nt a kind entertainment." But he, then Bishop of Salisbury, had
before his eyes the fate of one of his predecessors who married after he
became a bishop, and "upon that had received so severe a reprimand from
his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and laid it so much to heart
that it accelerated his death." This story may be apocryphal; it is
certainly startling. Do ladies of quality still give such hints to
bishops? Do bishops die of a rebuke from the archbishop of their
province?

Wilkins' marriage "gained him a strong interest and authority in the
University, and set him at safety, and out of the reach of his
Adversaries." We may trust that it was for his happiness in other ways.

Of his wife little is known, nor is there a portrait of her in the
College. She had a son by her second marriage, Joshua Wilkins, who
became Dean of Down: by her first marriage she had a daughter, Elizabeth
French, the wife of Tillotson. The writer once amused himself with the
fancy that the Archbishop to-be met and courted Miss French in the
Warden's Lodgings at Wadham, which have few romantic associations; but
chronology proves that Tillotson, a Cambridge man, born in 1630, would
probably not have made acquaintance with Wilkins before 1659, when he
became Master of Trinity. The romance had therefore to be transferred to
the Master's Lodge. Even there it could not stay, for Tillotson's first
meeting with his future wife in all likelihood took place in London,
when he was appointed Tuesday Lecturer at St Lawrence Jewry, the
vicarage of which was one of Wilkins' earliest preferments after his
ejection from the Mastership of Trinity. When Tillotson made suit for
the hand of his stepdaughter, Wilkins, upon her desiring to be excused,
said, "Betty, you shall have him, for he is the best polemical Divine
this day in England." Though excellence in polemical divinity has not an
attraction for most women, she consented, and they were married in 1664.
The stories both of Dorothy and Betty are myths, which fade away at the
first touch of criticism.

[Illustration: WADHAM COLLEGE FROM THE COLLEGE GARDEN.]

Wilkins was a diligent student, and wrote books of many kinds. These
books the writer does not pretend to have read, save in the most
hurried, even careless way, except two of them, the 'Real Character' and
'Natural Religion.' The others are of interest to natural philosophers,
as containing anticipations of discoveries and ideas which belong