26 DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

dated with Boyle, Petty, and others in the weekly gatherings of
the Invisible College, parent body of the Royal Society. Three
years later appeared his best-known book, Mathematical Magick,
or The Wonders that may be performed by Mechanical Geometry.

Wilkins was the second husband of Cromwell's sister Robina.
As an active partisan of Parliament during the Civil War, he
took the Covenant. During his period of office as Warden of
Wadham from 1648 onwards, the alumni of the College included
Christopher Wren and Thomas Sprat, later Lord Bishop of
Rochester and first historian of the Society. He became Master
of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1659, and as one of the leading
Left Intellectuals of the time, was deposed at the Restoration. In
that capacity he was closely acquainted with Newton's teachers,
though he did not come into direct contact with Newton, who
entered the College in 1661. At a meeting held in Gresham-
College to discuss a College for "The Promotion of Physico-
Mathematicall Experimentall Learning" on November 28, 1660,
Wilkins took the chair. Within a month the King approved of
the design, and joined the Society, to which he gave its Royal
Charter in July 1662. In 1668, five years before his death, he was
made Bishop of Chester, and in that office showed a cordial
tolerance towards dissenters. In the same year appeared his most
notable work, An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical
Language.

The first book cited in the foregoing paragraphs was composed
a few years before the death of Galileo. Wilkins was responsible
for popularising Galileo's views in Great Britain by making them
the subject of a scientific fantasy two and a half centuries before
Mr. Wells wrote The First Men in the Moon. It is noteworthy for
several reasons. One is that Wilkins anticipates the rocketeers and
the inter-planetary travel society of the present generation by
discussing at some length the ease with which a body would
travel through space if propelled with enough initial force to
carry it beyond die region of the earth's gravitational field. This
leads him to a statement of universal gravitation in the following
words: