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.

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."