He had many friends and a great reputation; they brought him various preferments,--the lectureship at Gray's Inn, the vicarage of St Lawrence Jewry, and the Deanery of Ripon, within a few years after his banishment from Cambridge. Preferment may not have brought him happiness, but it must have prevented his fortunes from being, as Pope says they were, "as low as they could be." He suffered indeed one calamity--a cruel one to a man of his pursuits and tastes: in the great fire of London the vicarage house of St Lawrence Jewry was burnt, and with it were destroyed his books and the collection of scientific instruments made during his residence at Oxford with the help of the members of the club. Add to this that he was out of favour both at Whitehall and at Lambeth on account of his marriage--for that reason "Archbishop Sheldon who had the keys of the Church for a great time in his power, and could admit unto it and keep out of it whom he pleased, I mean (Pope hastens to explain) disposed of all Ecclesiastical Preferments, entertained a strong prejudice against him." This prejudice the Archbishop, when later, on the introduction of Ward, he came to know him better, acknowledged to have been unjust, a signal instance of Wilkins' power of winning men. The Latitudinarian was at first coldly received at Lambeth: the brother-in-law of Cromwell was not acceptable at Whitehall. His friend Ward did not desert him, but "followed up good words with answerable actions," and procured for him the Precentor's place at Exeter,--"the first step which Wilkins ascended to a better fortune." In Charles II. he soon found a still more powerful friend. The King, who was himself the broadest of Latitudinarians, as far as Protestantism was concerned, was not repelled by Wilkins' theological views, and yielded readily to the attractions of a versatile and agreeable man of science. Science was the most creditable of Charles's tastes and occupations; the one in which he took a genuine and enduring interest. On November 28, 1660, the Invisible College was embodied, and became a tangible reality. At a meeting held in Gresham College, twelve persons of eminence in science and in other ways "formed the design," as the first Journal Book of the Royal Society records, "of founding a College for the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning." Among those present were Rooke, Petty, Wren, and Wilkins: a committee was formed, of which Wilkins was appointed chairman: the King gave his approval to the scheme drawn up by the committee, and offered to become a member of the new College: in 1662 he gave it the Charter of Incorporation which passed the Great Seal on July 13th of that year. Wilkins was not chosen President; that honour was given to Lord Brouncker.