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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 HENDERSON
WARDEN OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD

William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1910

_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_


_DEDICATED TO THE MEMBERS OF WADHAM COLLEGE._




PREFACE.


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

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

For it the writer will use, as I have done for this little book, the
notes and comments of Mr Andrew Clark on Wood's 'Life and Times,' and
other 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, now
Bishop of the Diocese which Wilkins held, has helped me with information
about the short episcopate of his predecessor. For it I am grateful to
him, as well for the suggestion or command which led to my first
attempt, made four years ago, to write something about Wilkins.

The too short article in the 'Dictionary of National Biography' has been
of much service: it gives the bibliography of the subject, or an
equivalent, for no life of Wilkins has been written till now, and
indicates the sources of information about him: it also puts in clear
order the events of his varied life. Mr Sanders must know much which he
should 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-natured
remarks about him, as ill-natured nearly as his own about most of his
contemporaries.

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




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

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

The founders were Nicholas Wadham and Dorothy, his wife, of Merrifield
and Edge in the county of Somerset. He was a squire of good estate and
high degree, the last male descendant of the main line of Wadhams. Born
in 1532, he was educated at Corpus or at Christ Church: there is a
conflict of testimony on this point, but Corpus was probably his
college. At the age of twenty-three he married Dorothy Petre. She was
two years younger than her husband, born in 1534, the daughter of Sir
William Petre of Writtle in Essex, near which much of the College
property now lies. For his zeal in suppressing the monasteries Sir
William had been rewarded by the grant of a large estate, and Wadham, so
long a Whig and Evangelical College, was by the vicissitudes of fortune
built both pecuniarily and materially on the ruins of the Roman Catholic
Church.

The young couple were wealthy and lived their lives in state at
Merrifield, where they kept an open house, "an inn at all times for
their friends, and a court at Christmas." Yet, owing probably to the
management of Dorothy, a notable and prudent wife, they saved money, and
the childless pair determined to devote their wealth to "the purposes of
religion, learning, and education." Their creed, like that of many
waverers in those days of transition, was by no means clear, possibly
even to themselves. The Wadhams were suspected of being Recusants, and
Dorothy was presented as such, even in the year 1613 when the College
was completed. This may have given rise to Antony Wood's story that
Nicholas was minded to found a College at Venice for Roman Catholic
students, 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 may
have weakened his (Wadham's) attachment, in common with that of many
liberal and loyal Catholics, to the cause of the old faith"; further,
that "the Venice scheme comes very near, if it does not amount to, an
offence which the law had anticipated and actually forbidden, and it
would have exposed its author to the direful penalties of Pramunire,
which by a Statute of 27 Elizabeth were denounced against any person
contributing to the support of any College of Jesuits, or Seminary,
erected, or hereafter to be erected, beyond the sea": and finally, Mr
Jackson dwells on many evidences from facts that the Founder was in his
later years strictly conformable to the Reformed Church. These are
weighty arguments, and to them may be added others worthy of
consideration. To a daughter of Sir William Petre her husband's design,
if he ever entertained it, would have been more than distasteful, for
its fulfilment would have meant a confession of sacrilege committed by
her father and acquiesced in by herself: it would have meant also the
establishment of a college beyond the sea, removed from the Founder's
supervision and control. No one who knows human nature, or daughters,
or Dorothy Wadham, can regard the story as more than an interesting
fiction. And yet, is there no foundation for Wood's circumstantial
narrative? Does the fact that the Foundress was presented as a Recusant
mean nothing? The problem is one worthy of the industry and ingenuity of
Mr Andrew Lang.

The Founder died at the age of seventy-seven years in 1609. He was
buried in "Myne Ile at Ilminster, where myne ancestors lye interred."
The funeral was one befitting, in the estimation of those days, the
obsequies of an important country gentleman: it cost L500, equivalent
now to a sum sufficient for the public funeral of some great statesman.
It is easy to condemn our ancestors; but their modes of extravagance
were less frivolous than ours, if equally irrational.

The building accounts have been preserved in the account-book treasured
in the College archives: in it is recorded "every item of stone, wood,
or metal used, and every workman's name and weekly wages," an important
contribution to the history of prices. The architect was William
Arnold, who combined in himself, as did architects in the middle ages
and later, the functions of head workman, master mason, architect, and
clerk of works in one--a master builder. The stones came from the
quarries at Headington and Shotover; the slates from Stonesfield and
Burford. Part of the beauty of the College is due to the soft colouring
of the silver-grey stone, honeycombed and crumbled, on the south and
west especially, where sun and wind and rain beat on it, giving it the
appearance of indefinite antiquity; an appearance due, alas! also to the
fact that stone from Headington is very friable, and little able to
resist the Oxford air.

One of the true College stories runs to the effect that Warden Griffiths
used the account-book to refute the contention of a great historian of
British architecture that Wadham College must have been built at
different dates, because its architecture is of different styles--an
improper combination of Jacobean and Perpendicular. Dr Griffiths was the
kindliest of men, but the most accurate, and it gave him, for he was
human, great pleasure to correct mistakes. He listened silently to the
great man's argument: next morning, at a large breakfast party given in
the College Common Room to the members of the British Association which
met at Oxford in the year 1847, he quietly laid the Account-Book beside
the plate of the unhappy dogmatist. The fact that the Chapel is
Perpendicular while the Quadrangle is late Gothic has been explained by
the late Mr J. H. Parker's reasonable, perhaps fanciful, suggestion that
"the architect desired to emphasise by this variation of style the
religious 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 the
University." It is the best specimen of that late Gothic style which
makes the charm of Oxford, and which Mr Jackson has helped to preserve
by his work there and elsewhere.

The beauty of Wadham is of a singularly quiet and simple kind, the
effect of proportion, of string-courses and straight lines, marred by
little decoration. Except for buildings annexed from time to time, so
plain that they are no disfigurement, the College stands as it stood
three centuries ago. Mr Andrew Lang has remarked that it is "the only
College in Oxford which has not been fiddled with"; this is high praise,
and gratefully accepted. One defect the College has: the resources of
the Founders sufficed to build only one quadrangle; they had not counted
the cost of the stately Chapel and Hall, and little was left for College
rooms. When will our benefactor come? But it would be ungracious in
Wadham men to criticise the Founders of their College, to whom they owe
the most beautiful of homes. It stood fifty years ago almost in the
country, with nothing north or east of it save the Museum and green
fields. It is still in a great measure what it was called, the Country
College; for though it has neighbours close to it in Mansfield and
Manchester Colleges, yet these and the cricket-grounds, which lie
between Wadham and the Cherwell, and further north, the Parks, make one
spacious region of almost country,--a region of grass and trees and
silence, broken only by the sounds of birds, and the shouts of Matthew
Arnold's "young barbarians all at play."

It is a quiet old College,--not old as age is reckoned in Oxford,--like
some great Elizabethan or Jacobean country-house turned into a College,
splendid yet homely, possessing that double charm which no palace or
castle or cathedral possesses in the same degree,--the charm of stately
beauty and the charm of human interest which belongs to the home of
generations who have spent there the happiest years of life, preparing
for themselves distinction and success, or obscurity and failure. As you
stand in the well-known College garden, one side of which is bounded by
the chapel and long line of wall and gables showing half-white half-grey
against the sward from which they rise, you might fancy, if you were a
Platonist, that here Plato might have realised the dream of his
Republic, and made a home for the chosen youths who were to rule and
defend his state; here amid things beautiful "from which come effluences
wholesome for the soul, like a breeze bringing health from blessed
regions."

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

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

[Illustration: NICHOLAS WADHAM.]

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

The Wardenship, as well as the Fellowships, could by the Founder's
intention, and in the first draft of the Statutes, be held without the
condition of Holy Orders. The Foundress, in this matter only, disobeyed
her husband, and at the wish of the Society altered the Statutes, and by
binding the Warden to take his Doctorate in Divinity made the office
clerical for two hundred and sixty years. In all other points she
followed the instructions which she may herself to some extent have
inspired. Her Visitor was to be the Bishop of the diocese in which she
had spent her life; her Warden was to be "a virtuous and honourable man
of stainless life, not a bishop, nor a foreigner but born in Britain":
the last word is significant. It was inserted in the Statutes by James
I. in place of "England": even Dr Griffiths is known to have spoken of
England 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 would
have approved of one of the reforms or perversions of her Statutes
ordained by the Commissioners, which gives a place in her College to a
married Warden and to married Fellows, much less that she would have
been willing to marry one of them herself. Thereby hangs a tale which
might suggest a new situation to our exhausted novelists. The Foundress,
so the story runs, chose for her first Warden a clergyman, Dr Robert
Wright, whose _beaux yeux_ touched the heart of the lone widow: she
loved him, and would fain have married him and reigned with him after
the necessary alteration of the Statutes; but he was cold and
irresponsive: the obligation of celibacy, save in the case of Warden
Wilkins, remained incumbent on a Warden of Wadham till 1806, when it was
removed by a special Act of Parliament. Modern criticism respects a
love-story no more than it respects the Pentateuch. A comparison of
dates shows that Dr Wright was fifty-four years old at the time of his
appointment in 1613, and the Foundress was then seventy-nine. The
difference of a quarter of a century makes the truth of the story not
indeed impossible but improbable; the coy Warden held his office only
for two months: the cause of his resignation or expulsion is not known,
but was probably not "spretae injuria formae": the hero of the story
wished to marry somebody else, and resigned his post because he was not
permitted to do so, as Mr Wells informs us, adding a prosaic explanation
of the lovers' quarrel, a disagreement about the appointment of an
under-cook. Therefore "Dorothy's Romance" must take its place among the
many College stories in which Oxford abounds, and become a forsaken
belief. Wright was the first on the long roll of Wadham bishops, and
played a not inconsiderable part at a crisis in English history. In
December 1641, as Bishop of Lichfield, he was one of the twelve bishops
who presented to Charles I. the famous protest against their exclusion
by mob violence from the House of Lords, declaring all proceedings in
their absence null and void: for this they were sent to the Tower as
guilty of high treason. Wright was soon released, and died two years
later defending his episcopal seat, Eccleshall Castle, against the
Parliamentarians,--a member of the Church militant like Ancktill.

[Illustration: DOROTHY WADHAM.]

