Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times
by Lucy Phillimore · English · Gutenberg #42007 · 580,412 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times
Author: Lucy Phillimore
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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
A carat character is used to denote superscription. A
single character following the carat is superscripted
(example: y^r). Multiple superscripted characters are
enclosed by curly brackets (example: ma^{tie}).
The right-hand pages of the original text used italicised
page headings to indicate the current topic. These have
been retained and placed at the start of the paragraph
where the topic is addressed, using square brackets,
e.g.: [_OLD FAMILY MOTTO._].
A lengthy paragraph may have multiple topics, and each is
placed separately.
There are several Greek citations, which are rendered
here using a simplified transliteration, denoted with
square brackets, as [Hoti anestê Basileus...]. There is
also a Maltese Cross which is likewise rendered as
[Maltese Cross].
For detailed information about any corrections made,
consult the tenscriber's note at the end of this text.
[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER WREN, D.D. DEAN OF WINDSOR.]
[Illustration: MATTHEW WREN, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF ELY.]
[Illustration: S^R. CHRIS. WREN K^T]
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
His Family and His Times.
With Original Letters and a Discourse on
Architecture Hitherto Unpublished.
1585-1723.
by
LUCY PHILLIMORE,
Author of 'Bishop Wilberforce, a Sketch for Children' etc.
'The modest man built the city, and the modest man's skill was
unknown.'--_The Tatler_, No. 52.
With Two Engravings.
[Illustration]
London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1 Paternoster Square.
1881.
(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)
TO
CATHERINE PIGOTT,
THE LAST DIRECT DESCENDANT OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN,
THESE MEMOIRS OF HER ANCESTORS
ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
The materials necessary for writing a life of Sir Christopher Wren are
so difficult of access as possibly to explain the unsatisfactory
character of such biographies as do exist. Mr. James Elmes, who
venerated Wren's genius, published in 1823, a Life which contained a
careful if a dry account of Wren's architectural works and of some of
his scientific discoveries. He also published a smaller work, 'Sir C.
Wren and his Times,' intended perhaps to give a flavour of personal
interest to the other volume. Neither book succeeds in doing this, and
both have suffered from the circumstance that Mr. Elmes' failing
eyesight did not permit him to correct the proofs of either work, and
accordingly many serious errors as to names and dates stand unaltered in
them. There is a sketch of Wren in the British Family Library, one
published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and one
in the 'Biographica Britannica,' but in them all it is with some of the
works of the great architect that we become acquainted, not with
himself.
The chief authority to which any biographer of Wren must perforce turn
is, the 'Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens: viz., of
Matthew, Bishop of Ely; Christopher, Dean of Windsor and Registrar of
the Garter; but chiefly of Sir Christopher Wren.' This work, a folio,
with portraits[1] of the three whose lives it records, was published in
London in 1750, dedicated to Mr. Speaker Onslow. It was chiefly written
by Christopher, the eldest surviving son of Sir Christopher Wren,
finished and finally published by Stephen Wren, M.D., the second and
favourite, son of the Mr. C. Wren above mentioned, 'with care of Joseph
Ames,' a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Several copies were
presented to the University of Oxford.
The 'Parentalia,' of which but a small edition was published, is now
scarce and little known. It is put together, not quite at hap-hazard,
but with no real method or order: digression ensues upon digression
until all clue to the original date or subject is lost. Nor is the very
imperfect 'index of names' of any real assistance in the labyrinth thus
created. Yet, with all its faults, the book is of great interest, and
bears amidst all errors and omissions an unmistakably genuine stamp.
'Bishop Wren's Diary,' reference to which will be frequently found in
the following pages, was kept by him in the blank leaves of 'Pond's
Almanack,' after this fashion:
'August 30.--_Per vim hostilem eripior domo meâ._ 1642.'
These entries cease with the death of his wife in 1646; even his own
release from prison is not mentioned.
The old heirloom copy of the 'Parentalia' intrusted to the writer of
these pages contains a large additional number of prints and wood
engravings by Virtue, Vandergucht, Loggan, and others, some printed
accounts of the City Churches, and several letters, rough drafts of
treatises, Garter records, and other MSS. in the handwritings of the
Bishop, the Dean, Sir Christopher himself, and of some of their
correspondents. Among the curious omissions of the 'Parentalia' are the
maiden name of Bishop Wren's wife, the date of the death of Sir
Christopher's mother, Mrs. Mary Wren, and the places and the dates at
which either of Sir Christopher's two weddings took place. Some of these
and other gaps I have, by the aid of 'Notes and Queries,' been able to
supply. Wren's son and grandson are both alike silent on all political
matters subsequent to the Restoration. The Popish Plot, the Trial of the
Seven Bishops, King James's Abdication, the Landing of William of Orange
are all passed by in perfect silence. The traditional politics of the
Wrens were certainly those of the loyal Cavalier party, and they were in
favour at the Court of the Stuarts.
It is curious how all political colouring disappears from the record
after the period of the Restoration. Yet Sir Christopher, his cousins,
and the very Mr. Wren who writes the book were all in Parliament, and
that in more or less critical times. Such accidental hints as there are
point, I think, to Sir Christopher as adhering, though very quietly, to
the politics of his ancestors; and assuredly neither he nor his
descendants had any cause to love the house of Hanover!
Wren was a steady Churchman, bred up in that school of Andrewes, of
Laud, and of Matthew Wren, which, if it was anti-Puritan, was equally
and emphatically anti-Roman. For this reason, if for no other, after the
trial of the Seven Bishops had shaken the confidence of every Churchman
in the country, Wren may have acquiesced in a settlement which appeared
to promise protection to the Church without finally excluding the Stuart
line. The 'Parentalia,' published five years after the last Jacobite
rising in 1745, preserves, as has been said, a political silence which
may be that of discretion or of disappointment.
One word should be said as to Gresham College, where Wren held his first
professorship. It was founded in 1579 by the will of Queen Elizabeth's
great merchant Sir Thomas Gresham. The college was no other than his own
house in Bishopsgate, forming a quadrangle round a large garden. The
seven professors, each of whom gave a lecture a day in term time, had a
salary of 50_l._ a year and were lodged in the house. Gresham College
escaped the Fire, and gave lodgings at that time to the Lord Mayor and
the aldermen, who had been less fortunate. In 1768 it was pulled down by
Act of Parliament, to give a site to the new Excise Office, and the
original collegiate scheme was destroyed, though the lectures are still
given in a lecture hall.
