him by those of his ownhousehold, and an omen of his desertion by his warlike countrymen, whom, despite their resistance to the English Liturgy, he trusted to befaithful to a Stuart. 

On June 24, 1646, the last fighting Royalist left Oxford. In thefollowing Michaelmas, Wood returned "to the home of his nativitie. " Hefound Oxford "empty as to scholars, but pretty well replenished withParliamentarian soldiers. " In his opinion the young men of the city andthe University had reaped less benefit from the Royalist occupation thantheir seniors; the latter had gained "great store of wealth from thecourt and royalists that had for several years continued among them";the former he "found many of them to have been debauched by bearingarms, and doing the duties belonging to soldiers, as watching, warding, and sitting in tipling houses for whole nights together. " Nor were thespiritual teachers sent by Parliament to restore good manners andreligion, in Wood's opinion, fitted for their mission: they were sixPresbyterian Ministers, "two of them fooles, two knaves, two madmen. "

With the history of Oxford for the next eighteen months, important andinteresting though it is, we are not concerned. The scholars returnedslowly to the half-empty colleges, where admissions had dwindled almostto vanishing point. At Wadham, for instance, the admissions in 1643 wereonly seven; in 1644, three; in 1645, none; in 1646, seven; in 1647, whenthe worst of the fighting was over, they rose to nineteen. TheIndependents and the Presbyterians were now in possession of Oxford. Inspite of both oppressors the undergraduates, of Wood's College at least, enjoyed themselves, as undergraduates do in the darkest times, andplayed "high jinks" on Candlemas Day, compelling the freshmen "tospeake some pretty apothegme or make a jest or bull, " or take strangeoaths "over an old shoe, " and suffer indignities if they were shy orstupid. "Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurrit. "

CHAPTER III. 

WILKINS' WARDENSHIP. 

In 1647 a Commission, as it would now be called, was appointed byParliament to conduct the visitation of the University. 'Lord have mercyupon us; or, the Visitation at Oxford, ' is the title of one of thenumerous pamphlets relating to this Oxford revolution; Tragi-comoediaOxonienses' is the title of another, and both suggest curiousreflections to Oxonians at the present time. The visitors did theirbusiness effectually. They set to work in 1648, and purged theUniversity by ejecting from the colleges all who did not by a certainday give in their assurance that they would submit to the visitors andtheir visitation appointed by Parliament. No party in our country canclaim the monopoly of loyalty to conviction attested by self-sacrifice. In England, non-jurors and dissenters; in Scotland, Episcopalians, Covenanters, and Free Churchmen; in Ireland, Roman Catholics, have "goneout, " or stayed out, for some lost cause. In Oxford, Royalists, fromHeads to Servitors, stood by their colours manfully. It is uncertain howmany submitted, how many were expelled. The estimates vary fromClarendon's statement that almost all the Heads and Fellows of Collegeswere ejected, "scarce one submitting, " to Wood's estimate of 334; it isprobable that 400--that is, about half of the whole number of Heads, Fellows, and Scholars then resident in the University--"made the greatrefusal, " not to accept office, but to retain it. Antony Wood did notshow himself ambitious of martyrdom. On May 12, 1648, he, along withother members of his College, appeared before the Visitors. When askedby one of them, "Will you submit to the authority of Parliament in thisvisitation?" he wrote on a paper lying on the table, "I do notunderstand the business, and therefore I am not able to give a directanswer. " "Afterwards his mother and brother, who advised him to submitin plaine terms, were exceedingly angry with him, and told him that hehad ruined himself and must therefore go a-begging. " Women, then as now, ready to sacrifice themselves, are less ready to permit those dear tothem to be overscrupulous. Wood's mother made intercession for him toSir Nathaniel Brent, President of the Visitors and Warden of Merton, and"he was connived at and kept in his Postmastership, otherwise he hadinfallibly gon to the pot. "

At Wadham the Visitors met with an obstinate resistance: Dr Pitt, thenWarden, was a stout Royalist, and refused to acknowledge the authorityof a Parliament acting without the king's consent. He was expelled onApril 13, 1648, along with nine of his thirteen Fellows, nine of hisfourteen Scholars, and many of his Commoners, all of them save one toreturn no more. John Wilkins was put in his place by the Visitors onthe same day, and held it till his resignation on September 3, 1659. 

Before the end of his stay in London he had taken the covenant anddefinitely given his allegiance to the Parliamentarian party. He wasmarked out for promotion as a known man of great ability, and he hadmade many friends among influential persons by his courtesy and tact. Itwas inevitable that a distinguished Oxford man should be chosen for animportant post in the University, which Cromwell desired to convert froma hotbed of Royalism into a nursery of Puritans. Wilkins was qualifiedby his common-sense and genial ways for what would have been a hopelesstask to the clumsy fanatics ready enough to undertake it. 

The new Warden must have found himself in a difficult position. Therewere in Oxford the three parties into which Englishmen and Scotchmeninvariably divide themselves. These parties are called by differentnames at different times, and are formed on different questions, butremain essentially the same. In Oxford they were called Royalists, Presbyterians, Independents; the questions at issue were the life, discipline, and religion of the University. 

This classification has all the faults which a classification can have;it is not exhaustive, for the variations, religious and political, beinginfinite, cannot be included under three heads; nor do the _membradividentia_ exclude each other: among the Royalists were some members ofthe established Church, of Calvinistic opinions, who were hardlydistinguishable from Presbyterians; and some professed Presbyterianswould have stood by Charles had not Laud driven them away, for they hadin their nature some of the best elements of conservatism, thehistorical sense, and a love of order and discipline, especially asadministered by themselves. But classifications may be illogical yetuseful, and Wilkins would have accepted this one, in his practical way, for working purposes. 

The Presbyterians were for forcing on the Church of England, theCovenant, the Westminster Confession, and the deposition of the Bishopby the Presbyter, or a board of Presbyters. The Independents conceivedthat every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supremejurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial andnational synods were scarcely less Scriptural than appeals to the Courtof Arches or to the Vatican, and that Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism, were merely three forms of one great apostacy. In politics theIndependents were, to use the phrase of their time, "root and branchmen, " or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals: notcontent with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous toerect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. Macaulay'svigorous words explain the difference between the Presbyterians and theIndependents: that difference is explained also by Wood in words asvigorous but less dignified and scholarly. "The Presbyterians, " he says, "with their disciples seemed to be very severe in their course of life, manners or conversation, and habits or apparell; of a Scoth (_i. E. _, Scotch) habit, but especially those that were preachers. The other (theIndependents) were more free, gay, and, with a reserve, frollicsome, ofa gay habit, whether preachers or not. " John Owen, Dean of ChristChurch--to be distinguished from Thankful Owen, President of StJohn's--seems to have been of a specially gay habit; whenVice-Chancellor "he had alwaies his hair powdred, cambric bands withlarge costly band strings, velvet jacket, his breeches set round at kneewith ribbons pointed, Spanish leather boots with cambric tops, &c. , --allthis was in opposition to prelattical cutt. " The habit of aVice-Chancellor, even in full dress, is nowadays far less gay, and ofthe Presbyterian rather than the Independent fashion. Whatever may havebeen their difference in dress, both parties were "void of public andgenerous spirits: the Presbyterians for the most part preached nothingbut damnation, the other not, but rather for libertie; yet both joynetogether to pluck downe and silence the prelattical preachers, or atleast to expose their way to scorne. " Wood carries his comparisonsfurther, and tells, perhaps invents, many things about their commonhatred of Maypoles, players, cassocks, surplices, and the use of theLord's Prayer in public religious service. He more than hints at darkersins, --drunkenness, and immorality cloaked by hypocrisy, the favouritetheme of the Restoration dramatists. His account of the Puritandomination in Oxford is, despite his bitter prejudices, historicallyimportant, and must have been used by Scott when he wrote 'Woodstock. '

It seems at first sight strange that the Independents should have been"gay, " and, even with a reserve, frolicsome, for they were originallythe soldiers of Cromwell's "New Model, " "honest and religious men. " ButWood describes them as he knew them many years after Naseby and MarstonMoor, when their character had changed with changing circumstances. Triumphant success seldom improves the morale of any party. Oxfordproved a Capua to the Independents who lived in it after the strain ofwar was over: the very principle of Independency, liberty of opinion andaction given to every Christian congregation, came to be applied to thelife of the individual: freedom to reject any doctrine or practice whichyou do not like naturally ends in much gaiety and frolicsomeness, especially if your lines are cast in pleasant places: it becomesdifficult not to slide into practical Antinomianism. What a place tolive in for eleven years! yet Wilkins did so with success and generalapplause. He was inclined by temperament to the freedom of mellowedIndependency rather than to the stiffness of the Presbyterians, who moresuccessfully than their rivals resisted the enervating influences oflife in Oxford. Circumstances as well as inclination led him to becomean Independent: his marriage with Cromwell's sister, and the appointmentto be one of the Commissioners to execute the office of Chancellor, perhaps also his appointment to the Wardenship, all tended to draw himto the side of Ireton and the Protector. Of the latter he saw much, andwas consulted by him on academical and ecclesiastical affairs. 