The history of the College from its foundation to the beginning of the
Civil War is uneventful, one of great prosperity. Among the Fellows
admitted in 1613, three, Smyth, Estcott, and Pitt, became Wardens: four
of the Fellows were drawn from Exeter, then, as now, a west-country
College like Wadham, though it has, more than Wadham, maintained its
connection with the West of England. The Foundress showed her resolve
that her husband's countryside should be well represented among the
first members of the foundation: of the fifteen Fellows, eleven--of the
fifteen Scholars, ten, came from western counties, especially from
Somerset; the Commoners also were many of them western men. The value to
a 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 the
Commissioners of 1853: they were under the tyranny of the formulae
current in their day, when "open competition" was supposed to be the
solution of all the difficulties of life.

In the first year of the College now opened for work, fifty-one
undergraduates, including the Scholars, were admitted. The number of its
inmates, from the Warden to the latest freshman, was therefore
sixty-nine, including the two chaplains. The rooms were larger than most
of the rooms in the older colleges, but fewer, and those available for
undergraduates were not more than about forty: the freshmen of 1613 must
have been closely packed, the Scholars especially, who had rooms three
together, sleeping in the large chamber and working in the _muscoelae_
or small studies attached, now used as bedrooms, or as scouts' pantries.
In the nine years following the admissions were necessarily
fewer--averaging twenty-seven. It is probable that till the depletion of
Oxford, when the Civil War began--_i.e._, during the first thirty years
of its life--Wadham numbered on an average between eighty and ninety
undergraduates, all of them resident in College, as was then required by
the Statutes of the University. This estimate is based on imperfect
data, and Mr Gardiner has pronounced that materials for any accurate
calculation are not to be found. We do not know what was the usual
length of undergraduates' residence at that time; some resided only for
a year, some proceeded to a degree. Nor is it clear whether the Warden
used all the rooms, eight in number, assigned to him, or gave, perhaps
rented, some of them to undergraduates. The estimate, which can neither
be confirmed nor disproved, is worth making only as helping us to
imagine the condition of the College in its early days. One thing is
certain, that Wadham was popular and fashionable, to use a modern
curious name, as is shown by the record of admissions.

Life, both for graduates and undergraduates, was harder then than it is
now. The Fellows were required to reside for forty-six weeks, the
Scholars, and probably the Commoners, for forty-eight weeks in each
year. All undergraduates had to attend lectures or disputations for
twenty-four hours in every week. These tasks were arranged with careful
malignity to begin at 6 A.M., and resumed at 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. Nor were
examinations wanting. The Bible was to be read during dinner in Hall by
a Bible Clerk or Scholar, and heard attentively and reverently. Latin
was to be spoken in Hall, and English only when the presence of an
unlearned 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 9
P.M.; and attendance twice a-day was required from bachelors and
undergraduates, and rigidly enforced. Attendance at roll-call as a
substitute for chapel was unheard of in those days, when all members of
the colleges were, or were presumed to be, members also of the Church of
England, nor would conscientious scruples have been treated with much
courtesy. In other matters discipline was no less strict; clothes and
boots were to be black, and gowns were to be long. No undergraduate was
allowed to go out of College unaccompanied by a "discrete senior" of
mature age as a witness to his good behaviour, unless to attend a
lecture or a disputation: nor might he keep dogs, or guns, or ferrets,
or any bird, within the precincts of the College, nor play any games
with dice or cards or of any unseemly kind. Yet the Foundress showed a
tenderness for human weakness by permitting the Fellows and Scholars to
play cards in Hall on some of the Gaudy days for "moderate stakes and at
timeous hours." Moreover, she ordained that L30 from the College
revenues should be spent on College banquets to be held on Gaudy days,
by which were meant the great Church festivals, the election days of
Fellows and College officers, All Saints' Day, and, on what at first
sight seems strange, the anniversary of her husband's death; but the
strangeness disappears if it be remembered that October 20th comes close
to All Saints' Day.

This seems, in some of its provisions, Draconian legislation, but it was
made for the government of boys, many of them only fourteen or fifteen
years of age: how far it was, even in early days, unflinchingly
enforced, we cannot tell. It began to fall into abeyance after the
Restoration, if we are to believe Antony Wood. His statements are
always to be received with caution; but they are on this point confirmed
by other testimonies, and by the antecedent probability of a strong
reaction against the Puritan _regime_. Eighteen months after the King's
Restoration, he writes of the decay of learning and discipline in the
University. "Before the warr wee had scholars that made a thorough
search in scholasticall and polemicall divinity, in humane authors, and
naturall philosophy. But now scholars studie these things not more than
what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their
respective Colleges and the Universitie. Their aime is not to live as
students ought to do--viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave
in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to
turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to
swash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c., and the theologists to
ride abroad in grey coats with swords by their sides: the masters have
lost their respect by being themselves scandalous, and keeping company
with undergraduates." We cannot believe that Wadham escaped the
contagion, and remained what its Foundress meant it to be. It would be
interesting--but lack of space forbids--to compare the discipline
prescribed with that administered in Wadham now. Sufficient to say--what
indeed might go without saying--that the lapse of three hundred years
has made changes desirable and necessary.

The Foundress died on May 16, 1618, aged eighty-four. For five years she
had watched over the infancy of her College, and had seen it grow into a
vigorous child, with the promise of a robust manhood. The mythopoeic
faculty is strong in all of us, and in Wadham has grown up a tradition
that Dorothy was a strong-minded woman, and her husband a submissive man
without character and will. The myth rests only on the science of
physiognomy working on portraits,--a most insecure foundation. The
Founders' portraits depict him as a gentle, placid person with
melancholy eyes; her as a hard-featured woman with a long upper lip and
an almost cruel mouth. Against the testimony, always dubious, of
portraits, must be set the known facts of her loyal devotion in carrying
out his wishes with scrupulous fidelity, and the sacrifices she made in
doing so, of money and of laborious supervision in the last years of her
long life.

The College may do well to remember the closing of one of her last
letters to the Warden and Fellows: "Above all things, I would have you
to avoid contentions among yourselves, for without true charity there
cannot be a true Society."--(Wells' 'History of Wadham,' p. 44.) She was
buried beside her husband in the Wadham aisle at Ilminster.

Only a few months after her death a question arose in which she would
have taken a keen interest, and have supported her College to the
uttermost. In October 1618 James I. set an example, which his grandson,
James II., followed, of that contempt for law which proved fatal to the
Stuarts. He wrote to his "trusty and well beloved, the Warden and
Fellows of Wadham College, bidding them elect Walter Durham of St
Andrews a Fellow, notwithstanding anything in their statutes to the
contrary." Durham had not been a scholar, and the vacancy had been
filled up by the Foundress, for whose death "their eyes were still wet."
It is possible that Durham's being a Scotchman was another objection to
his reception as a Fellow in those days when his aggressive countrymen
had found the high-road to England: this objection the Society did not
put 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 being
the earliest Oxford champion of legality in the struggle of seventy
years: as to Magdalen belongs the honour of the resistance which brought
that struggle nearly to its close. From 1618 onward till--who can say
when? the College has been on the popular or constitutional side, save
in 1648. The portrait of James I., who gave the College its Charter,
hangs in the Hall; there are no portraits there of Charles I., Charles
II., James II.

Among the admissions of this time the most illustrious name is that of
Robert Blake, who matriculated at Alban Hall, but took his B.A. from
Wadham in 1618, a few months before the Durham incident. The great
admiral and soldier may therefore have learnt in Wadham the opinions
which determined his choice of sides in the Parliamentary wars. The
College possesses his portrait, and four gold medals struck to
commemorate his victory over Van Tromp in 1653. It has never left the
custody of the Warden, save when it was sent, concealed on the person of
Professor and Commander Burroughs, to the Naval Exhibition some years
ago; and last year, when after an interesting correspondence between the
College and Colonel Maxse commanding the Coldstream Guards, leave was
cordially given to that distinguished regiment to have an electrotype
made of the Blake medal for its own exclusive use, and to be kept _in
perpetuum_ among the memorials of its long history. It is the oldest
regiment in the service, the only survivor of Cromwell's New Model; it
was commanded by Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, when he crossed the
border to march to London, perhaps with no definite intention to restore
the Monarchy--perhaps also prompted by his brother Nicholas, a Wadham
man, to solve the great problem in that simple way. The rest of the New
Model were disbanded after the Restoration, but, doubtless in deference
to Monk, the Coldstreams were reformed, and became the King's Bodyguard.
To Monk, who like Blake was half soldier, half sailor, one of the four
medals had been awarded for his services against the Dutch. It was lost,
and the replica will take its place. The other three medals are
preserved--one in the possession of the representatives of the Penn
family, one in the British Museum, one in Wadham: the last was sent to
the British Museum for reproduction: it was carried by our historian Mr
Wells, returned by him, and it now lies in the Warden's lodgings, in the
cabinet of treasures bequeathed by Dr Griffiths, our benefactor in many
ways unknown but to his friends. This tie of courtesy and history
between a regiment and a college, arms and the gown, is worth recording
and probably unique.

No other name of real distinction than Blake's occurs in the registers
of 1613 to 1648. But Colonel Henry Ancktill, "the priest and malignant
doctor," 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 vigorous
and devoted Royalist, a fighting man when his cause was hopeless; partly
because he may have been the original of Dr Rochcliffe in 'Woodstock.'
Sir Walter Scott read the 'Athenae Oxonienses,' and the resemblance
between Ancktill and Rochcliffe is striking; but who can say what a
great 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 parties
in Church and State were represented. There were represented also all
classes of society, from Dymokes, Herberts, Russells, Portmans,
Strangways, to the humblest _plebeiorum filii_, a fact which proves the
falsity of the assertion made forty years ago, that Oxford was once a
place 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 are
recorded,--evidences of the unrest of a time when greater questions than
the interpretation of a Statute or the disputed election of a College
officer were already in the air. The only dissension of any interest was
one which led to an appeal to the Visitor: the Visitor was Laud, the
Bishop of Bath and Wells, who showed great gentleness and patience in
dealing with a person even more provoking than he found the worst of
Scotch 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 which
he 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, for
Wilkins is described by Aubrey as "a lustie, strong-grown, well-set,
broad-shouldered person, cheerful and hospitable; no great-read man, but
one of much and deepe thinking, and of a working head; and a prudent man
as well as ingeniose." In the portrait these characteristics, physical
and mental, are well displayed: sanity of mind--that is, clearness,
shrewdness, courage, kindliness, the contentment which makes the best of
good and evil fortune, are, to the imaginative mind, written in the
face, as presented in his picture, of this great man. His greatness fell
short of genius, for it was the effect of ordinary qualities, rarely
combined and tempered into one character; but more effective for useful
work in the world than genius without sanity.