Little is known of Wren in his Masonic capacity. He is said to have been
a member and a master of the 'Old Lodge of S. Paul,' now known as the
'Lodge of Antiquity.' All the records of the Lodge belonging to that
time have unfortunately been lost, so that they cannot be consulted with
reference to this matter.
The question has been raised whether Wren was a Freemason or not. On
this point the 'Parentalia' makes no explicit statement, though it
appears to imply Wren's connection with the Order.
The Duke of Sussex caused a plate to be engraved in 1827 and affixed to
the mallet which Sir Christopher was said to have presented to the
Lodge, with this inscription:--'A. L. 5831. A.D. 1827. To commemorate
that this, being the same mallet with which His Majesty King Charles II.
levelled the foundation stone of S. Paul's Cathedral, A. L. 5677, A.D.
1673. Was presented to the Old Lodge of S. Paul, now the Lodge of
Antiquity, acting by immemorial constitution, by Brother Sir Christopher
Wren, R.W.D.G.M., Worshipful Master of this Lodge and Architect of that
Edifice.'
The statement respecting King Charles's presence is probably an
erroneous one. The Lodge possesses also three gilt wooden candlesticks
in the form of columns, inscribed 'Ex dono Chr. Wren Eq. A. L. 5680.'
Where quotations have been made directly from the Wren MS., from the
'Parentalia,' or from Evelyn's Diary, the spelling and stopping of the
originals have been faithfully reproduced. For the rest, the writer can
only hope that these pages may serve as a contribution towards that full
and worthy biography of the great architect which may yet, she trusts,
be written before London is finally robbed of the Churches with which
Wren's genius endowed her.
_August 1, 1881._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] From which the three vignettes in this volume are taken.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
1585-1636.
PAGE
Ancestry of the Wrens--Matthew Wren--Travels to Spain with
the Prince of Wales--Interview at Winchester
House--Bishop Andrewes' Prophecy--Wren made Master of
Peterhouse--Bishop of Hereford--Consecration of Abbey
Dore--Office of Reconciliation--Foreign Congregations
and the Norwich Weavers--Result of 'a Lecturer's'
Departure. 3
CHAPTER II.
1636-1640.
Dr. C. Wren--Birth of his Son Christopher--East
Knoyle--Order of the Garter--How a Murderer was
Detected--Christopher at Westminster--A Latin
Letter--Diocese of Ely--Impeachment of Lord
Strafford--Of Archbishop Laud--Articles against Bishop
Wren--Resigns the Deanery of the Chapels Royal. 31
CHAPTER III.
1641-1647.
Bishop Wren accused--Westminster Abbey attacked--Imprisonment
of the Bishops--Bishop Wren's Defence--'Utterly Denieth
all Popish Affections'--The Garter Jewels--Archbishop Laud
Murdered--Christopher at Oxford--Philosophical Meetings. 55
CHAPTER IV.
1647-1658.
Death of Mrs. M. Wren--King Charles Murdered--A monotonous
Walk--Inventions--A Dream--All Souls' Fellowship--
Beginnings of the Royal Society--Astronomy--An Offer of
Release--The Cycloid--Cromwell's Funeral--Letters from
London. 85
CHAPTER V.
1659-1663.
Apostolical Succession--Difficulty of preserving
it--Letters from Lord Clarendon--Bishop Wren's
Release--The Restoration--Convocation--Savilian
Professorship--Royal Society--'Elephant in the
Moon'--Pembroke Chapel begun. 109
CHAPTER VI.
1664-1667.
Repair of S. Paul's--Sheldonian Theatre--The Plague--A
Letter from Paris--Consecration of Pembroke Chapel--Fire
of London--Bishop Wren's Death--His Family. 139
CHAPTER VII.
1668-1672.
Patching S. Paul's--Sancroft's Letters--Wren's Examination
of S. Paul's--Salisbury Cathedral--London as it might
have been--Letter to Faith Coghill--Wren marries
her--Temple Bar--S. Mary-le-Bow--Artillery
Company--Gunpowder used to remove Ruins. 165
CHAPTER VIII.
1672-1677.
Birth of his eldest Son--S. Stephen's, Walbrook--S. Bennet
Fink--Plans for S. Paul's--The Excavations--Son
Christopher born--Death of Faith, Lady Wren--Second
Marriage--City Churches--The Monument--Tomb of Charles
I.--Remains of the little Princes in the Tower. 191
CHAPTER IX.
1677-1681.
Emmanuel College--Greenwich Observatory--Birth of Jane and
William Wren--S. Bartholomew's--Portland Quarries--Dr.
and Mrs. Holder--Death of Lady Wren--Popish
Plot--Papin's Digester--Sir J. Hoskyns--All Hallow's,
Bread Street--Palace at Winchester. 215
CHAPTER X.
1681-1686.
Chelsea College--S. James's, Westminster--A hard
Winter--Chichester Spire--An Astronomical Problem--A
Seat in Parliament--More City Churches--A curious
Carving. 239
CHAPTER XI.
1687-1696.
Parliament dissolved--Church building--Acquittal of the
Seven Bishops--James the Second's Flight--William and
Mary--College of Physicians--Hampton Court--Greenwich
Hospital--Richard Whittington--S. Paul's Organ. 259
CHAPTER XII.
1697-1699.
Opening of S. Paul's Choir--A moveable Pulpit--Letter to
his Son at Paris--Order against Swearing--Peter the
Great--S. Dunstan's Spire--Morning Prayer Chapel
opened--Westminster Abbey. 279
CHAPTER XIII.
1700-1708.
Member for Weymouth--Rising of the Sap in Trees--Prince
George's Statue--Jane Wren's Death--Thanksgiving at S.
Paul's--Letter to his Son--Son marries Mary
Musard--Death of Mr. Evelyn--Queen Anne's Act for
Building fifty Churches--Letter on Church Building. 297
CHAPTER XIV.
1709-1723.
Private Houses built--Queen Anne's Gifts--Last Stone of S.
Paul's--Wren deprived of his Salary--His
Petition--'Frauds and Abuses'--Interior work of S.
