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.