Before the end of his stay in London he had taken the covenant and definitely given his allegiance to the Parliamentarian party. He was marked out for promotion as a known man of great ability, and he had made many friends among influential persons by his courtesy and tact. It was inevitable that a distinguished Oxford man should be chosen for an important post in the University, which Cromwell desired 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.