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

It is from Aubrey that we derive the fullest account of the facts of
Wilkins' 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 and
there, 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 and
learning, by no means trustworthy, but none the less entertaining and
delightful. He tells us that Wilkins had his "grammar learning from Mr
Sylvester, 'the common drudge of the University,' who kept a private
school: that he entered Magdalen Hall from New Inn Hall in 1627 at the
age of thirteen, and there was placed under the tutorship of 'the
learned Mr John Tombs, the Coryphaeus of the Anabaptists.'" Tombs was a
man of great ability, notable for his "curious, searching, piercing
witt, of whom it was predicted that he would doe a great deale of
mischiefe to the Church of England, as great witts have done by
introducing new opinions." He was a formidable disputant, so formidable
that when he came to Oxford in 1664, and there "sett up a challenge to
maintain 'contra omnes gentes' the doctrines of the Anabaptists, not a
man would grapple with him, their Coryphaeus; yet putting aside his
Anabaptisticall opinions he was conformable enough to the Church of
England"; so much so that he held a living at Leominster, and was the
friend of two Bishops, Sanderson and Seth Ward. It is doubtful whether
Mr Tombs would now, if he came back, move in Episcopal circles. His
career gives us a glimpse into those puzzling times of confusion and
cross-purposes, when compromise and toleration co-existed, both in
parties and in individuals, with bitter fanaticism, more commonly than
is supposed, or can be explained.

It is easy to see what was the influence exercised by Tombs on a clever
boy like Wilkins. He was probably trained to be a Latitudinarian; for
Tombs, despite his strong opinions, could admire and praise sincerity in
opponents: he was heard to say that "though he was much opposite to the
Romish religion, truly for his part should he see a poor zealous friar
goeing to preach he should pay him respect." Utterances of this kind, if
heard by Wilkins, would make a strong impression on a youth by nature
singularly tolerant.

Wilkins took his B.A. degree in 1631, his M.A. in 1634. For a few years
he took pupils--read to pupils (as the phrase was),--the common resource
then, as now, of young Oxonians, who think themselves qualified to
teach, and must support themselves till a Fellowship comes, or till they
have chosen a profession.

In 1637 he took Holy Orders in the Church of England, and became curate
of Fawsley, the place in which he had been born. A country living was
too small a sphere for a young man of twenty-three, conscious of his
powers, ambitious and desirous to see the world of letters, science, and
politics in those eventful days. Aubrey tells us that "he has sayd often
times that the first rise, or hint of his rising, was from goeing
accidentally a courseing of a hare, when an ingeniose gentleman of good
quality falling into discourse with him, and finding him to have a very
good witt, told him that he would never gett any considerable preferment
by continuing in the University, and that his best way was to betake
himself to some lord's or great person's house that had good benefices
to conferre. Sayd Mr Wilkins, I am not knowne in the world; I know not
to whom to addresse myself upon such a designe. The gentleman replied,
'I will commende you myselfe,' and did so to (as I think) Lord Viscount
Say and Seale, where he stayed with very good likeing till the late
civill warres."

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

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

At Broughton, Wilkins, now chaplain and resident there, met the most
prominent men of the party which was against the Government. He must
have heard "great argument about it and about"; whether "evermore he
came out by the same door wherein he went" we cannot tell, for he
possessed to an extraordinary degree the faculty of seeing the two sides
of a question: as he stayed at Broughton "with very good likeing" for
five or six years, it may be presumed that the discreet and morigerous
man concealed the difficulty which he felt in accepting some of the
views maintained at Broughton. Some light is thrown on his real opinions
by words found in the sermon preached at his funeral by Lloyd, his
friend and pupil. "When some thought these dissents ground enough for
war, he declared himself against it, and confirmed others in their
allegiance: he profest to the last a great hatred of that horrible
rebellion." He doubtless resembled another
Latitudinarian--Cudworth--whom Burnet describes as "a man of great
competence and prudence upon which his enemies did very falsely accuse
him of craft and dissimulation."

When the Civil War broke out Wilkins removed to London and became
Chaplain to Lord Berkeley, and later to Charles Lewis, Prince Elector
Palatine, nephew of Charles I., and elder brother of Prince Rupert. The
Elector was then an _emigre_ in England, hoping to be restored to his
dominions by the aid of his uncle, who was then struggling to hold his
own inheritance. During his seven years' residence in London, Wilkins
became the friend, perhaps the leader, of the natural philosophers, who
later formed themselves into the Royal Society. Thus, before he had
reached "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 many
men 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 learned
man 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 the
Fiennes', with the Elector, and with London society, had taught him
"gentlemanlike behaviour" before he became a Head of a House,--a lesson
which, apparently, some other Heads in his time had not learnt; for Pope
goes on to say, "He had nothing of bigotry, unmannerliness or
censoriousness, which then were in the zenith amongst some of the Heads
and Fellows of Colleges in Oxford." It is to be hoped that such
criticisms would not now be made on the manners of the senior members of
the University, and that in this respect Oxford has been reformed, to
the approval of all concerned.

While Wilkins was experimenting and philosophising in London, events had
been marching rapidly in England and in Oxford. In Wood's 'Life and
Times' is written the history of the city of Oxford, of the University
and of himself, from the day of his birth till his death in 1681. The
three histories are mingled in a quaint and incoherent fashion. Wood is
a chronicler like Aubrey, his friend, with whom he quarrelled, as
antiquarians and historians do. Both were industrious, uncritical,
and--Wood especially--sometimes venomous; both were vivid and
picturesque, keen observers, and had a wonderful power of saying much in
few 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 Collegiate
parish of St John Baptist de Merton. He was educated at New College
School, in Oxford, and later at Thame Grammar School; was admitted into
Merton College at the age of fifteen as a "filius generosi," and became
Bible Clerk in 1650. When ten years old he saw the king, with his army
of foot, his two sons, Charles and James, his nephews, Rupert and
Maurice, enter Oxford after the battle of Edgehill. The incident was
impressed on his memory by the expulsion of his father from the house
in Merton Street, and the removal of the boys of New College School to
the choristers' chamber at the east end of the College hall, "a dark
nasty room, very unfit for such a purpose, which made the scholars often
complaine, but in vaine." From this time onward Wood, a clever and
observant boy, kept both his ears and eyes open, and accumulated from
all quarters materials for his narrative which covers fifty years, the
most 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, figures
largely in the early pages of Wood's 'Life and Times,' but does not hide
the march of men. In August 1642, "the members of the University began
to put themselves in a posture of defence," and till June 1646, when
Oxford was surrendered to Fairfax, it was a garrison town, the centre
and 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 the
four years' occupation, but some things he cannot forbear from
mentioning, for they throw light on the history of Wilkins' Oxford, and
on the problems with which he had to deal after the war was ended. Mr
Haldane would read with interest and approval how the Oxford
undergraduates of 1642 responded to a call to arms, as he hopes their
successors will respond, if and when need comes.

"Dr Pink of New College, the deputy Vice-Chancellor, called before him
to the public schools all the priviledged men's arms to have a view of
them; when, not only priviledged men of the University and their
servants, but also many scholars appeared, bringing with them the
furniture of armes of every College that then had any." The furniture
for one man was sent by Wood's father--viz., "a helmet, a back and
breast plate, a pike, and a musquet." The volunteers, both graduates,
some of them divines, and undergraduates, mustered in New College
quadrangle, 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 was
delightsome to behold the forwardnesse of so many proper yonge gentlemen
so intent, docile, and pliable to their business." Town and gown took
opposite sides: the citizens were, most of them, ready to support the
Parliament, or the King and Parliament, but not the King against the
Parliament. Long before the Civil War began there were in Oxford and in
the kingdom, as always in our history, though called by different names,
three parties, divided from each other by no very fast or definite
lines; the King's, the Parliament's and the party of moderate men, to
which Wilkins belonged; the Constitutional party in the strict meaning
of the word, who wished both to preserve and reform the constitution. In
those days of confusion and perplexity, when men's hearts were failing
them 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 for
Roundheads and Cavaliers, and most of all for those who were not sure
what they were. If Hyde and Falkland wavered for a time, how must the
timid and lukewarm have wavered? Though the great questions were fairly
clear, 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 a
sudden outbreak, a short struggle on simple issues between two sharply
divided parties, assured of their beliefs and interests. The French
Revolution was that, or nearly that; but our revolutions are managed
deliberately, and lead to conclusive and permanent results: the art of
revolution belongs to the English race.

In Oxford there must have been much bewilderment and questioning among
citizens and gownsmen when Lord Say and Seale, the new Lord-Lieutenant
of the county appointed by the Parliament, came into the town on
September 14, 1642, and ordered that the works and trenches made by the
scholars should be demolished; yet next day he "sent a drumme up and
downe the towne for volunteers to serve the King and Parliament." What
did that mean? Almost any answer might have been given to the question.
His lordship's opinions soon became clearer than his puzzling
proclamation; on September the 24th he sent for the Heads of Houses to
rebuke 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, by
taking up armes and the like courses." He had before this interview
"caused diverse popish bookes and pictures taken out of churches, and of
papish houses, here and abroad, to be burned in the street over against
the signe of the Starre, where his Lordship laye." We know not what is
meant by "papish bookes and pictures," but the Puritan Lord Say may not
have discriminated sharply between them and the books and ornaments of
the High Party in the Church of England.

For seven or eight weeks before the battle of Edgehill, Oxford swarmed
with soldiers. It had been held for a fortnight by the King's men, who
were succeeded by the Parliamentary troopers brought in by Lord Say.
Some disturbances took place, in which the soldiers from Puritan London
especially distinguished themselves: one of them, when flushed with wine
presented by the Mayor "too freely," went so far as to "discharge a
brace of bulletts at the stone image of Our Lady over the church St
Mairie's parish, and at one shott strooke off her hed, and the hed of
her child which she held in her right arme: another discharged his
musket at the image of our Saviour over All Soule's gate, and would have
defaced all the worke there, had it not been for some townsmen, who
entreated them to forbeare, they replienge that they had not been so
well treated here at Oxford as they expected: many of them came into
Christ Church to viewe the Church and paynted windowes, much admiringe
at the idolatry thereof, and a certain Scot, beinge amongst them, saide
that he marvaylled how the Schollers could goe for their bukes to these
paynted idolatrous wyndoes." From a Scot of that time this utterance was
not surprising: bukes had been substituted for paynted wyndowes
destroyed in his country many years before his visit to Oxford. But to
the honour of the Puritans be it said, there were no serious outrages on
person or property in Oxford, and that its citizens had to endure
nothing more than fear and discomfort: in no other country in Europe at
that time would a city occupied by troops have suffered as little as did
Oxford in those two months.

