sired to convert from
a hotbed of Royalism into a nursery of Puritans. Wilkins was qualified
by his common-sense and genial ways for what would have been a hopeless
task to the clumsy fanatics ready enough to undertake it.

The new Warden must have found himself in a difficult position. There
were in Oxford the three parties into which Englishmen and Scotchmen
invariably divide themselves. These parties are called by different
names at different times, and are formed on different questions, but
remain essentially the same. In Oxford they were called Royalists,
Presbyterians, Independents; the questions at issue were the life,
discipline, and religion of the University.

This classification has all the faults which a classification can have;
it is not exhaustive, for the variations, religious and political, being
infinite, cannot be included under three heads; nor do the _membra
dividentia_ exclude each other: among the Royalists were some members of
the established Church, of Calvinistic opinions, who were hardly
distinguishable from Presbyterians; and some professed Presbyterians
would have stood by Charles had not Laud driven them away, for they had
in their nature some of the best elements of conservatism, the
historical sense, and a love of order and discipline, especially as
administered by themselves. But classifications may be illogical yet
useful, and Wilkins would have accepted this one, in his practical way,
for working purposes.

The Presbyterians were for forcing on the Church of England, the
Covenant, the Westminster Confession, and the deposition of the Bishop
by the Presbyter, or a board of Presbyters. The Independents conceived
that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme
jurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial and
national synods were scarcely less Scriptural than appeals to the Court
of Arches or to the Vatican, and that Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism,
were merely three forms of one great apostacy. In politics the
Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, "root and branch
men," or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals: not
content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous to
erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. Macaulay's
vigorous words explain the difference between the Presbyterians and the
Independents: that difference is explained also by Wood in words as
vigorous but less dignified and schol