Paul's--Wren Superseded--Purchase of Wroxhall
Abbey--Wren's Thoughts on the Longitude--His
Death--Burial in S. Paul's--The End. 317
APPENDIX.
I. Reverendo Patri Domino Christophoro Wren S.T.D. et D. W.
Christophorus Filius Hoc Suum Panorganum Astronomicum
D.D. xiii. Calend. Novem. Anno 1645. 337
II. Churches, Halls, Colleges, Palaces, other Public
Buildings, and Private Houses built and repaired by Sir
Christopher Wren. 338
III. A Discourse on Architecture, from Original MS. 340
INDEX 351
[Illustration: THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
FROM A DRAWING BY C. R. COCKERELL, R.A.]
CHAPTER I.
1585-1636.
ANCESTRY OF THE WRENS--MATTHEW WREN--TRAVELS TO SPAIN WITH THE
PRINCE OF WALES--INTERVIEW AT WINCHESTER HOUSE--BISHOP ANDREWES'
PROPHECY--WREN MADE MASTER OF PETERHOUSE--BISHOP OF
HEREFORD--CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DORE--OFFICE OF
RECONCILIATION--FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS AND THE NORWICH
WEAVERS--RESULT OF 'A LECTURER'S' DEPARTURE.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away.
The name of Christopher Wren is no doubt familiar to the great majority
of English people, and to Londoners especially; but it is to many of
them little more than a name with which is connected S. Paul's Cathedral
and a now, alas! diminished number of City churches. Yet the great
architect's ninety-one years of life were passed among some of the most
stirring times of our history, in which his family played no
inconsiderable part, and he himself was not only the best architect of
his day, but was also the foremost in many other sciences. A singularly
patient and far-seeing intellect aiding a strong religious faith enabled
him 'to keep the even tenour of his way' through a life of incessant
labour and considerable temptation. It has been truly said,
'It seems almost like a defect in such a biography as that of Wren,
that it presents nothing of that picturesque struggle, in the rise
from a lower to a higher condition, which has so commonly attended
the conquest of genius over difficulty.'[2]
Far otherwise, the Wren family was an old one, tracing its descent from
the Danes; one of the house fought in Palestine under Richard I., and
his fame long survived, as in Charles I.'s time it was quoted against
one of the knight's descendants.
In 1455, during the reign of Henry VI., in the Black Book (or register)
of the Order of the Garter, mention is made of a Wren who probably
belonged to this family:--
'The Lord of Winchester, Prelate of the order, performed the Divine
Service proper for S. George the Martyr, but the Abbots Towyrhill
and Medmenham being absent, were not excused, in whose stead Sir
William Stephyns read the gospel and Sir W. Marshal the epistle,
both of them singing men of the king's choir. The dean of the same
choir presented the gospel to the sovereigne to be kissed, and the
next day celebrated Mass for the deceased, Sir J. Andevere and John
Wrenne assisting in the reading of the epistle and gospel. The
reader of the gospel, after censing the reader of the epistle,
reverently tendered the heart of S. George to the sovereigne and
knights in order to be kissed.'
The heart of S. George was presented by Sigismund, Emperor of Germany,
on his admission to the Order of the Garter.
The spelling of 'Wrenne' was a very common form of the family name, and
it seems very likely that John Wrenne belonged to this family, who were
much connected with S. George's, Windsor.
[_OLD FAMILY MOTTO._]
William Wren was in Henry VIII.'s time the head of the family; his
younger brother Geoffrey, who was a priest, was of Henry VII.'s privy
council, and was confessor both to him and to Henry VIII. He held the
living of S. Margaret's, Fish Street, in the City of London, from 1512
till his death.[3] Geoffrey Wren was also a canon of S. George's at
Windsor, where he founded the seventh stall. There he died in 1527, and
was buried in the north aisle of the chapel under a brass bearing his
effigy in the Garter mantle, with this inscription at his feet:
'Sub saxo ponor, et vermibus ultimis donor,
Et sicut ponor, ponitur omnis honor.'[4]
This tomb and brass have disappeared, as has the 'South Lodge' with its
window displaying his coat of arms and emblem; the latter, a wren
holding a trefoil in its claw, and his motto--'Turbinibus superest coelo
duce praescius.' Dean Wren explains this emblem as chosen because, 'the
trefoil or clover shrinking before a storm foretold a change of
weather,' and the wren was supposed to have the same prescience. Both
motto and emblem were changed by the descendants of the family.
William Wren's grandson, Francis, was born 1552, two years before the
close of Queen Mary's reign, at Monk's Kirby in Warwickshire, where the
family had property. He was a mercer and citizen of London, and was
steward to Mary Queen of Scots during her captivity in England. He
married Susan, daughter of William Wiffinson; they lived in the parish
of S. Peter's Cheap, and had three children: a daughter Anna, and two
sons; Matthew, born 1585, and Christopher, born 1589. Both were educated
at the Merchant Taylors' School, and there Matthew especially attracted
the notice of Lancelot Andrewes, then Dean of Westminster, who
frequently came to the school where he had been bred, and examined the
boys in various subjects, particularly in the Hebrew Psalter. He was
struck by the proficiency of the eldest of the Wrens, and obtained for
the boy a scholarship at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, of which he was
himself master. From that time Dr. Andrewes appears never to have lost
sight of Wren, but to have guided his studies and fostered 'the most
passionate affection for the ministry of the Church' which the young man
showed. Nor was Wren's university life undistinguished, for he became
Greek scholar of his college, and when King James visited Cambridge,
Matthew Wren, then in priest's orders, 'kept the Philosophy Act' before
him with great applause. The subject given was, 'Whether dogs were
capable of syllogisms.' Old Fuller says of this extraordinary 'Act,' 'he
kept it with no less praise to himself than pleasure to the king; where
if men should forget even dogs should remember his seasonable
distinction what the king's hounds could perform above others by virtue
of their prerogative.'[5] Probably this speech and its ready wit
remained on the mind of the King, who dearly loved a compliment to the
royal prerogative, and determined him to favour Matthew Wren.
