His unswerving support of the royal pretensions recommended him to James, duke of York, through whose influence he became Recorder of Derry about 1681.
In 1688 he wrote Jus regium Coronae, a learned defence of James's action in dispensing with the penal statutes.
Wilson was the author of four plays, showing a vigorous and learned wit, and a power of character-drawing that place him rather among the followers of Ben Jonson than with the Restoration dramatists.
It contains a scene between the usurper and the widow of his victim Alexius which follows very closely Shakespeare's treatment of a parallel situation in Richard III.
The Projectors (1665), a prose comedy of London life, is, like Molière's The Miser, founded on the Aulularia of Plautus, but there is no evidence that Wilson was acquainted with the French play.