rs"; and in 1649 Wilkins, along with the Proctor and a Canon of
Christ Church, was appointed to confer with the mayor and the citizens
on this important question, not then decided.

Two years later he served on a Commission appointed to consider how to
suppress troubles caused by sturdy beggars, "poore soldiers, cashiered
or maimed, and Irish people with petitions, that pretended to be undon
by the late rebellion there,"--the miserable sequel of the civil war.
He helped in the revision of the College and University Statutes, and on
the nomination of Cromwell was made one of the Commissioners for
executing the office of Chancellor, proving himself a man of affairs as
well as of learning. For ten years, as critical as any in the history of
Oxford, he took a leading part in its academical and municipal
administration.

Yet he found time to avail himself of the privilege to marry given to
the Warden of Wadham: it was accorded to him by a dispensation of the
Visitors, who doubtless thought that enforced celibacy savoured of
Popery. The privilege was withdrawn after the Restoration, as being a
concession made by Puritans, whose views on the marriage of the clergy
were not the views of the High Church party. Leave to marry was given to
all Wardens of Wadham by a special Act of Parliament in 1806, and not,
as the College story goes, by a clause tacked on to a Canal or Turnpike
Bill.

Pope's account of Wilkins' marriage is a strange solution of an always
interesting question, and not altogether complimentary to the lady of
his choice. "Dr Ward," he says, "rid out of this storm,"--the storm of
obloquy which broke out on him and Wilkins as being "mere moral men."
Wilkins "put into the port of matrimony," apparently as a harbour of
refuge in distress. He married Robina, the Protector's sister, widow of
Dr Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. Her first husband was "a pious,
humble, and learned person, and an excellent preacher," the best, in
Pope's opinion, of the censorious party. Ward did not imitate his
friend, though, if we believe Pope, he had many opportunities for doing
so. "He was never destitute of friends of the Fair Sex, never without
proffers of Wives," which became increasingly frequent as he rose in the
world. Pope professes to have known "several persons of great quality
and estates who found ways to make it known to Ward, that if he would
address himself to them in the honourable way of marriage, he should not
wa