[_MATTHEW WREN._]
Lancelot Andrewes, who had been Bishop of Chichester, was in 1609
translated to Ely, and so enabled to watch over the University and 'to
search out,' as he entreated his friends to do also, 'hopeful and
towardly young wits,' and train them up for Holy Orders.[6] He made
Matthew Wren his chaplain, gave him the living of Feversham in
Cambridgeshire, and some years later made him a canon of Winchester. But
very different duties from the ordinary ones of a parish priest devolved
upon Wren. King James planned for the Prince of Wales the famous
'Spanish match,' and gave a most reluctant consent to the Duke of
Buckingham's scheme, that the Prince should himself go to Spain to fetch
home his bride. Two of his chaplains were to attend the Prince, and by
the advice of Bishop Andrewes and of Laud, then Bishop of S. David's,
Dr. Leonard Maw, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Dr. Matthew
Wren were chosen. The Prince and Buckingham departed hastily, leaving
the chaplains and suite to follow as they could. King James had no
sooner allowed the expedition than he repented of it, and being unable
to recall his permission, was tormented by a thousand fears for the
Prince's safety. The nation was in a state of ferment, persuaded that
the Prince's faith would be tampered with as well as his person
endangered. Thus the two chaplains had by no means an enviable post.
They went down to Newmarket, took their leave of the King and received
his last instructions:--
'So as all their behaviour and service should prove decent and
agreeable to the purity of the Primitive Church, and yet so near
the Roman form as can lawfully be done; "for," said he, "it hath
ever been my way to go with the Church of Rome _usque ad
aras_."'[7]
'The two bishops gave them also written and detailed instructions
that there might appear a face of the Church of England in all
forms of worship; that in the sermons there may be no polemical
preachings to inveigh against the Romanists or to confute, but only
to confirm the doctrine and tenets of the Church of England by all
positive arguments either in fundamental or moral points.'
A full list followed of vestments for the clergy, ornaments and hangings
for the altar, and altar lights, Latin service books, directions for a
room to be adorned chapel-wise, and for frequent services, all to be
read in Latin so that the Spaniards might comprehend them. All this
careful provision seems to have been defeated by the fact of the Prince
and his suite being lodged in the palace at Madrid, so that there was no
public service, only bed-chamber prayers. Contemporary letters show that
the chaplains' position was not an easy one, though the Prince remained
steadfast, and in the congenial atmosphere of the dignified Spanish
court became every day more gracious. 'Dr. Wren forbears,' says one of
these letters, 'to write any particulars, but intimates all is not as it
should be.' It was no doubt a necessary precaution on the chaplain's
part to preserve this discreet silence, but it is tantalising to have
only a hint concerning the transactions in Spain. How the negotiations
were delayed, how the King recalled the Prince and the marriage was
broken off, are historical facts too well known to need repetition here.
One result seems to have been a strong bond of affection between the
Prince and those who went with him on this singular expedition.
[_RETURNS FROM SPAIN._]
That his departure was attended with some sea-peril appears from one of
Edmund Waller's[8] early poems on 'the Danger which His Majesty, being
Prince, escaped in the Road at S. Andero':--
'Now had his Highness bid farewell to Spain,
And reached the sphere of his own pow'r, the main;
With British bounty in his ship he feasts
The Hesperian princes his amazed guests,
To find that wat'ry wilderness exceed
The entertainment of their great Madrid.'
A description follows of the Prince being rowed in a barge to his own
ship, a sudden storm arises in which there is a great difficulty in
making the ship; at length the Fates allow the rope to be successfully
thrown, knowing it to be for England:--
'Whose prince must be (as their own books devise)
Lord of the scene where now his danger lies.'
On October 8, 1623, Dr. Wren's diary records 'we landed at Portsmouth,'
and his first and only journey out of Great Britain was over.
The sea-voyage, probably a stormy one, made an impression on his mind
and he preached before the Universities on the text 'One deep calleth to
another.' This is said to have been a remarkable sermon, and old Fuller
declares that he became an excellent preacher. The one sermon of his now
extant, preached at a later date, on the text 'Fear God, honour the
King,' shows that he modelled his style greatly on that of Bishop
Andrewes, though without attaining to the same excellence. The sermon is
a bold and outspoken one, and has its striking passages. King James, in
testimony of his approval of Dr. Wren's conduct as his son's chaplain,
bestowed on him the valuable living of Bingham, in Nottinghamshire, to
which he was inducted during the next year, resigning his fellowship of
Pembroke and the living of Feversham.
[_AT WINCHESTER HOUSE._]
Previous to this event, and soon after the Prince's return, a singular
incident occurred. Wren, who had been down to Cambridge, came up, as he
says, 'suddenly' to London, and as it was late, lodged with his sister
in Friday Street, instead of going to Winchester House, where the Bishop
kept 'three rooms near the garden' fitted and reserved for him, and
where he had lodged twice or thrice. He had, however, seen the Bishop
twice, also the Bishops of Durham and S. David's, had taken leave of
them on a Saturday, and was prepared to return to Cambridge on the
Monday morning following. His journey was, however, delayed by an event
which shall be given in his own words:--[9]
'On Monday morne by break of the day there was a great knocking at
the door where I lay. And at last the apprentice (who lay in the
shop) came up to my bedside, and told me there was a messenger from
Winchester House to speak with me. The business was to let me know,
that my Lord, when he came from Court last night, had given his
steward charge to order it so that I might be spoken with, and be
required as from him without fail to dine with him on Monday; but
to be at Winchester House by ten of the clock, which I wondered the
more at, his lordship not using to come from his study till near
twelve. My businesse would hardly permit this, yet because of his
lordship's importunity, I got up presently, and into Holborn I
went, and there used such despatch, that soon after ten of the
clock, I took a boat and went to Winchester House, where I found
the steward at the water gate waiting to let me in the nearest way;
who told me that my lord had called twice to know if I were come. I
asked where his lordship was? He answered, in his great gallery (a
place where I knew his lordship scarce came once in a year), and
thither I going, the door was locked, but upon my lifting a latch,
my lord of St. David's opened the door, and, letting me in, locked
it again.
'There I found but those three Lords, who causing me to sit down by
them, my Lord of Durham began to me: "Doctor, your Lord here will
have it so, I that am the unfittest person must be the speaker. But
thus it is. After you left us yesterday at Whitehall, we entering
into further discourses of those things which we foresee and
conceive will ere long come to pass, resolve to again to speak to
you before you went hence.
