ch
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