Lord Morley[2] records "a story told by Bishop Wilkins, who was thehusband of Cromwell's youngest sister Robina, that the Protector oftensaid to him that no temporal government could have a sure supportwithout a national church that adhered to it, and that he thoughtEngland was capable of no constitution but Episcopacy. " Lord Morleythinks that "the second imputation must be apocryphal. " That is by nomeans clear: Cromwell may have said what Wilkins probably did notinvent, meaning that he thought Episcopacy good enough for England, forEnglishmen were incapable of any better constitution; or he may havemodified his judgment of Episcopacy, --who knows all that Cromwell cameto think in his latter days, a time when most men revise their opinions?He may have felt the disenchantment which awaits success. 

Wilkins' marked success, both in his College and in his University, canbe explained only by the fact that he possessed the qualities necessaryfor the work he had to do, --strong common-sense, moderation, andgeniality. He had to live, as the most prominent man, in a societycomposed of three factions crowded together within the narrow limits ofa University town, which even in quiet times is not always the abode ofpeace. He had to deal with the most burning questions, religious andpolitical, which divide communities: questions which had been stifledfor a time by force, and therefore, when force was removed or slackened, came back into vigorous life, and were constantly and bitterlydiscussed. But he was the man for the time and the place. 

His College flourished under his wise and kindly rule. Dr Pope tells usthat "many country gentlemen, of all persuasions, but especially thosethen called Cavaliers and Malignants for adhering to the King and to theChurch, sent their sons to his College to be under his government. Theaffluence of gentlemen was so great that I may fairly say of WadhamCollege that it was never before in so flourishing a condition. " The"affluence of gentlemen" of all sorts, Fellow Commoners, Commoners, Servitors, and migrants from Cambridge, was, in 1649, fifteen; in 1650, fifty-one; in 1651, twenty-four; in 1652, forty. In the ten completeyears of Wilkins' Wardenship the average of admissions was thirty. Thelarge admission made in 1650 was due to the reputation of Wilkins as anable and tolerant College Head, as well as to the belief that the tumultof war had died away. Men's thoughts were turning to civil affairs andthe ordinary business of life, especially to education, the preparationfor it. 

In the registers of the period between 1648 and 1659, are found manynames either of distinction in themselves, or of interest as showingthat the connection of Wadham with the western counties was wellmaintained. Walter Pope, who has been already mentioned, was appointedScholar by the Visitors in 1648, perhaps on the suggestion of the newWarden, his half-brother. He filled many offices in the College, was oneof the original Fellows of the Royal Society, and became Professor ofAstronomy in Gresham College. He deserves to be remembered as the authorof a quaint and interesting little book, in which he gives a briefaccount of Wilkins, Lawrence Rooke, and Isaac Barrow, as well as acomplete life of Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. It is full ofdigressions on the manners and customs of the time, written with muchhumour, and is worthy of a humble place beside the diaries of Evelyn andPepys. 

Seth Ward was a Scholar of Sidney Sussex, ejected from his College andfrom Cambridge because "he refused the Covenant and other oaths. " Hewent to London, and, like Wren and Wallis, studied mathematics underWilliam Oughtred, the author of the 'Clavis Mathematica, '--"a littlebook, but a great one as to the contents, "--which brought its author agreat name, as well it might. When in London Ward met Wilkins andformed a lifelong friendship with him. They were both men of learning, moderate, dexterous, and successful. Ward entered Wadham as a FellowCommoner in October 1649, became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and in1659 President of Trinity. Like Wilkins, he was ejected from hisHeadship at the Restoration, and like him obtained high preferment underthe new _régime_ and became a Bishop. Both of them, when in Oxford, "became liable to the persecutions of peevish people who ceased not toclamour, and even to article against them as Cavaliers in theirhearts--meer moral men without the Power of Godliness. " "You must know, "continues Pope, "that a moral and unblamable person, if he did not herdwith them, was an abomination to that Party. I have heard one of themdeliver himself in this manner. " The "manner" is impossible to quote; itis to the effect that the speaker's opponents were hypocrites andPharisees of the worst kind, and "in a desperate condition, on whomJesus Christ can take no hold. " The passage is instructive; it revealsthe exasperation of party feeling in those times, and gives much foodfor reflection. 

Christopher Wren belongs both to Wadham and to All Souls. He wasadmitted Fellow Commoner of Wadham in 1649, and migrated to All Souls in1653, but maintained his connection with his first College, and forseveral years occupied the chamber over the gateway. Of him, the closefriend of Wilkins, the scientist and architect, the President of theRoyal Society, nothing more need here be said. His portrait hangs inWadham College Hall, beneath that of Robert Blake. 

Less known is Thomas Sprat, admitted Scholar of Wadham in 1651. Of himWood says that he was "an excellent poet and orator, and one who arrivedat a great mastery of the English language. " His reputation does notrest on his poetry: he was known by the strange and dubious title of"Pindarick Sprat. " But his History of the Royal Society justifies Wood'sencomium; and he wrote a 'Relation of the late wicked contrivance ofStephen Blackhead and of Robert Young, ' of which Macaulay, who does notpraise lightly, says that "there are few better narratives in thelanguage. " Sprat became Bishop of Rochester and Chaplain to Charles II. , though in his youth he had written an Ode on the death of OliverCromwell. 

Lawrence Rooke was admitted in 1650 from King's College, Cambridge. Heaccompanied Ward in his migration to Oxford, "and seated himself inWadham College for the benefit of his conversation. " Pope "never wasacquainted with any person who knew more and spoke less. " He was aprominent member of the band of philosophers who met in Wilkins'Lodgings; and after the Restoration held the Professorship of Astronomyin Gresham College, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Pope'saccount of him is well worth reading: of his travels in France; of hisencounter with the redoubtable Thomas Hobbes, whose quadrature of thecircle he proved false: that hard-headed philosopher's logic or"computation" must have failed him on this occasion, for finding, as hethought, errors in Rooke's criticism, he concluded that his own solutionmust be true. With Ward and Wallis Hobbes had still more fierceencounters on the same question. 

Gilbert Ironside, admitted in 1650, became Warden, Vice-Chancellor ofthe University, and, as his father had been, Bishop of Bristol, andfinally of Hereford. He was the "rudest man in the University, " and thatwithout respect of persons, for he remonstrated, in a tone not farremoved from rudeness, with James II. When he visited Oxford in 1687 toenforce his mandate on Magdalen College. 

William Lloyd, who entered Wadham in 1655, was a learned Divine, withhis learning at command, of whom Burnet says that "he had the mostlearning in ready cash of any one he knew. " He devoted himself to theinterpretation of prophecy. His labours were rewarded by the title ofPseudopropheta Canus, bestowed on him when he was old and white-haired, by the _terræ filius_ of 1703. He had himself in his younger days shownsome tendency to irreverent joking, by inventing an Eastern Patriarch, anative of London, a man of venerable appearance and dressed to suit thecharacter, who deceived some eminent members of the University, and gavethem his blessing; an incident of which Lloyd used to make his "bragge"long afterwards. He became Bishop of St Asaph, and was one of the SevenBishops committed to the Tower. William III. Rewarded him with theBishoprics of Lichfield and Coventry, and finally of Worcester. 

Samuel Parker matriculated in 1657, and became Bishop of Oxford in 1686. In the following year he was intruded by James II. Into the President'splace at Magdalen College, but held his office for only five months. Hedied in his Lodgings, and was buried in the ante-chapel, but honoured byno memorial to mark the place of his interment. His must have been adismal reign. 

