John Wilkins Biography

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Dictionary of Literary Biography on John Wilkins

John Wilkins was a man of often contested qualities and allegiances whose life illustrates the profoundly complex and turbulent culture of seventeenth-century England. Both the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell and the father-in-law of John Tillotson, who became archbishop of Canterbury after the restoration of the monarchy, Wilkins witnessed the religious controversies and political struggles leading to the English Revolution, partook in the scientific debates of the period, and wrote several works popularizing the "new science." During the Interregnum he oversaw Wadham College, Oxford, and at the beginning of the Restoration he played a key role in the founding of the Royal Society. Establishing himself as one of the leading latitudinarian preachers of his day, he served as dean of the Collegiate Church of Ripon and bishop of Chester under Charles II. Though he is primarily remembered for his defining influence on English rhetoric and literary styles, Wilkins's other major early publications--The Discovery Of A World In The Moone (1638), a defense of the new astronomy; Ecclesiastes, Or, A Discourse concerning the Gift Of Preaching as it fals under the rules of Art (1646), a handbook on preaching; and Mathematical Magick: Or, The Wonders that May Be Performed by Mechanicall Geometry (1648), a primer on mechanics--prove Wilkins a polymath typical of those men with whom he later helped to found the Royal Society.

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