In 'John Inglesant' a man of genius has drawn a picture of Oxford when
it was the residence of the King and Queen and Court. His description is
so 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 true
ethically or in spirit, that highest truth which accurate and laborious
historians often fail to reach.

John Inglesant entered Wadham before the war began--the date of his
admission is obviously uncertain--and lived there from time to time till
the rout at Naseby, in 1645, brought about the surrender of Oxford to
the 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 in
no place could he have dreamt more peacefully and happily than there,
though sometimes perhaps, even in his first term, he must have been
disturbed by the ominous sounds of axe and hammer, pick and spade, busy
on the "fortifications in making about the towne on the north and
north-west thereof," and, later, on the east, toward Headington Hill and
close to Wadham. A trace of them remains in the terrace on the east of
the Warden's garden, which did not then exist for Inglesant to walk
in, 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. Huddled
together were soldiers, courtiers, ladies beautiful, gay, and famous in
many ways, severe Divines and College Heads, to whom such surroundings
were unfamiliar and perhaps not uninteresting: masques and revels were
frequent; Christ Church meadow and the grove at Trinity were the resort
of a brilliant throng, more brilliant even than the gatherings which
fill Oxford at Commemoration time in our more sober age. But beneath
this merriment there were doubtless in the minds at least of those who
thought, or stopped to think, terrible anxieties and the grimmest of
forebodings. It was becoming clearer every month that Edgehill had not
broken the rebellion; that the struggle would be long, and that the
issue was uncertain; events soon justified these fears. On January 10,
1643, "the Kinges letters came to all the Colledges and Halls for their
plates to be brought into the mint at Oxford, there to be coyned into
money with promise of refunding it, or payeinge for it again after five
shillings the ounce for silver, five and sixpence for silver and gilt."
The fruitless sacrifice was made by no college with more unhesitating
devotion than by Wadham, which preserves the letter addressed by Charles
I. to "our trusty and well-beloved ye Warden and Fellows of Wadham
College," and the receipt for 124 lb. of plate from the king's officers
of the mint, a liberal contribution from a college only thirty years
old. Few relics of the ancient Collegiate plate are now to be found in
the University; in most instances pieces, either bestowed or given by
special benefactors: the Communion vessels of the Colleges were not
taken by the king--a loyal son of the Church. Six colleges, among them
Wadham, retained theirs through all the confusion of the war, and still
possess them.

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

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

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




CHAPTER III.

WILKINS' WARDENSHIP.


In 1647 a Commission, as it would now be called, was appointed by
Parliament to conduct the visitation of the University. 'Lord have mercy
upon us; or, the Visitation at Oxford,' is the title of one of the
numerous pamphlets relating to this Oxford revolution; Tragi-comoedia
Oxonienses' is the title of another, and both suggest curious
reflections to Oxonians at the present time. The visitors did their
business effectually. They set to work in 1648, and purged the
University by ejecting from the colleges all who did not by a certain
day give in their assurance that they would submit to the visitors and
their visitation appointed by Parliament. No party in our country can
claim 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 "gone
out," or stayed out, for some lost cause. In Oxford, Royalists, from
Heads to Servitors, stood by their colours manfully. It is uncertain how
many submitted, how many were expelled. The estimates vary from
Clarendon's statement that almost all the Heads and Fellows of Colleges
were ejected, "scarce one submitting," to Wood's estimate of 334; it is
probable that 400--that is, about half of the whole number of Heads,
Fellows, and Scholars then resident in the University--"made the great
refusal," not to accept office, but to retain it. Antony Wood did not
show himself ambitious of martyrdom. On May 12, 1648, he, along with
other members of his College, appeared before the Visitors. When asked
by one of them, "Will you submit to the authority of Parliament in this
visitation?" he wrote on a paper lying on the table, "I do not
understand the business, and therefore I am not able to give a direct
answer." "Afterwards his mother and brother, who advised him to submit
in plaine terms, were exceedingly angry with him, and told him that he
had ruined himself and must therefore go a-begging." Women, then as now,
ready to sacrifice themselves, are less ready to permit those dear to
them to be overscrupulous. Wood's mother made intercession for him to
Sir Nathaniel Brent, President of the Visitors and Warden of Merton, and
"he was connived at and kept in his Postmastership, otherwise he had
infallibly gon to the pot."

At Wadham the Visitors met with an obstinate resistance: Dr Pitt, then
Warden, was a stout Royalist, and refused to acknowledge the authority
of a Parliament acting without the king's consent. He was expelled on
April 13, 1648, along with nine of his thirteen Fellows, nine of his
fourteen Scholars, and many of his Commoners, all of them save one to
return no more. John Wilkins was put in his place by the Visitors on
the 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 and
definitely given his allegiance to the Parliamentarian party. He was
marked out for promotion as a known man of great ability, and he had
made many friends among influential persons by his courtesy and tact. It
was inevitable that a distinguished Oxford man should be chosen for an
important post in the University, which Cromwell desired to convert from
a hotbed of Royalism into a nursery of Puritans. Wilkins was qualified
by his common-sense and genial ways for what would have been a hopeless
task to the clumsy fanatics ready enough to undertake it.

The new Warden must have found himself in a difficult position. There
were in Oxford the three parties into which Englishmen and Scotchmen
invariably divide themselves. These parties are called by different
names at different times, and are formed on different questions, but
remain 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, being
infinite, cannot be included under three heads; nor do the _membra
dividentia_ exclude each other: among the Royalists were some members of
the established Church, of Calvinistic opinions, who were hardly
distinguishable from Presbyterians; and some professed Presbyterians
would have stood by Charles had not Laud driven them away, for they had
in their nature some of the best elements of conservatism, the
historical sense, and a love of order and discipline, especially as
administered by themselves. But classifications may be illogical yet
useful, and Wilkins would have accepted this one, in his practical way,
for working purposes.

The Presbyterians were for forcing on the Church of England, the
Covenant, the Westminster Confession, and the deposition of the Bishop
by the Presbyter, or a board of Presbyters. The Independents conceived
that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme
jurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial and
national synods were scarcely less Scriptural than appeals to the Court
of Arches or to the Vatican, and that Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism,
were merely three forms of one great apostacy. In politics the
Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, "root and branch
men," or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals: not
content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous to
erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. Macaulay's
vigorous words explain the difference between the Presbyterians and the
Independents: that difference is explained also by Wood in words as
vigorous 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 (the
Independents) were more free, gay, and, with a reserve, frollicsome, of
a gay habit, whether preachers or not." John Owen, Dean of Christ
Church--to be distinguished from Thankful Owen, President of St
John's--seems to have been of a specially gay habit; when
Vice-Chancellor "he had alwaies his hair powdred, cambric bands with
large costly band strings, velvet jacket, his breeches set round at knee
with ribbons pointed, Spanish leather boots with cambric tops, &c.,--all
this was in opposition to prelattical cutt." The habit of a
Vice-Chancellor, even in full dress, is nowadays far less gay, and of
the Presbyterian rather than the Independent fashion. Whatever may have
been their difference in dress, both parties were "void of public and
generous spirits: the Presbyterians for the most part preached nothing
but damnation, the other not, but rather for libertie; yet both joyne
together to pluck downe and silence the prelattical preachers, or at
least to expose their way to scorne." Wood carries his comparisons
further, and tells, perhaps invents, many things about their common
hatred of Maypoles, players, cassocks, surplices, and the use of the
Lord's Prayer in public religious service. He more than hints at darker
sins,--drunkenness, and immorality cloaked by hypocrisy, the favourite
theme of the Restoration dramatists. His account of the Puritan
domination in Oxford is, despite his bitter prejudices, historically
important, 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 originally
the soldiers of Cromwell's "New Model," "honest and religious men." But
Wood describes them as he knew them many years after Naseby and Marston
Moor, when their character had changed with changing circumstances.
Triumphant success seldom improves the morale of any party. Oxford
proved a Capua to the Independents who lived in it after the strain of
war was over: the very principle of Independency, liberty of opinion and
action given to every Christian congregation, came to be applied to the
life of the individual: freedom to reject any doctrine or practice which
you do not like naturally ends in much gaiety and frolicsomeness,
especially if your lines are cast in pleasant places: it becomes
difficult not to slide into practical Antinomianism. What a place to
live in for eleven years! yet Wilkins did so with success and general
applause. He was inclined by temperament to the freedom of mellowed
Independency rather than to the stiffness of the Presbyterians, who more
successfully than their rivals resisted the enervating influences of
life in Oxford. Circumstances as well as inclination led him to become
an Independent: his marriage with Cromwell's sister, and the appointment
to be one of the Commissioners to execute the office of Chancellor,
perhaps also his appointment to the Wardenship, all tended to draw him
to the side of Ireton and the Protector. Of the latter he saw much, and
was consulted by him on academical and ecclesiastical affairs.

Lord Morley[2] records "a story told by Bishop Wilkins, who was the
husband of Cromwell's youngest sister Robina, that the Protector often
said to him that no temporal government could have a sure support
without a national church that adhered to it, and that he thought
England was capable of no constitution but Episcopacy." Lord Morley
thinks that "the second imputation must be apocryphal." That is by no
means clear: Cromwell may have said what Wilkins probably did not
invent, meaning that he thought Episcopacy good enough for England, for
Englishmen were incapable of any better constitution; or he may have
modified his judgment of Episcopacy,--who knows all that Cromwell came
to 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, can
be explained only by the fact that he possessed the qualities necessary
for the work he had to do,--strong common-sense, moderation, and
geniality. He had to live, as the most prominent man, in a society
composed of three factions crowded together within the narrow limits of
a University town, which even in quiet times is not always the abode of
peace. He had to deal with the most burning questions, religious and
political, which divide communities: questions which had been stifled
for a time by force, and therefore, when force was removed or slackened,
came back into vigorous life, and were constantly and bitterly
discussed. But he was the man for the time and the place.

His College flourished under his wise and kindly rule. Dr Pope tells us
that "many country gentlemen, of all persuasions, but especially those
then called Cavaliers and Malignants for adhering to the King and to the
Church, sent their sons to his College to be under his government. The
affluence of gentlemen was so great that I may fairly say of Wadham
College 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 complete
years of Wilkins' Wardenship the average of admissions was thirty. The
large admission made in 1650 was due to the reputation of Wilkins as an
able and tolerant College Head, as well as to the belief that the tumult
of war had died away. Men's thoughts were turning to civil affairs and
the ordinary business of life, especially to education, the preparation
for it.