Beside these names of bishops and philosophers occur names of interestof various kinds: historic names--Russell, Lovelace, Windham, Strangways; one also of quite different associations, Sedley, whoentered Wadham in 1656, the boon companion later of Rochester, who, alsoa Wadham undergraduate, was his junior by four years. Both of them werelibertines and wits, who received at their College, it may be presumed, an education the precepts of which they did not practise at the Court ofCharles II. Other entries show the continued connection of the Collegewith the West of England--with Somerset, the Wadhams' county; withDevon, Dorset, Hampshire, and Gloucestershire. 

Enough has been said to prove that Wadham under Wilkins was a college ofhigh reputation and efficiency. It was a nursery of bishops, contributing to the bench no less than six, including Wilkins himself; anursery also of Fellows of the Royal Society, --Wilkins, Ward, Rooke, Wren, Sprat, and Pope were original members of the "invisible college. "Not only to the Church and to Science did Wadham do good service, butmore directly to the State, by educating together impartially the youthof both the great parties. "When the hurly-burly's done, when thebattle's lost and won, " it is above all things desirable to allay bitterfeelings, and bring the former combatants together. For this mostdifficult and delicate of tasks Wilkins was well qualified. He wasbeloved by the Cavaliers because he treated all his undergraduateskindly, Royalists and Puritans alike, in marked contrast with otherHeads of Houses, who appear to have dealt faithfully with youngMalignants, the sons of their political opponents. 

That Wilkins possessed great administrative abilities and vigour isshown by his work in the University and in his College. He had seen muchof the world, and was in the prime of life, and already a man ofeminence--a combination of qualities as rare in Heads of Houses as inCabinet Ministers. He persuaded the Visitors that Wadham and Trinitywere fitted, specially and immediately, in 1651 for freedom to electtheir Fellows--a privilege of which all the Colleges had been deprivedin 1648. The administration of the College estates and finances wascarefully revised, and the Statutes were amended. Wilkins' life wasvaried and full of activities outside as well as within his College. Hewas selected to deal with problems more difficult and pressing thanCompulsory Pass Greek, or degrees for women. Was Oxford to bedismantled? Its security had been threatened by a rising of the"Levellers"; and in 1649 Wilkins, along with the Proctor and a Canon ofChrist Church, was appointed to confer with the mayor and the citizenson this important question, not then decided. 

Two years later he served on a Commission appointed to consider how tosuppress troubles caused by sturdy beggars, "poore soldiers, cashieredor maimed, and Irish people with petitions, that pretended to be undonby the late rebellion there, "--the miserable sequel of the civil war. He helped in the revision of the College and University Statutes, and onthe nomination of Cromwell was made one of the Commissioners forexecuting the office of Chancellor, proving himself a man of affairs aswell as of learning. For ten years, as critical as any in the history ofOxford, he took a leading part in its academical and municipaladministration. 

Yet he found time to avail himself of the privilege to marry given tothe Warden of Wadham: it was accorded to him by a dispensation of theVisitors, who doubtless thought that enforced celibacy savoured ofPopery. The privilege was withdrawn after the Restoration, as being aconcession made by Puritans, whose views on the marriage of the clergywere not the views of the High Church party. Leave to marry was given toall Wardens of Wadham by a special Act of Parliament in 1806, and not, as the College story goes, by a clause tacked on to a Canal or TurnpikeBill. 

Pope's account of Wilkins' marriage is a strange solution of an alwaysinteresting question, and not altogether complimentary to the lady ofhis choice. "Dr Ward, " he says, "rid out of this storm, "--the storm ofobloquy which broke out on him and Wilkins as being "mere moral men. "Wilkins "put into the port of matrimony, " apparently as a harbour ofrefuge in distress. He married Robina, the Protector's sister, widow ofDr Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. Her first husband was "a pious, humble, and learned person, and an excellent preacher, " the best, inPope's opinion, of the censorious party. Ward did not imitate hisfriend, though, if we believe Pope, he had many opportunities for doingso. "He was never destitute of friends of the Fair Sex, never withoutproffers of Wives, " which became increasingly frequent as he rose in theworld. Pope professes to have known "several persons of great qualityand estates who found ways to make it known to Ward, that if he wouldaddress himself to them in the honourable way of marriage, he should notwant a kind entertainment. " But he, then Bishop of Salisbury, hadbefore his eyes the fate of one of his predecessors who married after hebecame a bishop, and "upon that had received so severe a reprimand fromhis brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and laid it so much to heartthat it accelerated his death. " This story may be apocryphal; it iscertainly startling. Do ladies of quality still give such hints tobishops? Do bishops die of a rebuke from the archbishop of theirprovince?

Wilkins' marriage "gained him a strong interest and authority in theUniversity, and set him at safety, and out of the reach of hisAdversaries. " We may trust that it was for his happiness in other ways. 

Of his wife little is known, nor is there a portrait of her in theCollege. She had a son by her second marriage, Joshua Wilkins, whobecame Dean of Down: by her first marriage she had a daughter, ElizabethFrench, the wife of Tillotson. The writer once amused himself with thefancy that the Archbishop to-be met and courted Miss French in theWarden's Lodgings at Wadham, which have few romantic associations; butchronology proves that Tillotson, a Cambridge man, born in 1630, wouldprobably not have made acquaintance with Wilkins before 1659, when hebecame Master of Trinity. The romance had therefore to be transferred tothe Master's Lodge. Even there it could not stay, for Tillotson's firstmeeting with his future wife in all likelihood took place in London, when he was appointed Tuesday Lecturer at St Lawrence Jewry, thevicarage of which was one of Wilkins' earliest preferments after hisejection from the Mastership of Trinity. When Tillotson made suit forthe hand of his stepdaughter, Wilkins, upon her desiring to be excused, said, "Betty, you shall have him, for he is the best polemical Divinethis day in England. " Though excellence in polemical divinity has not anattraction for most women, she consented, and they were married in 1664. The stories both of Dorothy and Betty are myths, which fade away at thefirst touch of criticism. 

[Illustration: WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE COLLEGE GARDEN. ]

Wilkins was a diligent student, and wrote books of many kinds. Thesebooks the writer does not pretend to have read, save in the mosthurried, even careless way, except two of them, the 'Real Character' and'Natural Religion. ' The others are of interest to natural philosophers, as containing anticipations of discoveries and ideas which belong to alater age, and as showing that Wilkins possessed the inspiringconviction of all genuine men of Science, that for it the wordimpossible does not exist. 

In 1638 he published his first work, an Astronomical treatise, the fruitof his studies at Oxford and at Fawsley. It is entitled 'The Discoveryof a World in the Moone, or a discourse tending to prove that there maybe another habitable World in that Planet': in the third impression, issued in 1640, is added a "Discourse concerning the Possibility of aPassage thither. " Like Lucian he imagined a voyage to the moon, thoughhe admits that the journey through the air was a formidable difficulty. He successfully defended his views against an objection raised by theDuchess of Newcastle. That clever and eccentric lady, the authoress ofmany "fancies, " philosophical and poetical, asked him where she was tobait her horses if she undertook the journey. "Your Grace could not dobetter, " he replied, "than stop at one of your castles in the air. " Inhis treatment of the difficulties caused by the apparent conflictbetween certain passages of Scripture and the conclusions ofAstronomical Science, which he accepts, he anticipates in a remarkableway that explanation of them which rests on the understanding of themeaning of the Bible and of the nature of inspiration. The book wasparodied in the story of 'Peter Wilkins' Journey to the Moon, ' whicheven usually well-informed persons have been known to attribute as a_jeu-d'esprit_ to the Warden of Wadham. It was written by RobertPaltock, and published in 1751. 

His next production was 'Mercurie; or the Secret and SwiftMessenger, '--a treatise on Cryptography or ciphers; curiouscontrivances whereby A can communicate with C without B's suspecting orunderstanding, by signs, gestures, parables, and transpositions of thealphabet: such as the writer looked at seemed to confirm the view thatevery cipher which depends on system, and not on an arrangement of acapricious kind, can be interpreted by an expert, a title to which helays no claim. The book was meant perhaps for use in the Civil War, aswas the system of Wilkins' friend, Dr Wallis, who could both invent andsolve such puzzles, and distinguished himself by deciphering the lettersof the king which fell into the hands of the Parliamentarians at Naseby. There is also among the "Tracts of Bishop Wilkins, " a treatise dated1648, entitled 'Mathematical Magic; or, the Wonders worked by MechanicalPowers and Motions, ' subdivided, according to that distinction, into twobooks, styled Archimedes and Dædalus. The names are quaint, and theclassical illustrations are very numerous. The work is a kind ofhandbook for engineers, enlivened by quotations, not always apposite, from ancient authors, as was the fashion when high literary culture andscience could be more easily combined than in our days of ruthlessspecialism. It is dedicated in very courtly language to the PrinceElector Palatine. Wilkins looks forward to the Prince's restoration tohis dominions--a curious aspiration to be professed by a man who didnot, then at least, put his trust in princes. But he did not foreseewhat was to come, both to himself or others. 