'"We must know of you, what your thoughts are concerning your
master the Prince. You have now been his servant above two years,
and you were with him in Spain. We know he respects you well; and
we know you are no fool, but can observe how things are like to
go." "What things, my Lord?" (quoth I). "In brief," said he, "how
the Prince's heart stands to the Church of England, that when God
brings him to the Crown we may know what to hope for."
'My reply was to this effect, that however I was most unfit of any
opinion herein, attending but two months in the year and then at a
great distance, only in the closet and at meals; yet, seeing they
so pressed me, I would speak my mind freely; so I said, "I know my
master's learning is not equal to his father's, yet I know his
judgement to be very right; and as for his affection in these
particulars which your Lordships have pointed at, for upholding
the doctrine and discipline and right estate of the Church, I have
more confidence of him than of his father, in whom they say (better
than I can) is so much inconstancy in some particular cases."
[_BISHOP ANDREWES' PROPHECY._]
'Hereupon my Lords of Durham and St. David's began to argue it with
me, and required me to let them know upon what ground I came to
think thus of the Prince. I gave them my reasons at large; and
after many replyings, (above an hour together,) then my Lord of
Winchester (who had said nothing all the while) bespake me these
words:--
'"Well, Doctor, God send you may be a good prophet concerning your
master's inclinations in these particulars, which we are glad to
hear from you. I am sure I shall be a true prophet: I shall be in
my grave, and so shall you, my Lord of Durham; but my Lord of St.
David's and you, Doctor, will live to see that day that your master
will be put to it, upon his head and his crown, without he will
forsake the support of the Church."
'Of these predictions made by that holy father,' adds the writer,
'I have now no witness but mine own conscience and the Eternal God
who knows I lie not; nobody else being present when this was spoken
but these three Lords.'
After this the four friends separated and Wren returned to Cambridge.
In two years from the time of that conference King James died, in the
following year the saintly Bishop Andrewes, the kind and unfailing
friend of both the Wrens, died also. It is to the great discredit of
James I., and probably was the inconstancy to which Dr. Wren alluded,
that, as has happened in our own day, the greatest Prelate, the
'incomparable preacher,' the truest and wisest champion of the Church,
was passed over when the archbishopric was vacant, an inferior man put
above him, and at last the see of Winchester offered to him in tardy
amends. At Archbishop Bancroft's death in 1610, everyone's eyes had
turned to Bishop Andrewes as his natural successor: but, in the words of
a contemporary letter from Lord Baltimore (then Mr. Calvert) to Sir T.
Edmonds,
'The Bishop of London (Abbot) by a strong north wind blowing out of
Scotland is blown over the Thames to Lambeth; the king having
professed to the Bishop himself as also to all the Lords of this
council that it is neither the respect of his learning, his wisdom
nor his sincerity (although he is well persuaded there is not any
one of them wanting in him), that hath made him to prefer him above
the rest of his fellows, but merely the recommendation of his
faithful servant Dunbar that is dead, whose suit on behalf of this
Bishop he cannot forget, nor will suffer to lose his
intention.'[10]
[_MASTERSHIP OF PETERHOUSE._]
The consequences of such an ecclesiastical appointment made for so
insufficient a reason were disastrous indeed. Had Andrewes succeeded
Bancroft, and had Laud succeeded Andrewes, 'the Church had been settled
on so sure a foundation that it had not easily been shaken.'[11]
There was general lamentation when Andrewes died, and few can have
mourned him more sincerely than Matthew Wren, whom he had loved as a
son. Wren attended the funeral, received the gold ring which was the
Bishop's bequest to him, and composed the Latin epitaph for his tomb in
S. Saviour's, Southwark, which is no unworthy tribute to the holy
Bishop.
During this year Dr. Wren was elected, by the unanimous wish of the
fellows, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he 'exercised such
prudence and moderation in his government that he reduced all the
fellows to one sacred bond of unity and concord.' Besides this he
rebuilt the college in great part from the ground, and perceiving that
the absence of a chapel was a great obstacle in the way of reverent and
frequent services, he did not rest until he had raised subscriptions
enough to build a handsome chapel, and to ornament it richly.[12] The
wood-panelled hexagonal roof, the marble steps on which the altar
stands, flanked by two tall candlesticks, give a character to the
interior enhanced by the east window, which is in part a copy of that
famous picture of the Crucifixion, then just finished, by Rubens, at
Antwerp. This window was carefully taken down in the Rebellion before
the college was visited, and hidden away in boxes. A wise precaution,
for the commissioners destroyed all the other ornaments, pulling down
'two mighty angels with wings, divers other angels, the four
evangelists, and Peter with his keys on the chapel door, together with
about a hundred cherubim and many superstitious letters in gold.
Moreover,' they say, 'we found six angels on the windows which we
defaced.' After the Restoration the hidden glass was brought forth again
and put back in its place over the altar.[13] While Dr. Wren was thus
adorning his college chapel King Charles did not show himself forgetful
of Bishop Andrewes' well-loved pupil and chaplain, but in 1628 appointed
him Dean of Windsor and registrar of the Order of the Garter. The year
after this appointment the peace between England and France was solemnly
ratified in the chapel at Windsor and Dean Wren administered the oath to
the French ambassador, the Marquis de Châteauneuf.
About this time, as his diary says, he was 'joined together in happy
matrimony.' His wife was Eliza Brownrigg, the widowed daughter of Thomas
Cull, Esquire, of Ipswich; she had one daughter by her first marriage,
and seems to have been possessed of some property in Suffolk. The
marriage was in truth as happy as the cruel times in which their lot was
cast would allow, though chequered with many sorrows; for of the twelve
children whose birth Wren records in his diary, six died while very
young. When King Charles journeyed to Scotland for his coronation he
summoned Wren to attend him. No shadow of the coming trouble showed
itself then. The young King was everywhere received with enthusiasm.
Whether Dr. Wren, mindful of Andrewes' words, suspected what lay under
this fair show, there is no record left to tell us. In after years Sir
Thomas Widdrington's venomous attack on himself must have strangely
recalled his tones when on this occasion he addressed the King in terms
of fulsome adulation at Berwick. On his return from Scotland the King
passed the holy week at York, where on Maunday Thursday Dr. Wren washed
the feet of thirty-nine poor old men in warm water, drying them with a
linen cloth, and Dr. Curle, Bishop of Winchester, washed them over again
in white wine and then kissed them.