In the registers of the period between 1648 and 1659, are found many
names either of distinction in themselves, or of interest as showing
that the connection of Wadham with the western counties was well
maintained. Walter Pope, who has been already mentioned, was appointed
Scholar by the Visitors in 1648, perhaps on the suggestion of the new
Warden, his half-brother. He filled many offices in the College, was one
of the original Fellows of the Royal Society, and became Professor of
Astronomy in Gresham College. He deserves to be remembered as the author
of a quaint and interesting little book, in which he gives a brief
account of Wilkins, Lawrence Rooke, and Isaac Barrow, as well as a
complete life of Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. It is full of
digressions on the manners and customs of the time, written with much
humour, and is worthy of a humble place beside the diaries of Evelyn and
Pepys.

Seth Ward was a Scholar of Sidney Sussex, ejected from his College and
from Cambridge because "he refused the Covenant and other oaths." He
went to London, and, like Wren and Wallis, studied mathematics under
William Oughtred, the author of the 'Clavis Mathematica,'--"a little
book, but a great one as to the contents,"--which brought its author a
great name, as well it might. When in London Ward met Wilkins and
formed a lifelong friendship with him. They were both men of learning,
moderate, dexterous, and successful. Ward entered Wadham as a Fellow
Commoner in October 1649, became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and in
1659 President of Trinity. Like Wilkins, he was ejected from his
Headship at the Restoration, and like him obtained high preferment under
the new _regime_ and became a Bishop. Both of them, when in Oxford,
"became liable to the persecutions of peevish people who ceased not to
clamour, and even to article against them as Cavaliers in their
hearts--meer moral men without the Power of Godliness." "You must know,"
continues Pope, "that a moral and unblamable person, if he did not herd
with them, was an abomination to that Party. I have heard one of them
deliver himself in this manner." The "manner" is impossible to quote; it
is to the effect that the speaker's opponents were hypocrites and
Pharisees of the worst kind, and "in a desperate condition, on whom
Jesus Christ can take no hold." The passage is instructive; it reveals
the exasperation of party feeling in those times, and gives much food
for reflection.

Christopher Wren belongs both to Wadham and to All Souls. He was
admitted Fellow Commoner of Wadham in 1649, and migrated to All Souls in
1653, but maintained his connection with his first College, and for
several years occupied the chamber over the gateway. Of him, the close
friend of Wilkins, the scientist and architect, the President of the
Royal Society, nothing more need here be said. His portrait hangs in
Wadham College Hall, beneath that of Robert Blake.

Less known is Thomas Sprat, admitted Scholar of Wadham in 1651. Of him
Wood says that he was "an excellent poet and orator, and one who arrived
at a great mastery of the English language." His reputation does not
rest on his poetry: he was known by the strange and dubious title of
"Pindarick Sprat." But his History of the Royal Society justifies Wood's
encomium; and he wrote a 'Relation of the late wicked contrivance of
Stephen Blackhead and of Robert Young,' of which Macaulay, who does not
praise lightly, says that "there are few better narratives in the
language." Sprat became Bishop of Rochester and Chaplain to Charles II.,
though in his youth he had written an Ode on the death of Oliver
Cromwell.

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

Gilbert Ironside, admitted in 1650, became Warden, Vice-Chancellor of
the University, and, as his father had been, Bishop of Bristol, and
finally of Hereford. He was the "rudest man in the University," and that
without respect of persons, for he remonstrated, in a tone not far
removed from rudeness, with James II. when he visited Oxford in 1687 to
enforce his mandate on Magdalen College.

William Lloyd, who entered Wadham in 1655, was a learned Divine, with
his learning at command, of whom Burnet says that "he had the most
learning in ready cash of any one he knew." He devoted himself to the
interpretation of prophecy. His labours were rewarded by the title of
Pseudopropheta Canus, bestowed on him when he was old and white-haired,
by the _terrae filius_ of 1703. He had himself in his younger days shown
some tendency to irreverent joking, by inventing an Eastern Patriarch, a
native of London, a man of venerable appearance and dressed to suit the
character, who deceived some eminent members of the University, and gave
them 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 Seven
Bishops committed to the Tower. William III. rewarded him with the
Bishoprics 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's
place at Magdalen College, but held his office for only five months. He
died in his Lodgings, and was buried in the ante-chapel, but honoured by
no memorial to mark the place of his interment. His must have been a
dismal reign.

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

Enough has been said to prove that Wadham under Wilkins was a college of
high reputation and efficiency. It was a nursery of bishops,
contributing to the bench no less than six, including Wilkins himself; a
nursery 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, but
more directly to the State, by educating together impartially the youth
of both the great parties. "When the hurly-burly's done, when the
battle's lost and won," it is above all things desirable to allay bitter
feelings, and bring the former combatants together. For this most
difficult and delicate of tasks Wilkins was well qualified. He was
beloved by the Cavaliers because he treated all his undergraduates
kindly, Royalists and Puritans alike, in marked contrast with other
Heads of Houses, who appear to have dealt faithfully with young
Malignants, the sons of their political opponents.

That Wilkins possessed great administrative abilities and vigour is
shown by his work in the University and in his College. He had seen much
of the world, and was in the prime of life, and already a man of
eminence--a combination of qualities as rare in Heads of Houses as in
Cabinet Ministers. He persuaded the Visitors that Wadham and Trinity
were fitted, specially and immediately, in 1651 for freedom to elect
their Fellows--a privilege of which all the Colleges had been deprived
in 1648. The administration of the College estates and finances was
carefully revised, and the Statutes were amended. Wilkins' life was
varied and full of activities outside as well as within his College. He
was selected to deal with problems more difficult and pressing than
Compulsory Pass Greek, or degrees for women. Was Oxford to be
dismantled? Its security had been threatened by a rising of the
"Levellers"; and in 1649 Wilkins, along with the Proctor and a Canon of
Christ Church, was appointed to confer with the mayor and the citizens
on this important question, not then decided.

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

Yet he found time to avail himself of the privilege to marry given to
the Warden of Wadham: it was accorded to him by a dispensation of the
Visitors, who doubtless thought that enforced celibacy savoured of
Popery. The privilege was withdrawn after the Restoration, as being a
concession made by Puritans, whose views on the marriage of the clergy
were not the views of the High Church party. Leave to marry was given to
all 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 Turnpike
Bill.

Pope's account of Wilkins' marriage is a strange solution of an always
interesting question, and not altogether complimentary to the lady of
his choice. "Dr Ward," he says, "rid out of this storm,"--the storm of
obloquy which broke out on him and Wilkins as being "mere moral men."
Wilkins "put into the port of matrimony," apparently as a harbour of
refuge in distress. He married Robina, the Protector's sister, widow of
Dr Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. Her first husband was "a pious,
humble, and learned person, and an excellent preacher," the best, in
Pope's opinion, of the censorious party. Ward did not imitate his
friend, though, if we believe Pope, he had many opportunities for doing
so. "He was never destitute of friends of the Fair Sex, never without
proffers of Wives," which became increasingly frequent as he rose in the
world. Pope professes to have known "several persons of great quality
and estates who found ways to make it known to Ward, that if he would
address himself to them in the honourable way of marriage, he should not
want a kind entertainment." But he, then Bishop of Salisbury, had
before his eyes the fate of one of his predecessors who married after he
became a bishop, and "upon that had received so severe a reprimand from
his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and laid it so much to heart
that it accelerated his death." This story may be apocryphal; it is
certainly startling. Do ladies of quality still give such hints to
bishops? Do bishops die of a rebuke from the archbishop of their
province?

Wilkins' marriage "gained him a strong interest and authority in the
University, and set him at safety, and out of the reach of his
Adversaries." 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 the
College. She had a son by her second marriage, Joshua Wilkins, who
became Dean of Down: by her first marriage she had a daughter, Elizabeth
French, the wife of Tillotson. The writer once amused himself with the
fancy that the Archbishop to-be met and courted Miss French in the
Warden's Lodgings at Wadham, which have few romantic associations; but
chronology proves that Tillotson, a Cambridge man, born in 1630, would
probably not have made acquaintance with Wilkins before 1659, when he
became Master of Trinity. The romance had therefore to be transferred to
the Master's Lodge. Even there it could not stay, for Tillotson's first
meeting with his future wife in all likelihood took place in London,
when he was appointed Tuesday Lecturer at St Lawrence Jewry, the
vicarage of which was one of Wilkins' earliest preferments after his
ejection from the Mastership of Trinity. When Tillotson made suit for
the hand of his stepdaughter, Wilkins, upon her desiring to be excused,
said, "Betty, you shall have him, for he is the best polemical Divine
this day in England." Though excellence in polemical divinity has not an
attraction for most women, she consented, and they were married in 1664.
The stories both of Dorothy and Betty are myths, which fade away at the
first touch of criticism.

[Illustration: WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE COLLEGE GARDEN.]

Wilkins was a diligent student, and wrote books of many kinds. These
books the writer does not pretend to have read, save in the most
hurried, 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 a
later age, and as showing that Wilkins possessed the inspiring
conviction of all genuine men of Science, that for it the word
impossible does not exist.

In 1638 he published his first work, an Astronomical treatise, the fruit
of his studies at Oxford and at Fawsley. It is entitled 'The Discovery
of a World in the Moone, or a discourse tending to prove that there may
be another habitable World in that Planet': in the third impression,
issued in 1640, is added a "Discourse concerning the Possibility of a
Passage thither." Like Lucian he imagined a voyage to the moon, though
he admits that the journey through the air was a formidable difficulty.
He successfully defended his views against an objection raised by the
Duchess of Newcastle. That clever and eccentric lady, the authoress of
many "fancies," philosophical and poetical, asked him where she was to
bait her horses if she undertook the journey. "Your Grace could not do
better," he replied, "than stop at one of your castles in the air." In
his treatment of the difficulties caused by the apparent conflict
between certain passages of Scripture and the conclusions of
Astronomical Science, which he accepts, he anticipates in a remarkable
way that explanation of them which rests on the understanding of the
meaning of the Bible and of the nature of inspiration. The book was
parodied in the story of 'Peter Wilkins' Journey to the Moon,' which
even usually well-informed persons have been known to attribute as a
_jeu-d'esprit_ to the Warden of Wadham. It was written by Robert
Paltock, and published in 1751.