His two books of a devotional character were, one on 'The Gift ofPrayer, ' a formal and elaborate treatise with many divisions andsubdivisions, in spirit earnest and devout. Its companion treatise, 'Ecclesiastes; or the Gift of Preaching, ' shows a high conception of thelearning which he thought necessary for one who would preach well;knowledge of commentators; of preachers, especially of Englishsermon-writers; of works on Christian doctrine, on the history ofChristianity; of all subjects which can be included in Theology. Thelist of books recommended is enormous, and beyond the reach of anyman--even of Wilkins or Casaubon: it must have been intended to be awork of reference, a catalogue from which a student might select. It, like his 'Sermons Preached on Several Occasions, ' is illumined by quaintutterances, humorous, sensible, and devout; qualities more frequentlycombined in those days than in our own, when the "dignity of thepulpit, " a lamentable superstition, has weakened its influence, and hasmade religion appear to simple people remote from common life. 

Wilkins' most original and valuable contribution to Theology is 'ThePrinciples and Duties of Natural Religion, ' written in his later years, and published after his death by Tillotson. Mr Sanders, the writer ofthe too short article on Wilkins in the 'Dictionary of NationalBiography, ' says that "in this work there are thoughts which anticipatethe argument of Butler's 'Analogy. '" Wilkins, like Butler and Newman, draws distinctions between different kinds of evidence and differentdegrees of consequent assent. He points out that neither NaturalReligion nor Christianity can be proved true by demonstration like aconclusion in geometry, or in any kind of mathematical reasoning; thatin default of this inference from self-evident premises to propositionsof equal cogency, we must, in a matter of paramount practicalimportance, be content to judge, as fairly and soberly as we can, bythat "probability" which Butler calls "the guide of life. " Wilkinsperceived, what few in his time perceived, that there are no"demonstrations" of Christianity, nor even of Theism; that faith isfaith. Further, he emphasises the harmony between Natural and RevealedReligion, the fact that one is the complement of the other. But in himthere are not the depth, candour, and seriousness of Butler, nor thatsense of mystery which makes him the weightiest of Christian Apologistsin the estimation both of disciples and opponents. 

The book by which Wilkins will always be remembered among curiousstudents and philologers is his 'Essay towards a Real Character and aPhilosophical Language. ' It is a quarto of 600 pages, including analphabetical dictionary of English words, with their equivalents in whatmay be called, without irreverence, Wilkinese. It was written at therequest of the Royal Society, and, by its order, published in 1688. Themeaning of the somewhat obscure title is explained by Wilkins in a veryinteresting preface. Character means language, or rather writing, and auniversal character is the script of a language like that which wasspoken before the confusion of tongues; a language for and of all men. By "Real" is signified that the new language is founded on a study ofthings which are "better than words"; of "the nature of things, and thatcommon notion of them wherein mankind does agree. " The making of such alanguage "will prove the shortest and plainest way for the attainment ofreal knowledge, " and the language thus made will be truly philosophical, or, to use our modern term, scientific. The labour bestowed by Wilkinson his magnificent project was immense, but the result was failure. "Sunt lacrimæ rerum, " and tears were never shed over a greater waste ofingenuity and heroic toil, if indeed a fine example of fruitlessdevotion is to be called waste. With apologies to the Esperantists, itmust be said that the invention of a universal language, of any but thenarrowest compass, seems impossible, for language, in any real sense, isnot made but grows. It is dangerous, however, to dogmatise onpossibilities. Misled, as we can gather from his preface, by the provedusefulness of mathematical signs, Wilkins attempted to provide forphilosophers of all countries a better means of communication thanLatin, then the universal language of literature and science, but in hisopinion unscientific, full of anomalies and difficult to acquire; for init there were, he said, thirty thousand words. In his language therewere only three thousand, and they could be learnt by a man of goodcapacity in a month. His estimate of capacity and diligence is somewhathigh. It is possible to explain the principles on which he constructedhis new tongue. He began by dividing the universe, the sum total ofexistence, things, thoughts, relations, after the manner of Aristotle, though not into ten, but into forty categories, or genera, or greatclasses, such as World, Element, Animal, and apparently species ofanimals, such as Bird, Fish, Beast: for each of these great classes hedevised a monosyllabic name--_e. G. _, De for Element, Za for Fish; eachof these genera is subdivided into species indicated by the addition ofa consonant, and these are again subdivided into subordinate speciesdistinguished by a vowel affixed. For example--De means an Element, anyof the four, Fire, Air, Earth, Water; add to it B, which, as the firstconsonant, stands for the first species of a genus, and you will havethe significant word DEB, which means Fire, for it, we know not why, isthe first of the four Elements. Let us take a more complex instance--hisname for Salmon. The salmon is a species of Za or Fish, a particularkind of fish called N, namely, the Squameous river fish. This class ZaNis subdivided into lower classes, and the lower class Salmon is calledA, which means the red-fleshed kind of squameous river fish, and so asalmon is a ZaNA. If you wished to state the fact that a salmon swims, you would use the words ZaNA GoF, for Go stands for the great categoryof motion, F for the particular kind of motion meant, swimming. Voice, tense, and mood are indicated by lines of different lengths, straight orcurved, crossed, hooked, looped; adverbs and conjunctions by dots orpoints differently arranged. 

Wilkins' universal character therefore means a kind of shorthand writingof his Real Language. 

The writer fears that he may only have confused his readers and himselfby his bold but poor attempt to express in a few lines the meaning ofsix hundred pages. He would be the last to ridicule the "folly" of agreat man, whose system he has made no very laborious effort tounderstand, for it seems to be built on sand, on a classification ofthings superficial, imperfect, and capricious, which would not have beenaccepted by learned men, and if accepted would have become obsolete in aquarter of a century. The syllable Co stands for all relations betweenhuman beings, and these relations are of eight kinds. What would aprofessor of social science now say to this? What would an ichthyologistsay to Wilkins' definition of a salmon? The interest of the book lies inits being the most striking of many proofs of the wide intellectualinterests, the alert and insatiable curiosity, and the extraordinaryindustry of its writer. It has also the pathetic interest of "love'slabour lost, " for who now reads the 'Real Character, ' or who read ittwenty years after Wilkins' death? His name was "writ in water, " for hespent himself on many things, and did little because he did too much. 

The "greatest curioso" of his time relieved his toils by music. Nowhereare Wood's vanity and self-consciousness shown more vividly than in hisaccount of a musical entertainment given by Wilkins in honour of ThomasBaltzar, "the most famous artist for the violin which the world had yetproduced. The books and instruments were carried thither, " to theWarden's lodgings, "but none could be persuaded there to play againsthim in consort on the violin. At length the company, perceiving A. W. Standing behind in a corner neare the dore, they haled him in amongthem, and play forsooth he must against him: whereupon, he being notable to avoid it, took up a violin, and behaved himself as poor Troylusdid against Achilles. " Wood consoled himself for his failure by thehonour he acquired from being asked to play with the Master, of whom hemaliciously remarks that "he was given to excessive drinking, "--acharacteristic comment. 