[_BISHOPRIC OF HEREFORD._]
Shortly after this, Dr. Lindsell, the Bishop of Hereford, died, and
Matthew Wren was appointed (1634) to the vacant see. He thereupon
resigned the Mastership of Peterhouse, probably with much regret, for
all his life he retained a strong affection for his University. His
successor was one whose name is well known in church history, Dr. John
Cosin, afterwards Dean of Durham and Bishop of Peterborough, a great
authority on the ritual and ornaments of the Church. The King would not
then suffer Wren to resign the Deanery of Windsor. When Dr. Juxon, who
was Clerk of the Closet, was made Bishop of London, the King showed how
highly he valued and esteemed Bishop Wren by giving him the post which
Juxon resigned, and Dr. Wren then gave up his Deanery. His new post was
one of great nearness to the King; to fill it well required great tact
and a discreet deafness to the whispers of court intriguers. King
Charles was well aware of this, and as soon as Wren had settled himself
in his new post said to him:[14]
'Now you are at my elbow there will be many devices to set you and
the Archbishop (Laud) at odds. But I warn you of it that you suffer
no such trick to be put on you, and therefore I require you both,
by that faith which I am sure you will both perform to me, to bind
yourselves mutually neither of you to believe any report against
the other; and if you meet with any such thing, believe it not, yet
presently impart it to each other.'
The wisdom of the King's counsel was quickly shown, for when Dr. Hackett
came in his turn of office as the next month's chaplain, he told Wren
how they had expected him to be made Bishop of London, and but for the
Archbishop preferring Juxon, as a man of whom he had experience and on
whom he could rely, it would have been done. Wren paid no regard to
these suggestions, suspecting them to be the device of some discontented
courtier in order to make him the Archbishop's enemy. To keep his faith
with the King and the Archbishop, he presently told them what had
passed. The King praised his conduct and told him, 'there was no truth
in the report, but only a plot to kindle coals between them two.'
[_CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DORE._]
Bishop Wren began vigorous work in Hereford, holding a visitation,
collecting and setting in order the statutes of the cathedral, which
were in a state of great confusion. Another congenial piece of work came
also into his hands. John, Viscount Scudamore, a friend of Laud's, had
inherited, with other property, the old Cistercian abbey of Dore, near
Monmouth; the building had been greatly damaged in the reign of Henry
VIII., but the transepts, chancel, and lady chapel still stood, as they
do now, and Lord Scudamore was minded to restore the building to its
true use. He accordingly repaired it, setting up again the old stone
altar on its four pillars, and providing the church with everything
needful for service. Bishop Wren was unable to consecrate the building
himself, being in constant attendance on the King, but he busied himself
in drawing up an office for the occasion, like, but not identical with,
that used by Bishop Andrewes, and commissioned Bishop Field of S.
David's to act for him. Bishop Wren was, as Lord Clarendon testifies,
'much versed in the old liturgies, particularly those of the Eastern
Church.' He employed himself, at Laud's request, in preparing a service
for the reconciliation of those who had apostatised when in slavery with
the Moors, and when released wished to return to the faith. The
merchants and seamen who were taken by 'Barbary pirates,' and when
released came sadly back to England with their story of cruel sufferings
undergone and faith reluctantly forsworn, were numerous enough to
require a special provision to be made for them.
Knolles' quaint 'Historie of the Turks' shows that they even made
descents on the western coasts of England and carried off men, women,
and children into slavery. In 1636, with some of the much-grudged
'ship-money,' a very successful expedition was made under Lord
Rainsborough against Sallee, which resulted in the release of large
numbers of captives and a promise from the Moorish king to suppress
Christian slavery. It is significant that the real leader of the
expedition was John Dunton, a reformed renegade taken _off the Isle of
Wight_ in command of a Sallee ship. He was tried and condemned, but
saved his life by offering to show the assailable points of the Barbary
ports, and sailed as master on Lord Rainsborough's ship.[15]
['_RECONCILIATION OF A RENEGADO._']
The 'Form of Penance and Reconciliation of a Renegado or Apostate from
the Christian Religion to Turcism,'[16] which Wren and Laud prepared
together, is a very striking one. First came the solemn excommunication,
then for two Sundays the penitent came to the door of his parish church
in a white sheet carrying a white wand, craving the prayers of all 'good
Christians for a poor wretched renegado;' on the second Sunday he was
allowed to enter and kneel by the font and pray to be 'restored to the
rights and benefits of the blessed sacrament which I have so wickedly
abjured,' and then return to the church porch as before. On the third
Sunday, when the Apostles' creed had been said, after being publicly put
in mind of his sin, and advised 'that a slight and ordinary sorrow is
not enough for so grievous an offence,' the penitent, kneeling eastward,
and bowing to the very pavement, was to confess his sin and declare his
sorrow and repentance, and to ask the prayers of the congregation. Also
to 'thank God for His mercies, especially for the divine ordinance of
His Holy Sacraments, and of His heavenly power committed to His Holy
Priests, in His Church for the reconciliation of sinners unto Himself
and the absolving them from all their iniquity.'
'Then,' says the rubric, 'let the Priest come forth to him, and
stand over him, and laying his hand on his head, say, as is
prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, thus:--
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve
all sinners which truly repent and believe in Him, of His great
mercy forgive thee thine offences; and, by His authority committed
unto me, I absolve thee from this thy heinous crime of
renunciation, and from all thy other sins, in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.'
After this follows, with slight alteration, a collect, also from the
Visitation of the Sick, and then the priest was to take the penitent by
the hand, take away from him the white sheet and the wand, and address
to him, once again as dear brother, an affectionate exhortation to walk
worthy 'of so great a mercy,' and promise him re-admission to the Holy
Communion on the next opportunity. How often this service was employed
does not appear. The whole form is so beautiful that it is matter for
regret it should be so much forgotten.
Wren had been Bishop of Hereford but one year, when the Bishop of
Norwich, Dr. R. Corbet, was translated to Oxford, and Bishop Wren
translated in turn to the vacant see. It is easy to see Laud's hand in
this. Norwich was a large wide diocese, much shaken by schism and
faction and abounding with lecturers who were the torment of the Church
at that time and were not unaptly compared 'to bats or reremice, being
neither birds nor beasts, and yet both together,'[17] i.e. neither clerk
nor layman.