His next production was 'Mercurie; or the Secret and Swift
Messenger,'--a treatise on Cryptography or ciphers; curious
contrivances whereby A can communicate with C without B's suspecting or
understanding, by signs, gestures, parables, and transpositions of the
alphabet: such as the writer looked at seemed to confirm the view that
every cipher which depends on system, and not on an arrangement of a
capricious kind, can be interpreted by an expert, a title to which he
lays no claim. The book was meant perhaps for use in the Civil War, as
was the system of Wilkins' friend, Dr Wallis, who could both invent and
solve such puzzles, and distinguished himself by deciphering the letters
of the king which fell into the hands of the Parliamentarians at Naseby.
There is also among the "Tracts of Bishop Wilkins," a treatise dated
1648, entitled 'Mathematical Magic; or, the Wonders worked by Mechanical
Powers and Motions,' subdivided, according to that distinction, into two
books, styled Archimedes and Daedalus. The names are quaint, and the
classical illustrations are very numerous. The work is a kind of
handbook for engineers, enlivened by quotations, not always apposite,
from ancient authors, as was the fashion when high literary culture and
science could be more easily combined than in our days of ruthless
specialism. It is dedicated in very courtly language to the Prince
Elector Palatine. Wilkins looks forward to the Prince's restoration to
his dominions--a curious aspiration to be professed by a man who did
not, then at least, put his trust in princes. But he did not foresee
what was to come, both to himself or others.

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

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

The book by which Wilkins will always be remembered among curious
students and philologers is his 'Essay towards a Real Character and a
Philosophical Language.' It is a quarto of 600 pages, including an
alphabetical dictionary of English words, with their equivalents in what
may be called, without irreverence, Wilkinese. It was written at the
request of the Royal Society, and, by its order, published in 1688. The
meaning of the somewhat obscure title is explained by Wilkins in a very
interesting preface. Character means language, or rather writing, and a
universal character is the script of a language like that which was
spoken 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 of
things which are "better than words"; of "the nature of things, and that
common notion of them wherein mankind does agree." The making of such a
language "will prove the shortest and plainest way for the attainment of
real knowledge," and the language thus made will be truly philosophical,
or, to use our modern term, scientific. The labour bestowed by Wilkins
on his magnificent project was immense, but the result was failure.
"Sunt lacrimae rerum," and tears were never shed over a greater waste of
ingenuity and heroic toil, if indeed a fine example of fruitless
devotion is to be called waste. With apologies to the Esperantists, it
must be said that the invention of a universal language, of any but the
narrowest compass, seems impossible, for language, in any real sense, is
not made but grows. It is dangerous, however, to dogmatise on
possibilities. Misled, as we can gather from his preface, by the proved
usefulness of mathematical signs, Wilkins attempted to provide for
philosophers of all countries a better means of communication than
Latin, then the universal language of literature and science, but in his
opinion unscientific, full of anomalies and difficult to acquire; for in
it there were, he said, thirty thousand words. In his language there
were only three thousand, and they could be learnt by a man of good
capacity in a month. His estimate of capacity and diligence is somewhat
high. It is possible to explain the principles on which he constructed
his new tongue. He began by dividing the universe, the sum total of
existence, things, thoughts, relations, after the manner of Aristotle,
though not into ten, but into forty categories, or genera, or great
classes, such as World, Element, Animal, and apparently species of
animals, such as Bird, Fish, Beast: for each of these great classes he
devised a monosyllabic name--_e.g._, De for Element, Za for Fish; each
of these genera is subdivided into species indicated by the addition of
a consonant, and these are again subdivided into subordinate species
distinguished by a vowel affixed. For example--De means an Element, any
of the four, Fire, Air, Earth, Water; add to it B, which, as the first
consonant, stands for the first species of a genus, and you will have
the significant word DEB, which means Fire, for it, we know not why, is
the first of the four Elements. Let us take a more complex instance--his
name for Salmon. The salmon is a species of Za or Fish, a particular
kind of fish called N, namely, the Squameous river fish. This class ZaN
is subdivided into lower classes, and the lower class Salmon is called
A, which means the red-fleshed kind of squameous river fish, and so a
salmon 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 category
of motion, F for the particular kind of motion meant, swimming. Voice,
tense, and mood are indicated by lines of different lengths, straight or
curved, crossed, hooked, looped; adverbs and conjunctions by dots or
points differently arranged.

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

The writer fears that he may only have confused his readers and himself
by his bold but poor attempt to express in a few lines the meaning of
six hundred pages. He would be the last to ridicule the "folly" of a
great man, whose system he has made no very laborious effort to
understand, for it seems to be built on sand, on a classification of
things superficial, imperfect, and capricious, which would not have been
accepted by learned men, and if accepted would have become obsolete in a
quarter of a century. The syllable Co stands for all relations between
human beings, and these relations are of eight kinds. What would a
professor of social science now say to this? What would an ichthyologist
say to Wilkins' definition of a salmon? The interest of the book lies in
its being the most striking of many proofs of the wide intellectual
interests, the alert and insatiable curiosity, and the extraordinary
industry of its writer. It has also the pathetic interest of "love's
labour lost," for who now reads the 'Real Character,' or who read it
twenty years after Wilkins' death? His name was "writ in water," for he
spent himself on many things, and did little because he did too much.

The "greatest curioso" of his time relieved his toils by music. Nowhere
are Wood's vanity and self-consciousness shown more vividly than in his
account of a musical entertainment given by Wilkins in honour of Thomas
Baltzar, "the most famous artist for the violin which the world had yet
produced. The books and instruments were carried thither," to the
Warden's lodgings, "but none could be persuaded there to play against
him in consort on the violin. At length the company, perceiving A. W.
standing behind in a corner neare the dore, they haled him in among
them, and play forsooth he must against him: whereupon, he being not
able to avoid it, took up a violin, and behaved himself as poor Troylus
did against Achilles." Wood consoled himself for his failure by the
honour he acquired from being asked to play with the Master, of whom he
maliciously remarks that "he was given to excessive drinking,"--a
characteristic comment.

Wilkins' greatest achievement was the founding of the Royal Society. He
may be called its founder, if that high title can be given to any one of
the eminent men who, in Oxford and in London, revived or regenerated
the study of natural philosophy. Pope, Aubrey, and Sprat differ from
Wallis in their accounts of the origin of the mother of scientific
parliaments. The first three find that origin in meetings held in Wadham
College under the presidency of Wilkins. Wallis traces the beginnings of
the Royal Society to meetings held in London in 1645. "In that year," he
writes, "there had sprung up an association of certain worthy persons
inquisitive in Natural Philosophy, who met together, first in London,
for the investigation of what was called the new or experimental
philosophy, and afterwards several of the more influential of the
members, about 1648 or 1649, finding London too much distracted by civil
commotions, commenced holding their meetings in Oxford." Among those who
removed to Oxford were, "first, Dr Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr
Goddard, whereupon our company divided. Those at London (and we when we
had occasion to be there) met as before. Those of us at Oxford, with Dr
Ward, Dr Petty, and many others of the most inquisitive persons in
Oxford, met weekly for some years at Dr Petty's lodgings, on the like
account, to wit, so long as Dr Petty continued in Oxford, and for some
while after, because of the conveniences we had there (being the house
of an apothecary) to view and make use of drugs, and other like matters
as there was occasion. We did afterwards (Dr Petty being gone to Ireland
and our numbers growing less) remove thence, and (some years before his
Majesty'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 in
this point only, that Sprat omits reference to the first meetings in
London between 1645 and 1648, and to the meetings in Oxford at Dr
Petty'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 into
Wadham: it is difficult to believe that he was present at the gatherings
of men many years his senior in Dr Petty's lodgings, or knew as much as
Wallis did of the infancy of the Royal Society. No Oxford man is to be
entirely trusted when writing about his own College, and Sprat laudably
claimed for Wadham the honour of being the cradle of the great
association.

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

"It was some space," he writes, "after the end of the Civil Wars at
Oxford, in Dr Wilkins, his lodgings, in Wadham College, which was then
the place of resort for virtuous and learned men, that the first
meetings 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 a
free way of reasoning; and was also frequented by some gentlemen of
philosophical minds, whom the misfortunes of the kingdom, and the
security and ease of a retirement among Gownsmen had drawn thither.
Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing
a freer air, and of conversing in quiet one with another, without being
engaged in the passions and madness of that dismal Age. And from the
Institution of that Assembly, it had been enough if no other advantage
had come but this: that by this means there was a race of young men
provided, against the next Age, whose minds, receiving from them their
first impressions of sober and general knowledge, were invincibly armed
against the enchantments of Enthusiasm. But what is more, I may venture
to affirm that it was in good measure by the influence which these
Gentlemen had over the rest, that the University itself, or at least any
part of its Discipline or Order was saved from ruine. For such a candid
and impassionate company as that was, and for such a gloomy season, what
could have been a fitter subject to pitch upon than Natural Philosophy?
To have been always tossing about some Theological question would have
been to have made that their private diversion the excess of which they
themselves disliked in the public. To have been eternally musing on
Civil business and distresses of their Country was too melancholy a
reflection. It was Nature alone which could pleasantly entertain them in
that estate."

It would be superfluous to praise this noble and pathetic passage. It
shows the weariness of political and religious controversy which
oppressed men's minds; the discouragement, almost hopelessness, which
made the Restoration welcome, and Puritanism odious, for a time at
least, to the majority of Englishmen. The word Enthusiasm is of strange
significance; then and for more than a hundred years later it connoted
extravagance and fanaticism. Worthy of notice also are Sprat's words to
the effect that the influence of Wilkins and his friends was on the side
of discipline and order in the University, and saved it from "ruine."
They ought to please and encourage, perhaps instruct, the modern
apostles of science who are with us now.