Wilkins' greatest achievement was the founding of the Royal Society. Hemay be called its founder, if that high title can be given to any one ofthe eminent men who, in Oxford and in London, revived or regeneratedthe study of natural philosophy. Pope, Aubrey, and Sprat differ fromWallis in their accounts of the origin of the mother of scientificparliaments. The first three find that origin in meetings held in WadhamCollege under the presidency of Wilkins. Wallis traces the beginnings ofthe Royal Society to meetings held in London in 1645. "In that year, " hewrites, "there had sprung up an association of certain worthy personsinquisitive in Natural Philosophy, who met together, first in London, for the investigation of what was called the new or experimentalphilosophy, and afterwards several of the more influential of themembers, about 1648 or 1649, finding London too much distracted by civilcommotions, commenced holding their meetings in Oxford. " Among those whoremoved to Oxford were, "first, Dr Wilkins, then I, and soon after DrGoddard, whereupon our company divided. Those at London (and we when wehad occasion to be there) met as before. Those of us at Oxford, with DrWard, Dr Petty, and many others of the most inquisitive persons inOxford, met weekly for some years at Dr Petty's lodgings, on the likeaccount, to wit, so long as Dr Petty continued in Oxford, and for somewhile after, because of the conveniences we had there (being the houseof an apothecary) to view and make use of drugs, and other like mattersas there was occasion. We did afterwards (Dr Petty being gone to Irelandand our numbers growing less) remove thence, and (some years before hisMajesty's return) did meet at Dr Wilkin's lodgings in Wadham College. "

This account is plain enough: it differs from the story told by Sprat inthis point only, that Sprat omits reference to the first meetings inLondon between 1645 and 1648, and to the meetings in Oxford at DrPetty's lodgings. The causes of these omissions are not far to seek. Sprat was a youth of seventeen in 1651, the year of his admission intoWadham: it is difficult to believe that he was present at the gatheringsof men many years his senior in Dr Petty's lodgings, or knew as much asWallis did of the infancy of the Royal Society. No Oxford man is to beentirely trusted when writing about his own College, and Sprat laudablyclaimed for Wadham the honour of being the cradle of the greatassociation. 

In his history of the Royal Society, published in 1667, he gives a fullaccount of its growth and objects, though not of its beginnings. 

"It was some space, " he writes, "after the end of the Civil Wars atOxford, in Dr Wilkins, his lodgings, in Wadham College, which was thenthe place of resort for virtuous and learned men, that the firstmeetings were held which laid the foundation of all this that followed. The University had at this time many members of its own who had begun afree way of reasoning; and was also frequented by some gentlemen ofphilosophical minds, whom the misfortunes of the kingdom, and thesecurity and ease of a retirement among Gownsmen had drawn thither. Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathinga freer air, and of conversing in quiet one with another, without beingengaged in the passions and madness of that dismal Age. And from theInstitution of that Assembly, it had been enough if no other advantagehad come but this: that by this means there was a race of young menprovided, against the next Age, whose minds, receiving from them theirfirst impressions of sober and general knowledge, were invincibly armedagainst the enchantments of Enthusiasm. But what is more, I may ventureto affirm that it was in good measure by the influence which theseGentlemen had over the rest, that the University itself, or at least anypart of its Discipline or Order was saved from ruine. For such a candidand impassionate company as that was, and for such a gloomy season, whatcould have been a fitter subject to pitch upon than Natural Philosophy?To have been always tossing about some Theological question would havebeen to have made that their private diversion the excess of which theythemselves disliked in the public. To have been eternally musing onCivil business and distresses of their Country was too melancholy areflection. It was Nature alone which could pleasantly entertain them inthat estate. "

It would be superfluous to praise this noble and pathetic passage. Itshows the weariness of political and religious controversy whichoppressed men's minds; the discouragement, almost hopelessness, whichmade the Restoration welcome, and Puritanism odious, for a time atleast, to the majority of Englishmen. The word Enthusiasm is of strangesignificance; then and for more than a hundred years later it connotedextravagance and fanaticism. Worthy of notice also are Sprat's words tothe effect that the influence of Wilkins and his friends was on the sideof discipline and order in the University, and saved it from "ruine. "They ought to please and encourage, perhaps instruct, the modernapostles of science who are with us now. 

From a comparison of Wallis' and Sprat's accounts, it is clear that thedispute, if dispute there be, whether Wadham or London was the cradle ofthe Royal Society, can be settled more easily than most contested claimsof this kind. The facts are ascertained: the question turns on themeaning of the words "founder" and "foundation. " The first meetings ofthe Philosophical Club, which became the Royal Society, wereunquestionably held in London, and were continued there, at the Bull'sHead Tavern in Cheapside, after Wilkins had removed to Oxford in 1648, and gathered round him there the members of a new philosophical society, which may be called, if that name be preferred, an offshoot from theparent stem: the two clubs co-existed till the Restoration, when most ofthe Oxford philosophers migrated or returned to London, and wereincorporated into one society which received its name and charter fromCharles II. In July 1662. 

Metaphors do not always illustrate, but the facts may be stated thus:the Royal Society was born in London or cradled there; the infant didnot thrive, and was put out to nurse at Oxford where it waxed andprospered: it was a proper child of three years old when (on Petty'sleaving Oxford in 1651) it found a settled home in the Warden's lodgingsin Wadham for eight years; grown and strengthened, the boy was broughtback to his birthplace, and was recognised and named. In this sense itmay be said that the Royal Society was founded by Wilkins in Wadham:that College was its early home, and Wilkins was the most prominent andactive man in the Philosophical Club. 

A very clear and short account of many of its members is given in the'History of the Oxford Museum, ' by Dr Vernon and Miss Vernon, which, ifI may presume to praise it, resembles the work of Oughtred beforementioned, as being "a little book, but a great one as to the contents. "Sprat enumerates as "the principal and most constant of those who met atWadham, Dr Seth Ward, Mr Boyle, Dr Wilkins, Sir William Petty, DrWallis, Dr Goddard, Dr Willis, Dr Bathurst, Mr Matthew Wren, DrChristopher Wren, Mr Rooke, besides several others, who joyn'dthemselves to them, upon occasion. " The list is remarkable; itrepresents the science of the time, --Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Architecture, Theology, and Political Economy orArithmetic, for nothing "scibile" was alien to these inquisitivepersons. "Their proceedings, " we are told, "were rather by action thandiscourse, chiefly attending some particular Trials in Chymistry orMechanicks: they had no Rules nor Method fixed: their intention was moreto communicate to each other their discoveries which they could make inso narrow a compass, than an united, constant, or regular inquisition. "They were probably "clubbable" persons, friends with a common interest, each pursuing his own path with perfect freedom, a method which musthave enhanced the harmony and efficiency of their meetings. The Club, ora branch of it, survived at Oxford the departure of Wilkins and most ofthe philosophers. To Robert Boyle was mainly due the continuance of thefaithful remnant. In the year 1659 he imported into Oxford PeterSthael, a noted Chemist and Rosicrucian, "a great hater of women and avery useful man. " Among those who attended his lectures were AntonyWood, Wallis, Wren, Bathurst, and, not least, Locke, who wastroublesome, and "scorned to take notes"--why we are not told, and mayimagine as we please. Wood's account of this survival is obscure--heseems uncertain as to the relation of Sthael's pupils to the RoyalSociety at Oxford: they were probably the same, and incurred the wrathand misrepresentations of Henry Stubb, who inveighed against them asdangerous, --the Society had become obnoxious to the University, beingsuspected of a desire to confer degrees, against which the University"stuck, " to use Wood's word, not unreasonably. 

The Oxford meetings in Wilkins' time, after 1651, were held, not in theroom over the gateway, but in the dining-room or drawing-room of theWarden's lodgings. By the direction of the Foundress "the chamber overthe great gate" had been assigned to the Warden, as commanding theentrance into the College, and a view of all who should go in or out: hewas to have also for his own use seven rooms next adjoining on the northside. It is uncertain at what date he migrated to his present lodgings, but there is abundant evidence to show that it was before the time ofWilkins, for from 1640 to 1663 the great chamber was occupied by varioustenants, --among them Seth Ward and Christopher Wren. The writer istherefore warranted in picturing to the eye of his imagination thepersonages of the club assembled in his drawing-room, a club lessfamous, but no less worthy of fame, than the Literary Club of Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and Reynolds. 

[Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. ]

Fain would he ask questions of Wren or Ward or Wilkins, or any of themembers of the club, most of whom he would recognise by their portraitsin the College or elsewhere. 

On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died. To Wood the exact date isimportant, because "some writers tell us that he was hurried away bythe Devill in a terrible raging wind on the 30th of August, " a statementwhich the chronicler might have been expected to believe. RichardCromwell was proclaimed Protector at Oxford on September 6th, in theusual places where kings had been proclaimed. The ceremony was disturbedby young scholars, who pelted with carrots and turnips the mayor, recorder, and town clerk, as well as Colonel Upton and his troopers. These missiles were symptoms of the reaction which was fast approaching. It belongs to the history of England, but so far as it showed itself inOxford, it is part of the life of Wilkins. It must have given him muchto think of during the last year of his Wardenship. In February 1659 theVice-Chancellor wrote to the Dean of Christ Church, then in London, that"he must make haste to Oxford, for godliness laye a gasping. " NathanielCrewe of Lincoln had in the same month drawn up a petition, which Woodsigned, to put out the Visitors. He was a Presbyterian, and ready tohave the Visitors "put downe, notwithstanding he had before submittedto them and had paid to them reverence and obedience. The Independants, who called themselves the godly party, drew up a petition contrary tothe former, and said 'twas for the cause of Christ. " The feud betweenthe two parties was no less bitter, when their supremacy in Oxford wasdrawing to its end, than it had been many years before. Which of thepetitions did Wilkins sign?

