The Life and Times of John Wilkins

n us; or, the Visitation at Oxford,' is the title of one of the numerous pamphlets relating to this Oxford revolution; Tragi-com?dia Oxoniense

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

ng 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 Commoner

de 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 conve

ivide themselves. These parties are called by different names at different times, and are formed on different questions, but remain essentially the sam

s 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 bes

ence 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 les

ency, 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 tha

ngland 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, f

minent 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, w

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

648, 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

ssful. 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 régime 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 mus

ned 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

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

hilosophers 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 t

ol, and finally of Hereford. He was the "rudest man in the University," and that without respect of persons, for he remonstrated,

owed on him when he was old and white-haired, by the terr? 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 membe

into the President's place at Magdalen College, but held his office for only five months. He died in his Lodgings, and was b

he 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 wh

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 to

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 wi

y 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 executin

ibacy 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

erson, 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 o

e University, and set him at safety, and out of the reach of his Ad

ambridge 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 e

E FROM THE CO

t two of them, the 'Real Character' and 'Natural Religion.' The others are of interest to natural philosophers, as containing anticipations of discoveries and ideas wh

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

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 D?dalus. The names are quaint, and the classical illustrations are very numerous. The

ors; 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 studen

d 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 li

genuity 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

erefore means a kind of shortha

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

d 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

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 o

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,

d in 1667, he gives a full account of its gro

reathing 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 Univ

nism 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

der" 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

s 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, a

"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. I

iew 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 occupi

ISTOPHE

or any of the members of the club, most of whom he would

onel 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, whi

r 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." Wo

TNO

well,' p. 368