They were not unfrequently men who had been ordained without cure of
souls and served as chaplains in gentlemen's houses, or men whose orders
were doubtful, or mere laymen who had failed in other callings. They
were all strong Calvinists, seldom read the services, but called a fast,
quite irrespective of those of the Church, and gave a lecture. This
speedily became a 'running lecture,' i.e. was not confined to one place
but ran from parish to parish. Every possible check was put by the
Archbishop upon these lectures, which were fatal to the proper order of
the parishes and all church discipline. Private gentlemen were forbidden
to have chaplains, all who preached were compelled to wear a surplice
and first to read the Church Service, and in the afternoon to teach the
Church Catechism. Wren, Mainwaring, Corbet, Montague, and other
like-minded bishops set themselves vigorously to enforce the
Archbishop's plans, esteeming the discipline and doctrine of the Church
more valuable than the popularity which their firmness forfeited.
Norwich presented an especial difficulty to the Bishop in the great
number of weavers and other workmen who had taken refuge there from the
Low Countries in times of persecution, and who still kept up their
schismatic services.
As his treatment of the Norwich weavers has always been the principal
ground of attack against Wren, from Lord Clarendon down to writers of
the present time, it is needful to enter somewhat into the question, and
to see where the truth lies.
[_FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS._]
These foreign workmen had settled in England at various times, escaping
from persecutions in the Low Countries and in France, and, though they
had never had any distinct permission to use their own services, their
doing so had been winked at by Queen Elizabeth and King James. Now they
had reached a third generation and continued to profit by an exemption
which was enjoyed by no other body of the kingdom. It will be borne in
mind that as the laws then ran and were understood, every English
subject was required to be also a member of the Church of England. The
first generation of refugees were an exception, but when they reached a
second and third generation, had their own ministers and pretended to
the power of Ordination, they became an anomaly, and as Laud, when
Bishop of London, said, 'The example is of ill-consequence in Church
affairs to the subjects of England, many being confirmed by it in their
stubborn ways and inconformities.' The matter was not likely to be
mended by Archbishop Abbot; but when Laud succeeded him he addressed
himself, in 1634, vigorously to the business, and set out this dilemma:
'If they were not of the same religion' (as the Church of England),
'why should they, being strangers, born in other countries, or
descending from them, expect more liberty of conscience than the
Papists had, being all natives, and descending from English
parents? If of the same, why should they not submit to the
government and forms of worship, being the outward acts and
exercises of the religion here by law established?'
Every art that could be used was employed by the congregations to avoid
returning an answer to the Archbishop's inquiries, whether the
English-born members would conform and use the Liturgy in their own
language. The two congregations in Norwich resisted vehemently and
remonstrated with Bishop Corbet, who was then bishop of the diocese; but
Archbishop Laud himself visited the diocese and caused the injunction to
be published in the congregations. It had been modified until it only
ordered that, while strangers, as long as they were strangers, might use
their own discipline, yet that the English Liturgy should be translated
into French and Dutch for the better fitting of their children to the
English Government. In Canterbury, he kept them 'on a harder diet,' and
allowed only the translated Liturgy. All this took place before Bishop
Wren came to Norwich, so it is manifestly unjust to accuse him of having
set the measure, moderate as it was, on foot. The congregations remained
a focus of Calvinism and discontent, secretly encouraged by all the
leading Puritans, and envied by the lecturers who wished themselves in
the like case.
[NORWICH CLOTH WEAVERS.]
Another trouble in Norwich, was the failure of business amongst the
cloth weavers, whose trade was the chief industry of the town; the
failure appears to have been, in a great measure, caused by the plague,
which raged in London in 1636,[18] and put a stop for a considerable
time to the weekly traffic between it and Norwich. Many of the workmen
in consequence betook themselves to Holland, to obtain the means of
livelihood. The same thing had happened in Bishop Corbet's time, but as
in this instance it coincided with Wren's first visitation, there were
not wanting those who said that his severity in enforcing conformity was
the main reason of their departure. This accusation seems never to have
been made at the time, but only later on, when every conceivable charge
was being raked up against the Bishop. He truly says, that, often as at
the council board the failure of the weaving trade and the emigration of
the skilled workmen to Holland was lamented, it was never suggested that
his severity was in any way the cause of it. In his defence, prepared
for the House of Commons, the Bishop, besides accounting for much of
the emigration by the failure of trade, consequent on the plague,
reduces the number, by comparing it with the records kept at the various
ports, from the alleged 3,000 to about 300, and drily says: 'The
defendant humbly conceiveth that the chiefest cause of their departure
was the small wages given to the workmen, whereby the workmasters grew
rich, and the workmen were kept very poor.'
[Sidenote: 'NO LECTURE, BUT VERY MUCH PEACE.']
The charge has been often revived, the more so as though the accusation
is well known enough, the defence, only to be found in the 'Parentalia,'
is hardly known except to the few who have threaded the labyrinth of
that scarce volume. That Wren was a great upholder of discipline and
authority, a man of a fiery energetic temper, decided opinions, and an
unyielding, perhaps a severe, disposition, is certainly true; but it is
also true that he practised, as Laud and Strafford did, an even-handed
justice, laying his hand on rich and poor alike, and would not turn
aside for any suggestion of policy or expediency. It should, however, in
fairness be added, that though he made his authority felt and obeyed, he
did not press matters to extremity against any clergyman without grave
cause, and was very ready to receive those who showed any readiness to
submit. Of the 1,300 clergy in the diocese, not including those attached
to the Cathedral or the schoolmasters, in spite of 'many disorders,'
there were in 1636 but thirty excommunicated or suspended, some for
contumacy, some for obstinately refusing to publish the King's
declaration, some 'for contemning all the Orders and Rites of the
Church and intruding themselves, without licence from the Ordinary, for
many years together.' His returns to the Archbishop show how very
thoroughly and diligently he, to use a modern phrase, 'worked his
diocese,' visiting parish after parish, causing the fabrics to be
repaired,[19] the clergy to reside, to hold the appointed services and
to catechise the children. Here and there a lecturer who promised
conformity was allowed to remain, but generally they were checked and
discouraged. Great Yarmouth must have gladdened the Bishop's heart, as,
two years before Bishop Wren came to the Diocese, the lecturer had gone
to New England, 'since which time,' the Bishop says, 'there hath been no
lecture and very much peace in the town and all ecclesiastical orders
well observed.' It was in truth a great undertaking to bring the Diocese
of Norwich into order; but Wren did not shrink from the task, and had
all the support which the King and the Archbishop could give, a support
afterwards imputed as a crime both to those who gave and to him who
received it.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Warwickshire Worthies_, p. 845. Article by C. Wren Hoskyns, Esq.,
M.P.
