On a November afternoon—Nov. 28, 1660—the usual little audience of philosophers had assembled to listen to one of Dr. Christopher Wren’s astronomy lectures at Gresham College, in Basinghall Street.[262] Wren, who had been astronomy professor there since 1657, lectured on Wednesday afternoons during Term-time from two to three—and it was a custom for the little company to stay on after the lecture, adjourning to another room for “mutuall converse.” The political disasters of the last year or two had somewhat interrupted the advancement of learning; the soldiers had, in fact, for a time, been quartered in Gresham College. But by the end of November 1660 things were settling down again, and the lectures were going on as usual. At this particular lecture the _virtuosi_ present were Lord Brouncker, Mr. Boyle, Mr. Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paule Neile, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Mr. Ball, Mr. Rooke, Mr. Wren, and Mr. Hill; and their “mutuall converse” turned on the formation of a scientific society, on a broader basis than had been hitherto attempted—a society “for the promoting of Physico-Mathematicall-Experimentall Learning,” to consist of weekly meetings, which were to be held every Wednesday from that date onwards. This, it must be remembered, was no outcome of the Restoration. It was fifteen years since the Invisibles had begun their meetings, “precluding matters of theology and state affairs,” sometimes at Gresham College, oftener in Dr. Goddard’s house in Wood Street, or at the Bull’s Head Tavern in Cheapside. Robert Boyle at that time had been a boy of eighteen, just back from Geneva, and introduced into the little Hartlib-Durie-Comenius circle to find that the Parliament men were already interested in a scheme of “Verulamian education.” In November 1660 the Invisibles were fifteen years wiser than they had been in 1645. And what a fifteen years it had been! Had there ever been such a fifteen years in English History? Some of them, after the visitation of Oxford, had migrated there, taking posts vacated by Royalists, and forming the Oxford branch of the Invisible Society; and now again these same men, removed at the Restoration from their posts in Oxford University, were turning back to London. It was the old Invisible College of 1645 that was to merge itself in the Royal Society.