From a comparison of Wallis' and Sprat's accounts, it is clear that the
dispute, if dispute there be, whether Wadham or London was the cradle of
the Royal Society, can be settled more easily than most contested claims
of this kind. The facts are ascertained: the question turns on the
meaning of the words "founder" and "foundation." The first meetings of
the Philosophical Club, which became the Royal Society, were
unquestionably held in London, and were continued there, at the Bull's
Head 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 the
parent stem: the two clubs co-existed till the Restoration, when most of
the Oxford philosophers migrated or returned to London, and were
incorporated into one society which received its name and charter from
Charles 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 did
not thrive, and was put out to nurse at Oxford where it waxed and
prospered: it was a proper child of three years old when (on Petty's
leaving Oxford in 1651) it found a settled home in the Warden's lodgings
in Wadham for eight years; grown and strengthened, the boy was brought
back to his birthplace, and was recognised and named. In this sense it
may be said that the Royal Society was founded by Wilkins in Wadham:
that College was its early home, and Wilkins was the most prominent and
active 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, if
I may presume to praise it, resembles the work of Oughtred before
mentioned, 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 at
Wadham, Dr Seth Ward, Mr Boyle, Dr Wilkins, Sir William Petty, Dr
Wallis, Dr Goddard, Dr Willis, Dr Bathurst, Mr Matthew Wren, Dr
Christopher Wren, Mr Rooke, besides several others, who joyn'd
themselves to them, upon occasion." The list is remarkable; it
represents the science of the time,--Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry,
Physics, Engineering, Architecture, Theology, and Political Economy or
Arithmetic, for nothing "scibile" was alien to these inquisitive
persons. "Their proceedings," we are told, "were rather by action than
discourse, chiefly attending some particular Trials in Chymistry or
Mechanicks: they had no Rules nor Method fixed: their intention was more
to communicate to each other their discoveries which they could make in
so 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 must
have enhanced the harmony and efficiency of their meetings. The Club, or
a branch of it, survived at Oxford the departure of Wilkins and most of
the philosophers. To Robert Boyle was mainly due the continuance of the
faithful remnant. In the year 1659 he imported into Oxford Peter
Sthael, a noted Chemist and Rosicrucian, "a great hater of women and a
very useful man." Among those who attended his lectures were Antony
Wood, Wallis, Wren, Bathurst, and, not least, Locke, who was
troublesome, and "scorned to take notes"--why we are not told, and may
imagine as we please. Wood's account of this survival is obscure--he
seems uncertain as to the relation of Sthael's pupils to the Royal
Society at Oxford: they were probably the same, and incurred the wrath
and misrepresentations of Henry Stubb, who inveighed against them as
dangerous,--the Society had become obnoxious to the University, being
suspected 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 the
room over the gateway, but in the dining-room or drawing-room of the
Warden's lodgings. By the direction of the Foundress "the chamber over
the great gate" had been assigned to the Warden, as commanding the
entrance into the College, and a view of all who should go in or out: he
was to have also for his own use seven rooms next adjoining on the north
side. 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 of
Wilkins, for from 1640 to 1663 the great chamber was occupied by various
tenants,--among them Seth Ward and Christopher Wren. The writer is
therefore warranted in picturing to the eye of his imagination the
personages of the club assembled in his drawing-room, a club less
famous, 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 the
members of the club, most of whom he would recognise by their portraits
in the College or elsewhere.


On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died. To Wood the exact date is
important, because "some writers tell us that he was hurried away by
the Devill in a terrible raging wind on the 30th of August," a statement
which the chronicler might have been expected to believe. Richard
Cromwell was proclaimed Protector at Oxford on September 6th, in the
usual places where kings had been proclaimed. The ceremony was disturbed
by 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 in
Oxford, it is part of the life of Wilkins. It must have given him much
to think of during the last year of his Wardenship. In February 1659 the
Vice-Chancellor wrote to the Dean of Christ Church, then in London, that
"he must make haste to Oxford, for godliness laye a gasping." Nathaniel
Crewe of Lincoln had in the same month drawn up a petition, which Wood
signed, to put out the Visitors. He was a Presbyterian, and ready to
have the Visitors "put downe, notwithstanding he had before submitted
to them and had paid to them reverence and obedience. The Independants,
who called themselves the godly party, drew up a petition contrary to
the former, and said 'twas for the cause of Christ." The feud between
the two parties was no less bitter, when their supremacy in Oxford was
drawing to its end, than it had been many years before. Which of the
petitions did Wilkins sign?

A year later, in February 1660, Monk made a speech to Parliament of
doubtful meaning, exhorting his hearers to be careful "that neither the
Cavalier nor the phanatique party have yet a share in your civil or
military power,"--on which utterance Wood notes that "the word
phanatique comes much into fashion after this." Monk's meaning was
quickly interpreted for him, both in London and in Oxford,--on February
13th "there was great rejoicing here at Oxon for the news of a free
parliament, ringing of bells, bonfires, &c.: there were rumps (_i.e._,
tayles of sheep) flung in a bonfire at Queen's Coll., and some at Dr
Palmer's window at All Soles." The joy of the Royalists especially was
manifested by the reading at Magdalen parish church of Common Prayer,
"after it had been omitted to be read in public places in Oxon since the
surrender of the city or in 1647." All the tokens of Monarchy were
restored: "the signe of the King's Head had been dashed out, or daubled
over, tempore Olivari, and (in its place was written 'This was the
King's Head') was new painted." On the 1st of May "a Maypole was set up
against the Beare in All Hallows parish (_i.e._, opposite the Mitre of
our time) on purpose to vex the Presbyterians and Independants," despite
the interference of Dr Conant, the Vice-Chancellor. On the 10th the new
King was proclaimed: on the 14th letters from Richard Cromwell to
Convocation were read, whereby he resigned the Chancellorship of the
University in dignified and courteous words. By May 29th the Restoration
was complete, and the day was observed in all or in most towns in
England, "particularly at Oxon, which did exceed any place of its
bigness." Wood's comment on these events is worth giving in full: "The
world of England was perfectly mad. They were free from the chains of
darkness and confusion which the Presbyterians and phanatiques had
brought upon them: yet some of them, seeing then what mischief they had
done, tack'd about to participate of the universal Joy, and at length
closed with the Royal partie." Here we take leave, for a time, of Antony
Wood, who has been allowed to tell his story in his own words; unwilling
leave, for though he is provoking, he is charming, with a keen eye for
character, both of parties and individuals, and for the issues and
events of real importance, never dull or lengthy, save when he descants
on his family affairs or on the minutiae of his occasionally meticulous
antiquarianism, 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 in
Oxford, and of being ejected from his post like other Heads of Houses.
On September 3, 1659, he resigned the Wardenship, and was succeeded on
September 5th by Walter Blandford, one of the Fellows who had submitted
to the Visitors in 1648, and later, in that strange time of opinions
which "could be changed," had made his peace with the Royalists. During
his Wardenship of six years the College flourished. He was made Bishop
of 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. He
had been invited there by the Fellows, on whose petition he was
presented by Richard Cromwell. Thirty years later Cambridge, as if in
exchange for value received, sent Richard Bentley to Wadham, who left it
to return to Cambridge as Master of Trinity,--an interchange of which
neither University can complain.

At Cambridge Wilkins' stay was brief. He was Master of Trinity only for
ten months, but in that short reign he proved himself as vigorous and
effective as he had been at Wadham: he stimulated and organised the
College teaching, and made his Fellows work, by instituting
disputations, and examinations at elections, probably fallen out of use
in the troubles of the fifteen previous years; yet here as elsewhere he
was able to win and rule, for "he was honoured there and heartily loved
by all." At Cambridge, Burnet tells us, "he joined with those who
studied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in
parties, or from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits, and
fierceness about opinions." He must have had as his allies there
Cudworth and Whichcote, men of his own age, and one younger,
Stillingfleet, the Latitudinarians, from whom our Broad Churchmen are
theologically descended.

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

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


     "Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit."


He had many friends and a great reputation; they brought him various
preferments,--the lectureship at Gray's Inn, the vicarage of St
Lawrence Jewry, and the Deanery of Ripon, within a few years after his
banishment from Cambridge. Preferment may not have brought him
happiness, but it must have prevented his fortunes from being, as Pope
says they were, "as low as they could be." He suffered indeed one
calamity--a cruel one to a man of his pursuits and tastes: in the great
fire of London the vicarage house of St Lawrence Jewry was burnt, and
with it were destroyed his books and the collection of scientific
instruments made during his residence at Oxford with the help of the
members of the club.

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

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

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

The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge
(its official title) took knowledge for its province; that is, natural
knowledge, of Nature, Art, and Works, in preference to, though not
necessarily to the exclusion of, moral and metaphysical philosophy,
history and language. The experiments, its chief work, were to be
productive both of light and fruit: the influence of Bacon is so great
and evident that he might in a sense be called the founder of the Royal
Society. Sprat's real preface to his History is Cowley's famous ode. The
poet speaks of philosophy--_i.e._, natural philosophy, as the captive
and slave of Authority and Words, set free by Bacon: its followers he
likens to the Children of Israel wandering aimlessly from one desert to
another till Moses brought them to the border of the promised land. The
stately 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's
anxiety to show that experiments "are not dangerous to the Universities
nor to the Church of England," a contention which now would be admitted
or denied if the term "experiments" were first defined. He labours, too,
to show that they are not dangerous to the Christian religion, either
its belief or practice. His remarks on this question are of great
interest and value, and are strangely modern. He pleads that
"experiments will be beneficial to our wits and writers." Alas! the wits
at least benefited in a way which Sprat did anticipate. Shadwell in his
'Virtuoso' found material for profane merriment in some of the
unquestionably absurd inquiries made or suggested by the natural
philosophers. "Science was then only just emerging from the Mists of
Superstition." Astrology and Alchemy still infected Astronomy,
Chemistry, and Medicine. A Fellow of the Royal Society, along with the
Puritan, made a ridiculous figure on the stage. But Puritanism and
Natural Philosophy both survived the "test of truth," and were better
for the ordeal.[3]

In 1668, through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, Wilkins was
made Bishop of Chester. The position of a Bishop in some ways resembles
that of the Head of a College: Fellows are like canons and archdeacons;
undergraduates are the "inferior clergy." The Bishop showed in the
management of his diocese the moderation, tact, and charity which had
made him a successful Warden. He brought back into the Church of
England, or into loyalty to that Church, many ministers who had been
ejected from their livings for non-compliance with the Act of
Uniformity: his success in this good work was due to his "soft
interpretation of the terms of conformity." They needed softening; no
part of Macaulay's 'History of England' is more striking and instructive
than his account in chapter ii. of the sufferings of the Puritans and
Nonconformists of all descriptions. "It was made a crime to attend a
dissenting place of worship. A new and most unreasonable test was
imposed on divines who had been deprived of their benefices for
Nonconformity; and all who refused to take that test were prohibited
from coming within five miles of any town which was governed by a
corporation, of any town which was represented in Parliament, or of any
town where they had themselves resided as ministers. The magistrates by
whom these vigorous statutes were to be enforced, were in general men
inflamed by party spirit, and by remembrances of wrongs suffered in the
time of the Commonwealth. The jails were therefore soon crowded with
dissenters, and among the sufferers were some of whose genius and virtue
any Christian society might well be proud."

