Wilkins, like many "moderate" men, had convictions, and was ready to make sacrifices in their defence. Not only in his diocese, but in the House of Lords, he pleaded for a lenient treatment of dissenters. In reference to the second Conventicle Act, Wilkins gained for himself, in the view of all right-minded men, especial honour. He argued earnestly against the Bill in the Upper House. Even when the king desired him to be silent, he replied "That he thought it an ill thing, both in conscience and policy, and therefore as an Englishman and a Bishop, he was bound to oppose it." Being still further requested by Charles not to go to the House while the Bill was pending, his answer was "That by the law and constitution of England, and by his Majesty's favour, he had a right to debate and vote: and he was neither afraid nor ashamed to own his opinion in this matter, and to act pursuant to it, and the king was not offended with his freedom."[4] He did not hesitate to endanger his favour with the king--perhaps not with him, for Charles was not by temper a persecutor, but with the party then in power. From the 'Church of England in the Reigns of the Stuarts,' I quote another instance of his moderation and clear-headedness in the fierce controversies of his time. In a conversation with Cosin, Bishop of Devon, who had censured him for his moderation, Wilkins frankly told him that he was a better friend to the Church of England than his lordship--"for while you," says he, "are for setting the top on the picqued end and downwards, you won't be able to keep it up any longer than you keep whipping and scourging; whereas I am for setting the broad end downwards, and so 'twill stand of itself." The metaphor has obvious defects, but expresses the broadness of the Broad party in the Church. Of Wilkins' work in his diocese few particulars are recorded: it is called by Wood the "kill Bishop see," a name which now happily it does not deserve. His had been a laborious life, and the last years of it must have been full of difficulties and anxieties to the friend of an unpopular cause. After four years' tenure of his bishopric, he died in the year 1672, at the age of fifty-eight, in Tillotson's house: he was buried in the churchyard of St Lawrence Jewry, his old vicarage. His College pupil, William Lloyd, preached the funeral sermon, in which he defends him against the charge of having looked with too much favour on the dissenters, urging as his excuse, "the vehemence of his desire to bring the Dissenters off their prejudices, and reduce them to the Unity of the Church"; no bad defence. It is pleasant to turn from Wilkins' public to his private life. There are many allusions to him in the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn.