st 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 no