The Oxford meetings in Wilkins' time, after 1651, were held, not in the room over the gateway, but in the dining-room or drawing-room of the Warden's lodgings. By the direction of the Foundress "the chamber over the great gate" had been assigned to the Warden, as commanding the entrance into the College, and a view of all who should go in or out: he was to have also for his own use seven rooms next adjoining on the north side. It is uncertain at what date he migrated to his present lodgings, but there is abundant evidence to show that it was before the time of Wilkins, for from 1640 to 1663 the great chamber was occupied by various tenants,--among them Seth Ward and Christopher Wren. The writer is therefore warranted in picturing to the eye of his imagination the personages of the club assembled in his drawing-room, a club less famous, but no less worthy of fame, than the Literary Club of Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and Reynolds. [Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN.] Fain would he ask questions of Wren or Ward or Wilkins, or any of the members of the club, most of whom he would recognise by their portraits in the College or elsewhere. On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died. To Wood the exact date is important, because "some writers tell us that he was hurried away by the Devill in a terrible raging wind on the 30th of August," a statement which the chronicler might have been expected to believe. Richard Cromwell was proclaimed Protector at Oxford on September 6th, in the usual places where kings had been proclaimed. The ceremony was disturbed by young scholars, who pelted with carrots and turnips the mayor, recorder, and town clerk, as well as Colonel Upton and his troopers. These missiles were symptoms of the reaction which was fast approaching. It belongs to the history of England, but so far as it showed itself in Oxford, it is part of the life of Wilkins. It must have given him much to think of during the last year of his Wardenship. In February 1659 the Vice-Chancellor wrote to the Dean of Christ Church, then in London, that "he must make haste to Oxford, for godliness laye a gasping." Nathaniel Crewe of Lincoln had in the same month drawn up a petition, which Wood signed, to put out the Visitors. He was a Presbyterian, and ready to have the Visitors "put downe, notwithstanding he had before submitted to them and had paid to them reverence and obedience. The Independants, who called themselves the godly party, drew up a petition contrary to the former, and said 'twas for the cause of Christ." The feud between the two parties was no less bitter, when their supremacy in Oxford was drawing to its end, than it had been many years before. Which of the petitions did Wilkins sign?