I attach no importance to the MS. prepared by Wren’s son Christopher, or, indeed, to any of his documents, and prefer to rest on the College records. Miss Phillimore followed the MS., but Miss Milman, without setting down any evidence, assumed that Wren spent three years in London between Dr. Busby and Oxford. I think she did wisely, and on all the evidence, obscure and conflicting as it is, I accept 1649 as the year when Wren began his Oxford career. The rest of the dates can be cleared off shortly. He became M.A. December 11, 1653, having been elected a Probationer Fellow of All Souls in November of the same year, and was made D.C.L. at All Souls on September 12, 1661. Wren was fortunate in the influence of the Warden of Wadham, which was so powerful during the formation of Wren’s character that it is necessary to form some picture of the man. John Wilkins reigned beneficently over the college from 1648 to 1659, and was described by Aubrey as “no great-read man, but one of much and deepe thinking; and a prudent man as well as ingeniose.” As the late Dr. Wright Henderson, the biographer of Wilkins, wrote of him, “his greatness fell short of genius, for it was the effect of ordinary qualities, rarely combined and tempered into one character; but more effective for useful work in the world than genius without sanity.” Soon after the Civil War broke out, Wilkins was living in London as the chaplain of Charles Lewis, Prince Elector Palatine, with whom Christopher renewed a childish acquaintance. Mr. Wright Henderson thinks that Wilkins became the leader, as he was certainly the friend, of the group of students of natural philosophy who afterwards formed the Royal Society. It seems obvious that Wren was entered at Wadham in order that he might be under Wilkins. It is certain that he became the Warden’s favourite pupil. It is evident from the amazing “Catalogue of New Theories, Inventions, Experiments, and Mechanick Improvements,” exhibited by Mr. Wren at the “First Assemblies at Wadham College in Oxford for Advancement of Natural and Experimental Knowledge” which is printed in _Parentalia_ that Wren took all knowledge for his province. There are fifty-three items, ranging from such solemnities as the “Hypothesis of the Moon’s Libration, in Solid” and “To find whether the earth moves” through the uncertainties of “Probable Ways for making Fresh Water at Sea,” and the largeness of “Divers Improvements in the Art of Husbandry” down to the pleasant simplicity of “A Way of Imbroidery for Beds, Hangings, cheap and fair.”