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

Wilkins, like many "moderate" men, had convictions, and was ready to
make sacrifices in their defence. Not only in his diocese, but in the
House of Lords, he pleaded for a lenient treatment of dissenters. In
reference to the second Conventicle Act, Wilkins gained for himself, in
the view of all right-minded men, especial honour. He argued earnestly
against the Bill in the Upper House. Even when the king desired him to
be silent, he replied "That he thought it an ill thing, both in
conscience and policy, and therefore as an Englishman and a Bishop, he
was bound to oppose it." Being still further requested by Charles not to
go to the House while the Bill was pending, his answer was "That by the
law and constitution of England, and by his Majesty's favour, he had a
right to debate and vote: and he was neither afraid nor ashamed to own
his opinion in this matter, and to act pursuant to it, and the king was
not offended with his freedom."[4] He did not hesitate to endanger his
favour with the king--perhaps not with him, for Charles was not by
temper a persecutor, but with the party then in power. From the 'Church
of England in the Reigns of the Stuarts,' I quote another instance of
his moderation and clear-headedness in the fierce controversies of his
time. In a conversation with Cosin, Bishop of Devon, who had censured
him for his moderation, Wilkins frankly told him that he was a better
friend to the Church of England than his lordship--"for while you," says
he, "are for setting the top on the picqued end and downwards, you won't
be 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 of
itself." The metaphor has obvious defects, but expresses the broadness
of the Broad party in the Church.

Of Wilkins' work in his diocese few particulars are recorded: it is
called by Wood the "kill Bishop see," a name which now happily it does
not deserve. His had been a laborious life, and the last years of it
must have been full of difficulties and anxieties to the friend of an
unpopular cause. After four years' tenure of his bishopric, he died in
the year 1672, at the age of fifty-eight, in Tillotson's house: he was
buried in the churchyard of St Lawrence Jewry, his old vicarage. His
College pupil, William Lloyd, preached the funeral sermon, in which he
defends him against the charge of having looked with too much favour on
the dissenters, urging as his excuse, "the vehemence of his desire to
bring the Dissenters off their prejudices, and reduce them to the Unity
of the Church"; no bad defence.

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

Pepys made his first acquaintance with Wilkins in 1665: he was now a man
widely known in London society, especially among learned men and natural
philosophers. 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 my
great joy, so sober and ingenious: he is now upon finishing his
discourse of a Universal Character." At a dinner-party later he met
Wilkins, when "I choosing to sit next Dr Wilkins, Sir George Ent, and
others whome I value, there talked of several things; Dr Wilkins of the
Universal Speech, of which he hath a book coming out, and did first
inform me how man was certainly made for society, without which he would
be a very mean creature." In 1668 the book was published, carried home
by Pepys, and carefully perused. He enjoyed the account given by Wilkins
of the ark, and his solutions of the difficulties raised even in his
time. The solutions, Pepys says, "do please me mightily, and are much
beyond whatever I heard of the subject." This is easy to believe. He
must have been impressed by Wilkins' contention that "few were the
several species of beasts and fowls which were to be in the Arke"; a
consequence of the fundamental error of his system, the belief that
nature was easily classified, and her classes few. In Pepys' last
important reference to Wilkins, he tells us that he "heard talk that Dr
Wilkins, my friend the Bishop of Chester, shall be removed to Winchester
and be made Lord Treasurer: though this be foolish talk, I do gather he
is a mighty rising man, as being a Latitudinarian, and the Duke of
Buckingham his friend."

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

In 1665 Evelyn heard his friend preach before the Lord Mayor at St
Paul's on the text, "Obedience is better than sacrifice,"--a curious
text 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 own
career. Under the same entry Evelyn describes his friend as one "who
took great pains to preserve the Universities from the ignorant and
sacrilegious commanders who would have demolished all places and persons
that 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 a
hansom, and a cycle. "Perhaps," continues Evelyn, "three such persons
were not to be found elsewhere in Europe for parts and ingenuity." Lord
Rosebery, we may safely presume, would be glad to see them at The
Durdans now.

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

Tillotson, who married Wilkins' stepdaughter, and may therefore have
been prejudiced, though such relationships give rise to prejudices of
various kinds, was deeply attached to him. He edited and wrote a preface
to the book on 'Natural Religion,' and did the same pious duty in
respect of the 'Sermons Preached on Several Occasions,' taking
opportunity in the preface to defend him against the censures of Antony
Wood. He edited also a pamphlet of an attractive title, which the writer
has not seen and fain would see, 'The Moderate Man, the best subject in
Church and State, proved from the arguments of Wilkins, with Tillotson's
opinions on the subject.' Between them they must make a strong case for
the Moderate Man. Tillotson says of his father-in-law: "I think I may
truly say that there are or have been few in this age and nation so well
known, and greatly esteemed, and favoured by many persons of high rank
and quality, and of singular worth and eminence in all the learned
professions." This eulogy has perhaps the ring of a time when rank and
quality were made more of than they are now made, but it is quoted as an
illustration of the change of feeling which would make it now impossible
or indecorous to praise a bishop because he got on well with great
people: allowance must be made for the difference between the
seventeenth and the twentieth century.

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

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

Burnet was a partisan, but these are the words of more than
partisanship. In his 'History of his Own Time' he introduces Wilkins to
his readers in very distinguished company, among the
Latitudinarians--Whichcote, Cudworth, Tillotson, Lloyd, and
Stillingfleet,--of whom he says that if such men had not appeared, of
another stamp than their predecessors, "the Church had quite lost its
esteem over the nation." Clarendon, whom he calls "more the friend of
the Bishops than of the Church," had, in his opinion, endowed them and
the higher clergy too well, and they were sunk in luxury and sloth. The
Latitudinarians infused into the Church life, energy, and a sense of
duty: they were, he adds, good preachers and acceptable to the king,
who, "having little or no literature, but true and good sense," liked
sermons "plain, clear, and short." "Incedo per ignes," but it is
impossible to refrain from quoting Burnet's language, which, _mutatis
mutandis_, would have expressed what High Churchmen felt towards the
leaders of the Oxford movement, and with equal truth and justice.

Here Antony Wood may be called in to play the part of the Advocatus
Diaboli. He plays it in the following passage, as always, with great
vigour and enjoyment: "Dr John Wilkins, a notorious complyer with the
Presbyterians, from whom he obtained the Wardenship of Wadham; with the
Independants and Cromwell himself, by whose favour he did not only get
a 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 his
smooth language, insinuating preaching, flatteries, and I know not what,
got among other preferments the Deanery of Ripon, and at length by the
commendation of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a great favourer of
fanaticks and atheists, the Bishopric of Chester."

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

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

Unquestionably there lies against a man who prospered under Cromwell and
Charles II., and was a favourite of both, a presumption of excessive
pliancy, of too much readiness to adapt himself to his environment, of
time-serving, if you like, and insincerity. It cannot be proved that he
was not a Vicar of Bray, the title which at once suggests itself.
Tolerance, geniality, and charity are virtues which have their own
defects, and some measure of austerity is one of the ingredients of a
perfect character. It has been said of Wilkins that two principles
determined his career: a large tolerance of actions and opinions; a
readiness to submit himself to "the powers that be," let them have been
established if they might. These are the marks of a wise man, and of a
man supremely useful in times of bitter hatred and uncompromising
revenge: 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 said
by Mr Herbert Paul of a more famous Trimmer, Lord Halifax (not our Lord
Halifax), that "he was thoroughly imbued with the English spirit of
compromise, that he had a remarkable power of understanding, even
sympathetically understanding, opinions which he did not hold." Wilkins
hated persecution, and that hatred nerves a Trimmer to defend unpopular
persons and unpopular causes, as he did in his College and University
and Diocese. Toleration has a courage of its own equal to that of
fanaticism, and more useful and intelligent. It is now an easier and a
safer virtue than it was two hundred and fifty years ago: it is not
popular now; it was odious then, and men were impatient with those who
took no side, or changed sides for reasons good or bad.

Macaulay--who never knew a doubt, whose way was clear and easy in the
struggles of his day, when reform and free trade in corn were obviously
desirable and necessary--writes with contemptuous severity of the
profligacy of politicians from the Restoration to the accession of the
House of Hanover. "One who in such an age is determined to attain civil
greatness must renounce all thought of consistency. Instead of affecting
immutability in the midst of mutation, he must always be on the watch
for the indications of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment
for deserting a falling cause. He has seen so many institutions from
which much had been expected produce mere disappointment, that he has no
hope of improvement. There is nothing in the state which he could not,
without a scruple, join in defending or destroying." Compare with these
scathing words his estimate of the character of Halifax, the Whig: "The
most estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and
licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. He was called inconsistent
because the relative position in which he stood to the contending
parties was perpetually varying. As well might the Polar Star be called
inconsistent because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the
west of the pointers. To have defended the ancient and legal
constitution of the realm against a seditious populace at one
conjunction, and against a tyrannical government at another; to have
been 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 the
Popish Plot, and to the Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot;
this was a course which contemporaries, heated by passion, and deluded
by names and badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which
deserves a very different name from the late justice of posterity." More
than one British statesman, Tory, be it observed, as well as Whig,
needs and deserves a defence like this. Alter names and dates, and it
will serve as a vindication of Wilkins' deficiency in a "constant mind
and settled principles." Therefore the paradox is true that a Trimmer
may be a man of firmness and courage; one who is bold enough to make
many enemies and few friends; who has convictions of his own, but by a
power of sympathy, one of the rarest and highest mental, half moral,
half intellectual, qualities, can understand opinions which he does not
hold; understand and pardon, as the French say.

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

As a loyal son of the College, the writer is prepared to maintain that a
Vicar of Bray could not have won love and admiration in his College, his
University, and in his Diocese, and in a larger world than these; nor
have been "laudatus a laudatis viris." It is more rational to believe
that Wilkins was a good and wise man, who accepted the situations in
which he found himself placed, and made the best of them, being more
solicitous to do good than to preserve consistency, that most negative
of virtues. Let him be judged by his best, as men are most fairly
judged, and by another good criterion, the times in which he
lived,--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 his
Own Time,' vol. i. p. 272. First edition.


PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Times of John Wilkins, by
Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

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