A year later, in February 1660, Monk made a speech to Parliament ofdoubtful meaning, exhorting his hearers to be careful "that neither theCavalier nor the phanatique party have yet a share in your civil ormilitary power, "--on which utterance Wood notes that "the wordphanatique comes much into fashion after this. " Monk's meaning wasquickly interpreted for him, both in London and in Oxford, --on February13th "there was great rejoicing here at Oxon for the news of a freeparliament, ringing of bells, bonfires, &c. : there were rumps (_i. E. _, tayles of sheep) flung in a bonfire at Queen's Coll. , and some at DrPalmer's window at All Soles. " The joy of the Royalists especially wasmanifested by the reading at Magdalen parish church of Common Prayer, "after it had been omitted to be read in public places in Oxon since thesurrender of the city or in 1647. " All the tokens of Monarchy wererestored: "the signe of the King's Head had been dashed out, or daubledover, tempore Olivari, and (in its place was written 'This was theKing's Head') was new painted. " On the 1st of May "a Maypole was set upagainst the Beare in All Hallows parish (_i. E. _, opposite the Mitre ofour time) on purpose to vex the Presbyterians and Independants, " despitethe interference of Dr Conant, the Vice-Chancellor. On the 10th the newKing was proclaimed: on the 14th letters from Richard Cromwell toConvocation were read, whereby he resigned the Chancellorship of theUniversity in dignified and courteous words. By May 29th the Restorationwas complete, and the day was observed in all or in most towns inEngland, "particularly at Oxon, which did exceed any place of itsbigness. " Wood's comment on these events is worth giving in full: "Theworld of England was perfectly mad. They were free from the chains ofdarkness and confusion which the Presbyterians and phanatiques hadbrought upon them: yet some of them, seeing then what mischief they haddone, tack'd about to participate of the universal Joy, and at lengthclosed with the Royal partie. " Here we take leave, for a time, of AntonyWood, who has been allowed to tell his story in his own words; unwillingleave, for though he is provoking, he is charming, with a keen eye forcharacter, both of parties and individuals, and for the issues andevents of real importance, never dull or lengthy, save when he descantson his family affairs or on the minutiæ of his occasionally meticulousantiquarianism, and even then to be forgiven for his zeal and industry. 

FOOTNOTE:

[2] See 'Cromwell, ' p. 368, 2nd edition. 

CHAPTER IV. 

WILKINS AFTER HIS LIFE AT OXFORD. 

Wilkins was spared the pain of witnessing the end of the Commonwealth inOxford, and of being ejected from his post like other Heads of Houses. On September 3, 1659, he resigned the Wardenship, and was succeeded onSeptember 5th by Walter Blandford, one of the Fellows who had submittedto the Visitors in 1648, and later, in that strange time of opinionswhich "could be changed, " had made his peace with the Royalists. Duringhis Wardenship of six years the College flourished. He was made Bishopof Oxford in 1665, and was in 1671 promoted to the See of Worcester, another of the many Wadham Bishops. 

Wilkins left Wadham to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Hehad been invited there by the Fellows, on whose petition he waspresented by Richard Cromwell. Thirty years later Cambridge, as if inexchange for value received, sent Richard Bentley to Wadham, who left itto return to Cambridge as Master of Trinity, --an interchange of whichneither University can complain. 

At Cambridge Wilkins' stay was brief. He was Master of Trinity only forten months, but in that short reign he proved himself as vigorous andeffective as he had been at Wadham: he stimulated and organised theCollege teaching, and made his Fellows work, by institutingdisputations, and examinations at elections, probably fallen out of usein the troubles of the fifteen previous years; yet here as elsewhere hewas able to win and rule, for "he was honoured there and heartily lovedby all. " At Cambridge, Burnet tells us, "he joined with those whostudied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being inparties, or from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits, andfierceness about opinions. " He must have had as his allies thereCudworth and Whichcote, men of his own age, and one younger, Stillingfleet, the Latitudinarians, from whom our Broad Churchmen aretheologically descended. 

The evil days came soon: despite the petition of the Fellows who wishedto keep him, he was ejected from the Mastership when the King came back. "The whirligig of time brings in his revenges, " and what Pitt hadundergone Wilkins had to undergo. 

Pope describes, surely with some exaggeration, the troubles of Wilkinsduring the eight years between his departure from Cambridge and hisbeing made Bishop of Chester. He was a man whom no misfortunes couldcrush--elastic, resolute, resourceful master of his fate, --

 "Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit. "

He had many friends and a great reputation; they brought him variouspreferments, --the lectureship at Gray's Inn, the vicarage of StLawrence Jewry, and the Deanery of Ripon, within a few years after hisbanishment from Cambridge. Preferment may not have brought himhappiness, but it must have prevented his fortunes from being, as Popesays they were, "as low as they could be. " He suffered indeed onecalamity--a cruel one to a man of his pursuits and tastes: in the greatfire of London the vicarage house of St Lawrence Jewry was burnt, andwith it were destroyed his books and the collection of scientificinstruments made during his residence at Oxford with the help of themembers of the club. 

Add to this that he was out of favour both at Whitehall and at Lambethon account of his marriage--for that reason "Archbishop Sheldon who hadthe keys of the Church for a great time in his power, and could admitunto it and keep out of it whom he pleased, I mean (Pope hastens toexplain) disposed of all Ecclesiastical Preferments, entertained astrong prejudice against him. " This prejudice the Archbishop, whenlater, on the introduction of Ward, he came to know him better, acknowledged to have been unjust, a signal instance of Wilkins' power ofwinning men. The Latitudinarian was at first coldly received at Lambeth:the brother-in-law of Cromwell was not acceptable at Whitehall. Hisfriend Ward did not desert him, but "followed up good words withanswerable actions, " and procured for him the Precentor's place atExeter, --"the first step which Wilkins ascended to a better fortune. "

In Charles II. He soon found a still more powerful friend. The King, whowas himself the broadest of Latitudinarians, as far as Protestantism wasconcerned, was not repelled by Wilkins' theological views, and yieldedreadily to the attractions of a versatile and agreeable man of science. Science was the most creditable of Charles's tastes and occupations; theone in which he took a genuine and enduring interest. 

On November 28, 1660, the Invisible College was embodied, and became atangible reality. At a meeting held in Gresham College, twelve personsof eminence in science and in other ways "formed the design, " as thefirst Journal Book of the Royal Society records, "of founding a Collegefor the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning. "Among those present were Rooke, Petty, Wren, and Wilkins: a committeewas formed, of which Wilkins was appointed chairman: the King gave hisapproval to the scheme drawn up by the committee, and offered to becomea member of the new College: in 1662 he gave it the Charter ofIncorporation which passed the Great Seal on July 13th of that year. Wilkins was not chosen President; that honour was given to LordBrouncker. 

The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge(its official title) took knowledge for its province; that is, naturalknowledge, of Nature, Art, and Works, in preference to, though notnecessarily to the exclusion of, moral and metaphysical philosophy, history and language. The experiments, its chief work, were to beproductive both of light and fruit: the influence of Bacon is so greatand evident that he might in a sense be called the founder of the RoyalSociety. Sprat's real preface to his History is Cowley's famous ode. Thepoet speaks of philosophy--_i. E. _, natural philosophy, as the captiveand slave of Authority and Words, set free by Bacon: its followers helikens to the Children of Israel wandering aimlessly from one desert toanother till Moses brought them to the border of the promised land. Thestately lines may well be quoted here:--

 "From these and all long errors of the way In which our wandering predecessors went, And like th' old Hebrews many years did stray In desarts but of small extent, Bacon like Moses led us forth at last, The barren Wilderness he past, Did on the very Border stand Of the blest promised land, And from the Mountain Top of his Exalted Wit Saw it himself and shew'd us it. But Life did never to one Man allow Time to discover Worlds and conquer too; Nor can so short a line sufficient be To fadome the vast depths of Nature's sea. "

