prescribed with that administered in Wadham now. Sufficient to say—what indeed might go without saying—that the lapse of three hundred years has made changes desirable and necessary.

The Foundress died on May 16, 1618, aged eighty-four. For five years she had watched over the infancy of her College, and had seen it grow into a vigorous child, with the promise of a robust manhood. The mythopœic faculty is strong in all of us, and in Wadham has grown up a tradition that Dorothy was a strong-minded woman, and her husband a submissive man without character and will. The myth rests only on the science of physiognomy working on portraits,—a most insecure foundation. The Founders' portraits depict him as a gentle, placid person with melancholy eyes; her as a hard-featured woman with a long upper lip and an almost cruel mouth. Against the testimony, always dubious, of portraits, must be set the known facts of her loyal devotion in carrying out his wishes with scrupulous fidelity, and the sacrifices she made in doing so, of money and of laborious supervision in the last years of her long life.

The College may do well to remember the closing of one of her last letters to the Warden and Fellows: "Above all things, I would have you to avoid contentions among yourselves, for without true charity there cannot be a true Society."—(Wells' 'History of Wadham,' p. 44.) She was buried beside her husband in the Wadham aisle at Ilminster.

Only a few months after her death a question arose in which she would have taken a keen interest, and have supported her College to the uttermost. In October 1618 James I. set an example, which his grandson, James II., followed, of that contempt for law which proved fatal to the Stuarts. He wrote to his "trusty and well beloved, the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, bidding them elect Walter Durham of St Andrews a Fellow, notwithstanding anything in their statutes to the contrary." Durham had not been a scholar, and the vacancy had been filled up by the Foundress, for whose death "their eyes were still wet." It is possible that Durham's being a Scotchman was another objection to his reception as a Fellow in those days when his aggressive countrymen had found the high-road to England: this objection the Society did not put before the King, but pleaded only the obligations of the statutes. Supported by the Earl of Pembroke, the Chancellor of the University, their resistance was successful. To Wadham belongs the honour of being the earliest Oxford champion of legality in the struggle of seventy years: as to Magdalen belongs the honour of the resistance which brought that struggle nearly to its close. From 1618 onward till—who can say when? the College has been on the popular or constitutional side, save in 1648. The portrait of James I., who gave the College its Charter, hangs in the Hall; there are no portraits there of Charles I., Charles II., James II.

Among the admissions of this time the most illustrious name is that of Robert Blake, who matriculated at Alban Hall, but took his B.A. from Wadham in 1618, a few months before the Durham incident. The great admiral and soldier may therefore have learnt in Wadham the opinions which determined his choice of sides in the Parliamentary wars. The College possesses his portrait, and four gold medals struck to commemorate his victory over Van Tromp in 1653. It has never left the custody of the Warden, save when it was sent, concealed on the person of Professor and Commander Burroughs, to the Naval Exhibition some years ago; and last year, when after an interesting correspondence between the College and Colonel Maxse commanding the Coldstream Guards, leave was cordially given to that distinguished regiment to have an electrotype made of the Blake medal for its own exclusive use, and to be kept in perpetuum among the memorials of its long history. It is the oldest regiment in the service, the only survivor of Cromwell's New Model; it was commanded by Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, when he crossed the border to march to London, perhaps with no definite intention to restore the Monarchy—perhaps also prompted by his brother Nicholas, a Wadham man, to solve the great problem in that simple way. The rest of the New Model were disbanded after the Restoration, but, doubtless in deference to Monk, the Coldstreams were reformed, and became the King's Bodyguard. To Monk, who like Blake was half soldier, half sailor, one of the four medals had been awarded for his services against the Dutch. It was lost, and the replica will take its place. The other three medals are preserved—one in the possession of the representatives of the Penn family, one in the British Museum, one in Wadham: the last was sent to the British Museum for reproduction: it was carried by our historian Mr Wells, returned by him, and it now lies in the Warden's lodgings, in the cabinet of treasures bequeathed by Dr Griffiths, our benefactor in many ways unknown but to his friends. This tie of courtesy and history between a regiment and a college, arms and the gown, is worth recording and probably unique.

No other name of real distinction than Blake's occurs in the registers of 1613 to 1648. But Colonel Henry Ancktill, "the priest and malignant doctor," as he was known among the Roundheads, one of the first Fellows, ought to be remembered, partly on his own account, for he was a vigorous and devoted Royalist, a fighting man when his cause was hopeless; partly because he may have been the original of Dr Rochcliffe in 'Woodstock.' Sir Walter Scott read the 'Athenæ Oxonienses,' and the resemblance between Ancktill and Rochcliffe is striking; but who can say what a great writer finds or creates in fiction or in history!

ADMIRAL BLAKE.

A perusal of the register shows that in Wadham both of the great parties in Church and State were represented. There were represented also all classes of society, from Dymokes, Herberts, Russells, Portmans, Strangways, to the humblest plebeiorum filii, a fact which proves the falsity of the assertion made forty years ago, that Oxford was once a place for "gentlemen only."

The history of the College at this time was not one of unbroken peace: occasional quarrels between members of the governing body are recorded,—evidences of the unrest of a time when greater questions than the interpretation of a Statute or the disputed election of a College officer were already in the air. The only dissension of any interest was one which led to an appeal to the Visitor: the Visitor was Laud, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who showed great gentleness and patience in dealing with a person even more provoking than he found the worst of Scotch Presbyterians.

We have now reached, "longas per ambages," the times of Wilkins' manhood: he was born a year later than the opening of the College which he was to rule.

CHAPTER II.

WILKINS' LIFE TILL HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE WARDENSHIP.

In the Common Room of Wadham College