[3] S. Margaret's, standing close to Pudding Lane, where the Fire of
London began in 1666, was the first church consumed. Its site is
now occupied by the Monument, and the parish incorporated with
that of S. Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge.
[4] Laid under the stone,
For the worms alone,
All mortal pride
Is laid aside. (G. A. D.)
[5] Bishop Andrewes was so well pleased that he 'sent the moderator
(Dr. Meade), the answerer (Mr. M. Wren), the varier, and one of
the repliers that were all of his house (i.e. Pembroke), twenty
angels apiece.' _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic
Theology, p. xxi.
[6] _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p.
xvii.
[7] _Cypr. Ang._, p. 100. Heylin.
[8] Edmund Waller, born March 3, 1605. He was connected by his
marriage with Cromwell, and wrote one of his best poems as a
panegyric on the Protector, but was supposed to be a Cavalier at
heart and rejoiced at the Restoration; died 1687.
[9] 'A transcript of a certain narrative written by the late Bishop
of Ely (Dr. Matthew Wren) with his own hand, of that remarkable
conference, which after his return from Spain with Prince
Charles, 1636, he had with Dr. Neile, then Bishop of Durham, Dr.
Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Laud, Bishop of S.
David's, touching the said Prince, whereat something prophetical
was then said by that Reverend Bishop of Winchester.' Printed
from a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum. _Life of Bishop Andrewes_,
Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. lvii.
[10] _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. x.
[11] _Cypr. Ang._, p. 59. Heylin.
[12] Evelyn, who visited Cambridge in 1655, says of Peterhouse, 'a
pretty neate college having a delicate chappell.'
The chapel, especially the west front, of S. Peter's College, is
one of the best specimens of the Renaissance Art at
Cambridge.--_Hist. of Modern Architecture_, p. 275. Fergusson.
[13] _Beauties of England and Wales_ (Cambridgeshire).
[14] _Life of Archbishop Juxon_, p. 27. Rev. W. H. Marah.
[15] _Annals of England_, p. 407.
[16] _Eccles. Hist._, vol. ix. p. 388, ed. 1841, Collier, where the
office may be found entire.
[17] _Cypr. Ang._, introduction, p. 9. Heylin.
[18] 'On August 29, 1636 (the plague then raging in London), King
Charles, the Queen, and the Court arrived at Oxford. The
Chancellor (Archbishop Laud), the Vice-Chancellor, and numerous
doctors and masters went out to meet the royal retinue. The
Chancellor, accompanied by the Lord Treasurer (Bishop Juxon),
the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Curle), the Bishop of Norwich (Dr.
M. Wren), and the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Bancroft), rode in a
coach.' The Court was entertained with very brilliant
festivities, and a series of masks and interludes arranged by
Inigo Jones.--_Oxfordshire Annals_, p. 25, by J. M. Davenport.
[19] The state of the diocese is vividly shown in Bishop Corbet's
charge of 1634 (for the repairs of old S. Paul's Cathedral).
'Some petitions,' he says, 'I have had since my coming to this
diocese, for the pulling downe of such an isle [aisle] or for
changing lead to thatch, soe far from reparations that our sute
is to demolish.... Since Christmas I was sued to and I have it
yett under their hands, the hand of the minister and the hand of
the whole parish, that I would give way to their adorning their
church within and out, to build a stone wall round the
churchyard which now had but a hedg. _I took it for a flout at
first_, but it proved a very sute; they durst not without leave
mend a fault forty yeares ould.' The spire of Norwich Cathedral
where Bishop Corbet was preaching had fallen in, and during
three years but two yards had been rebuilt. See _Documents
relating to S. Paul's_ by Dr. Sparrow Simpson, p. 137. Camden
Society.
CHAPTER II.
1630-1640.
DR. C. WREN--BIRTH OF HIS SON CHRISTOPHER--EAST KNOYLE--ORDER OF
THE GARTER--HOW A MURDERER WAS DETECTED--CHRISTOPHER AT
WESTMINSTER--A LATIN LETTER--DIOCESE OF ELY--IMPEACHMENT OF LORD
STRAFFORD--OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD--ARTICLES AGAINST BISHOP
WREN--RESIGNS THE DEANERY OF THE CHAPELS ROYAL.
Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry
A gospel-preaching ministry,
And some for old suits, coats, or cloak,
No surplices nor service-book.
A strange harmonious inclination
Of all degrees to Reformation.
_Hudibras_, pt. i. canto 2.
Less is known of the early years of Christopher Wren than of his
brother's more eventful life. Christopher went to Oxford, to S. John's
College, was admitted to Holy Orders, and, like his brother, became
chaplain to Bishop Andrewes, from whom in 1620 he received the living of
Fonthill Bishops in Wiltshire.
It may be said in passing, that to receive preferment from Lancelot
Andrewes was in itself a proof of merit, for it was his especial care,
in the three dioceses which he successively governed, only to promote
able and good men to 'such livings and preferments as fell within his
gift, and to give Church preferment to _none that asked for it_.' To
this rule he rigidly adhered, and his disciple, Matthew Wren, followed
the same plan when he became a Prelate of the Church.
Christopher did not hold this living more than three years, and then
received, also from Bishop Andrewes, the neighbouring living of East (or
Bishop's) Knoyle, very near Fonthill Abbey, afterwards a place famous
for its beauty and its curiosities, then the property of a Mr. Robert
Cox. This gentleman had an only child, Mary, who inherited his property;
she became the wife of Christopher Wren, probably a few years after his
appointment to East Knoyle, where their seven children were born--five
girls, of only one of whom there is any subsequent record, and two sons.
A Christopher, baptized in the November of 1630, who probably died very
young, as in the register the record stands, 'Christopher, first sonne
of Doctor Wren,' 'first' is added above in another hand. The next
baptism is, 'Christopher, 2nd (_sic_) sonne of Christopher Wren, