At Wadham the Visitors met with an obstinate resistance: Dr Pitt, then Warden, was a stout Royalist, and refused to acknowledge the authority of a Parliament acting 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 Commoners, all of them save one to return no more. John Wilkins was put in his place by the Visitors on the same day, and held it till his resignation on September 3, 1659.
Before the end of his stay in London he had taken the covenant and definitely given his allegiance to the Parliamentarian party. He was marked out for promotion as a known man of great ability, and he had made 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 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. These parties are called by different names at different times, and are formed on different questions, but remain essentially the same. In Oxford they were called Royalists, Presbyterians, Independents; the questions at issue were the life, discipline, and religion of the University.
This classification has all the faults which a classification can have; it is not exhaustive, for the variations, religious and political, being infinite, cannot be included under three heads; nor do the membra dividentia exclude each other: among the Royalists 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 best elements of conservatism, the historical sense, and a love of order and discipline, especially as administered by themselves. But classifications may be illogical yet useful, and Wilkins would have accepted this one, in his practical way, for working purposes.
The Presbyterians were for forcing on the Church of England, the Covenant, the Westminster Confession, and the deposition of the Bishop by the Presbyter, or a board of Presbyters. The Independents conceived that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcely less Scriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches or to the Vatican, and that Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism, were merely three forms of one great apostacy. In politics the Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, "root and branch men," or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals: not content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. Macaulay's vigorous words explain the difference between the Presbyterians and the Independents: that difference 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 less gay, and of the Presbyterian rather than the Independent fashion. Whatever may have been their difference in dress, both parties were "void of public and generous spirits: the Presbyterians for the most part preached nothing but damnation, the other not, but rather for libertie; yet both joyne together to pluck downe and silence the prelattical preachers, or at least to expose their way to scorne." Wood carries his comparisons further, and tells, perhaps invents, many things about their common hatred of Maypoles, players, cassocks, surplices, and the use of the Lord's Prayer in public religious service. 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." But Wood describes them as he knew them many years after Naseby and Marston Moor, when their character had changed with changing circumstances. Triumphant success seldom improves the morale of any party. Oxford proved a Capua to the Independents who lived in it after the strain of war was over: the very principle of Independency, 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 than to the stiffness of the Presbyterians, who more successfully than their rivals resisted the enervating influences of life in Oxford. Circumstances as well as inclination led him to become an Independent: his marriage with Cromwell's sister, and the appointment to be one of the Commissioners to execute the office of Chancellor, perhaps also his appointment to the Wardenship, all tended to draw him to the side of Ireton and the Protector. Of the latter he saw much, and was consulted by him on academical and ecclesiastical affairs.
Lord Morley[2] records "a story told by Bishop Wilkins, who was the husband of Cromwell's youngest sister Robina, that the Protector often said to him that no temporal government could have a sure support without a national church that adhered to it, and that he thought England 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, for Englishmen were incapable of any better constitution; or he may have modified his judgment of Episcopacy,—who knows all that Cromwell came to think in his latter days, a time when most men revise their opinions? He may have felt the disenchantment which awaits success.
Wilkins' marked success, both in his College and in his University, can be explained only by the fact that he possessed the qualities necessary for the work he had to do,—strong common-sense, moderation, and geniality. He had to live, as the most prominent 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, which divide communities: questions which had been stifled for a time by force, and therefore, when force was removed or slackened, came back into vigorous life, and were constantly and bitterly discussed. But he was the man for the time and the place.
His College flourished under his wise and kindly rule. Dr Pope tells us that "many country gentlemen, of all persuasions, but especially those then called Cavaliers and Malignants for adhering to the King and to the Church, sent their sons to his College to be under his government. The affluence of gentlemen was so great that I may 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 average of admissions was thirty. The large admission made in 1650 was due to the reputation of Wilkins as an able and tolerant College Head, as well as to the belief that the tumult of war had died away. Men's thoughts were turning to civil affairs and the ordinary business of life, especially to education, the preparation for it.
In the registers of the period between 1648 and 1659, are found many names either of distinction in themselves, or of interest as showing that the connection of Wadham with the western counties was well maintained. Walter Pope, who has been already mentioned, was appointed Scholar by the Visitors in 1648, 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 which he gives a brief account of Wilkins, Lawrence Rooke, and Isaac Barrow, as well as a complete life of Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. It is full of digressions on the manners and customs of the time, written with much humour, and is worthy of a humble place beside the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys.