P. A. Wright Henderson

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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, [Pg 6] 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? ”

“ 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 mythopœic 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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: [Pg 131] one note runs through all their eulogies, that he was universally beloved ”

“ 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 [Pg 91] 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 19] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 [Pg 97] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 55] 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ His description is so vivid that one is tempted [Pg 48] 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”