Like all human institutions, the Royal Society was criticised, feared, misunderstood, and ridiculed. There is evidence of this in Sprat'sanxiety to show that experiments "are not dangerous to the Universitiesnor to the Church of England, " a contention which now would be admittedor denied if the term "experiments" were first defined. He labours, too, to show that they are not dangerous to the Christian religion, eitherits belief or practice. His remarks on this question are of greatinterest and value, and are strangely modern. He pleads that"experiments will be beneficial to our wits and writers. " Alas! the witsat least benefited in a way which Sprat did anticipate. Shadwell in his'Virtuoso' found material for profane merriment in some of theunquestionably absurd inquiries made or suggested by the naturalphilosophers. "Science was then only just emerging from the Mists ofSuperstition. " Astrology and Alchemy still infected Astronomy, Chemistry, and Medicine. A Fellow of the Royal Society, along with thePuritan, made a ridiculous figure on the stage. But Puritanism andNatural Philosophy both survived the "test of truth, " and were betterfor the ordeal. [3]

In 1668, through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, Wilkins wasmade Bishop of Chester. The position of a Bishop in some ways resemblesthat of the Head of a College: Fellows are like canons and archdeacons;undergraduates are the "inferior clergy. " The Bishop showed in themanagement of his diocese the moderation, tact, and charity which hadmade him a successful Warden. He brought back into the Church ofEngland, or into loyalty to that Church, many ministers who had beenejected from their livings for non-compliance with the Act ofUniformity: his success in this good work was due to his "softinterpretation of the terms of conformity. " They needed softening; nopart of Macaulay's 'History of England' is more striking and instructivethan his account in chapter ii. Of the sufferings of the Puritans andNonconformists of all descriptions. "It was made a crime to attend adissenting place of worship. A new and most unreasonable test wasimposed on divines who had been deprived of their benefices forNonconformity; and all who refused to take that test were prohibitedfrom coming within five miles of any town which was governed by acorporation, of any town which was represented in Parliament, or of anytown where they had themselves resided as ministers. The magistrates bywhom these vigorous statutes were to be enforced, were in general meninflamed by party spirit, and by remembrances of wrongs suffered in thetime of the Commonwealth. The jails were therefore soon crowded withdissenters, and among the sufferers were some of whose genius and virtueany Christian society might well be proud. "

It is probable that Chester jail was less crowded than other jails inEngland, and that dissenters were allowed to come within five miles ofChester, even to the Bishop's palace. 

Wilkins, like many "moderate" men, had convictions, and was ready tomake sacrifices in their defence. Not only in his diocese, but in theHouse of Lords, he pleaded for a lenient treatment of dissenters. Inreference to the second Conventicle Act, Wilkins gained for himself, inthe view of all right-minded men, especial honour. He argued earnestlyagainst the Bill in the Upper House. Even when the king desired him tobe silent, he replied "That he thought it an ill thing, both inconscience and policy, and therefore as an Englishman and a Bishop, hewas bound to oppose it. " Being still further requested by Charles not togo to the House while the Bill was pending, his answer was "That by thelaw and constitution of England, and by his Majesty's favour, he had aright to debate and vote: and he was neither afraid nor ashamed to ownhis opinion in this matter, and to act pursuant to it, and the king wasnot offended with his freedom. "[4] He did not hesitate to endanger hisfavour with the king--perhaps not with him, for Charles was not bytemper a persecutor, but with the party then in power. From the 'Churchof England in the Reigns of the Stuarts, ' I quote another instance ofhis moderation and clear-headedness in the fierce controversies of histime. In a conversation with Cosin, Bishop of Devon, who had censuredhim for his moderation, Wilkins frankly told him that he was a betterfriend to the Church of England than his lordship--"for while you, " sayshe, "are for setting the top on the picqued end and downwards, you won'tbe able to keep it up any longer than you keep whipping and scourging;whereas I am for setting the broad end downwards, and so 'twill stand ofitself. " The metaphor has obvious defects, but expresses the broadnessof the Broad party in the Church. 

Of Wilkins' work in his diocese few particulars are recorded: it iscalled by Wood the "kill Bishop see, " a name which now happily it doesnot deserve. His had been a laborious life, and the last years of itmust have been full of difficulties and anxieties to the friend of anunpopular cause. After four years' tenure of his bishopric, he died inthe year 1672, at the age of fifty-eight, in Tillotson's house: he wasburied in the churchyard of St Lawrence Jewry, his old vicarage. HisCollege pupil, William Lloyd, preached the funeral sermon, in which hedefends him against the charge of having looked with too much favour onthe dissenters, urging as his excuse, "the vehemence of his desire tobring the Dissenters off their prejudices, and reduce them to the Unityof the Church"; no bad defence. 

It is pleasant to turn from Wilkins' public to his private life. Thereare many allusions to him in the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. 

Pepys made his first acquaintance with Wilkins in 1665: he was now a manwidely known in London society, especially among learned men and naturalphilosophers. Pepys describes his first visit to him, paid at his house, then probably the Vicarage of St Lawrence Jewry. "And so to Dr Merritt"(a Fellow of the Royal Society), "and fine discourse among them to mygreat joy, so sober and ingenious: he is now upon finishing hisdiscourse of a Universal Character. " At a dinner-party later he metWilkins, when "I choosing to sit next Dr Wilkins, Sir George Ent, andothers whome I value, there talked of several things; Dr Wilkins of theUniversal Speech, of which he hath a book coming out, and did firstinform me how man was certainly made for society, without which he wouldbe a very mean creature. " In 1668 the book was published, carried homeby Pepys, and carefully perused. He enjoyed the account given by Wilkinsof the ark, and his solutions of the difficulties raised even in histime. The solutions, Pepys says, "do please me mightily, and are muchbeyond whatever I heard of the subject. " This is easy to believe. Hemust have been impressed by Wilkins' contention that "few were theseveral species of beasts and fowls which were to be in the Arke"; aconsequence of the fundamental error of his system, the belief thatnature was easily classified, and her classes few. In Pepys' lastimportant reference to Wilkins, he tells us that he "heard talk that DrWilkins, my friend the Bishop of Chester, shall be removed to Winchesterand be made Lord Treasurer: though this be foolish talk, I do gather heis a mighty rising man, as being a Latitudinarian, and the Duke ofBuckingham his friend. "

Evelyn was a warm friend of Wilkins, and a frequent visitor at hislodgings in Wadham. In 1654 he came to Oxford with his wife anddaughter, as London visitors do now for a weekend, or for Commemoration. He "supped at a magnificent entertainment in Wadham Hall, invited by mydear and excellent friend Dr Wilkins, " and met "that miracle of a youth, Mr Christopher Wren. " Two years later, on another visit, he "dined withthat most obliging and universally curious person Dr Wilkins at WadhamCollege. " There he saw many wonderful things--transparent apiaries, astatue that spoke through a tube, a way-wiser (_i. E. _, a kind ofpedometer), dials, perspectives, mathematical and magical curiosities, the property or invention of Wilkins or of "that prodigious youngscholar Christopher Wren. " Alas! there are none of these magicalcuriosities in the Warden's lodgings now; they were taken to London andlost in the Great Fire. 

In 1665 Evelyn heard his friend preach before the Lord Mayor at StPaul's on the text, "Obedience is better than sacrifice, "--a curioustext for him to choose, for it may be interpreted in more ways than one, and might have been taken by an enemy as a summary of the preacher's owncareer. Under the same entry Evelyn describes his friend as one "whotook great pains to preserve the Universities from the ignorant andsacrilegious commanders who would have demolished all places and personsthat pretended to learning"; another indication among many that the"obliging" Dr Wilkins was not invertebrate. 

In the same year Evelyn, calling at The Durdans, the home of Wilkins'former pupil, Lord Berkeley, found there a remarkable group, Petty, Rooke, and Wilkins, amusing themselves with "contrivances for chariots, and for a wheel for one to run races in, "--the first forms possibly of ahansom, and a cycle. "Perhaps, " continues Evelyn, "three such personswere not to be found elsewhere in Europe for parts and ingenuity. " LordRosebery, we may safely presume, would be glad to see them at TheDurdans now. 

