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."