In November 1668, Evelyn went to London, "invited to the consecration ofthat excellent person, the Dean of Ripon, now made Bishop of Chester: DrTillotson preached. " Then he went to a sumptuous banquet in the Hall ofEly House, where were "the Duke of Buckingham, Judges, the Lord Keeper, Noblemen, and innumerable other company, who were honourers of thisincomparable man, universally beloved by all who knew him. "

Tillotson, who married Wilkins' stepdaughter, and may therefore havebeen prejudiced, though such relationships give rise to prejudices ofvarious kinds, was deeply attached to him. He edited and wrote a prefaceto the book on 'Natural Religion, ' and did the same pious duty inrespect of the 'Sermons Preached on Several Occasions, ' takingopportunity in the preface to defend him against the censures of AntonyWood. He edited also a pamphlet of an attractive title, which the writerhas not seen and fain would see, 'The Moderate Man, the best subject inChurch and State, proved from the arguments of Wilkins, with Tillotson'sopinions on the subject. ' Between them they must make a strong case forthe Moderate Man. Tillotson says of his father-in-law: "I think I maytruly say that there are or have been few in this age and nation so wellknown, and greatly esteemed, and favoured by many persons of high rankand quality, and of singular worth and eminence in all the learnedprofessions. " This eulogy has perhaps the ring of a time when rank andquality were made more of than they are now made, but it is quoted as anillustration of the change of feeling which would make it now impossibleor indecorous to praise a bishop because he got on well with greatpeople: allowance must be made for the difference between theseventeenth and the twentieth century. 

Funeral sermons are not always the naked truth, but Lloyd's fine sayingabout Wilkins bears on it the stamp of sincerity: "It was his way offriendship not so much to oblige men as to do them good. "

Burnet adds another testimony to Wilkins' singular power of winningaffection. He writes: "Wilkins was a man of as great a mind, as true ajudgement, as eminent virtues, and of as good a soul, as any one I everknew. He was naturally ambitious, but was the wisest clergyman I everknew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good. "

Burnet was a partisan, but these are the words of more thanpartisanship. In his 'History of his Own Time' he introduces Wilkins tohis readers in very distinguished company, among theLatitudinarians--Whichcote, Cudworth, Tillotson, Lloyd, andStillingfleet, --of whom he says that if such men had not appeared, ofanother stamp than their predecessors, "the Church had quite lost itsesteem over the nation. " Clarendon, whom he calls "more the friend ofthe Bishops than of the Church, " had, in his opinion, endowed them andthe higher clergy too well, and they were sunk in luxury and sloth. TheLatitudinarians infused into the Church life, energy, and a sense ofduty: they were, he adds, good preachers and acceptable to the king, who, "having little or no literature, but true and good sense, " likedsermons "plain, clear, and short. " "Incedo per ignes, " but it isimpossible to refrain from quoting Burnet's language, which, _mutatismutandis_, would have expressed what High Churchmen felt towards theleaders of the Oxford movement, and with equal truth and justice. 

Here Antony Wood may be called in to play the part of the AdvocatusDiaboli. He plays it in the following passage, as always, with greatvigour and enjoyment: "Dr John Wilkins, a notorious complyer with thePresbyterians, from whom he obtained the Wardenship of Wadham; with theIndependants and Cromwell himself, by whose favour he did not only geta dispensation to marry (contrary to the College Statutes), but also, because he had married his sister, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge:from which being ejected at the Restoration, he faced about, and by hissmooth language, insinuating preaching, flatteries, and I know not what, got among other preferments the Deanery of Ripon, and at length by thecommendation of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a great favourer offanaticks and atheists, the Bishopric of Chester. "

The passage is inaccurate both in grammar and in facts, but it isvaluable as evidence of the venomous party spirit prevalent in theseventeenth century, --a spirit to which we can easily rise superior, wewhose station, property, life, do not depend on the triumph of this orthat opinion. In Oxford at least we do not now say such things abouteach other. But in another place Wood takes a less unfavourable view ofWilkins' character, and uses about him the politest language at hiscommand. "He was a person of rare gifts, a noted theologist andpreacher; a curious critick in several matters; an excellentmathematician and experimentalist, &c. ; and I cannot say that there wasanything deficient in him but a constant mind and settled principles. "

This is an outline of the facts and opinions about Wilkins which havecome down to us. What are we to think of him?

Unquestionably there lies against a man who prospered under Cromwell andCharles II. , and was a favourite of both, a presumption of excessivepliancy, of too much readiness to adapt himself to his environment, oftime-serving, if you like, and insincerity. It cannot be proved that hewas not a Vicar of Bray, the title which at once suggests itself. Tolerance, geniality, and charity are virtues which have their owndefects, and some measure of austerity is one of the ingredients of aperfect character. It has been said of Wilkins that two principlesdetermined his career: a large tolerance of actions and opinions; areadiness to submit himself to "the powers that be, " let them have beenestablished if they might. These are the marks of a wise man, and of aman supremely useful in times of bitter hatred and uncompromisingrevenge: they are not the marks of a hero or a martyr. 

Wilkins was in fact a Trimmer. It may be said of him what has been saidby Mr Herbert Paul of a more famous Trimmer, Lord Halifax (not our LordHalifax), that "he was thoroughly imbued with the English spirit ofcompromise, that he had a remarkable power of understanding, evensympathetically understanding, opinions which he did not hold. " Wilkinshated persecution, and that hatred nerves a Trimmer to defend unpopularpersons and unpopular causes, as he did in his College and Universityand Diocese. Toleration has a courage of its own equal to that offanaticism, and more useful and intelligent. It is now an easier and asafer virtue than it was two hundred and fifty years ago: it is notpopular now; it was odious then, and men were impatient with those whotook no side, or changed sides for reasons good or bad. 

Macaulay--who never knew a doubt, whose way was clear and easy in thestruggles of his day, when reform and free trade in corn were obviouslydesirable and necessary--writes with contemptuous severity of theprofligacy of politicians from the Restoration to the accession of theHouse of Hanover. "One who in such an age is determined to attain civilgreatness must renounce all thought of consistency. Instead of affectingimmutability in the midst of mutation, he must always be on the watchfor the indications of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact momentfor deserting a falling cause. He has seen so many institutions fromwhich much had been expected produce mere disappointment, that he has nohope of improvement. There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple, join in defending or destroying. " Compare with thesescathing words his estimate of the character of Halifax, the Whig: "Themost estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt andlicentious Whitehall of the Restoration. He was called inconsistentbecause the relative position in which he stood to the contendingparties was perpetually varying. As well might the Polar Star be calledinconsistent because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to thewest of the pointers. To have defended the ancient and legalconstitution of the realm against a seditious populace at oneconjunction, and against a tyrannical government at another; to havebeen the foremost champion of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680, and the foremost champion of liberty in the servile Parliament of 1685;to have been just and merciful to the Roman Catholics in the days of thePopish Plot, and to the Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot;this was a course which contemporaries, heated by passion, and deludedby names and badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but whichdeserves a very different name from the late justice of posterity. " Morethan one British statesman, Tory, be it observed, as well as Whig, needs and deserves a defence like this. Alter names and dates, and itwill serve as a vindication of Wilkins' deficiency in a "constant mindand settled principles. " Therefore the paradox is true that a Trimmermay be a man of firmness and courage; one who is bold enough to makemany enemies and few friends; who has convictions of his own, but by apower of sympathy, one of the rarest and highest mental, half moral, half intellectual, qualities, can understand opinions which he does nothold; understand and pardon, as the French say. 

Whether Wilkins' tolerance was of the exalted kind, or alloyed by anadmixture of that other tolerance which is no better than indifferenceand opportunism, it is impossible to say, for we do not know enoughabout him to pronounce a judgment. Our data are scanty and incoherent, scattered about in diaries and memoirs written by persons of differentstations and opinions. This much is certain, that Pope, Aubrey, Sprat, Evelyn, Pepys, Tillotson, and Burnet speak of him with affection andrespect: one note runs through all their eulogies, that he wasuniversally beloved; yet he was not one of those nonentities whom now westyle amiable persons, but a man of character and power. 

As a loyal son of the College, the writer is prepared to maintain that aVicar of Bray could not have won love and admiration in his College, hisUniversity, and in his Diocese, and in a larger world than these; norhave been "laudatus a laudatis viris. " It is more rational to believethat Wilkins was a good and wise man, who accepted the situations inwhich he found himself placed, and made the best of them, being moresolicitous to do good than to preserve consistency, that most negativeof virtues. Let him be judged by his best, as men are most fairlyjudged, and by another good criterion, the times in which helived, --times of perpetual change, confusion, and perplexity. 

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See Mr Pearson's instructive and amusing article on "The Virtuoso"in the 'Nineteenth Century, ' November 1909. 

[4] This is an abbreviation of the passage in Burnet's 'History of hisOwn Time, ' vol. I. P. 272. First edition. 

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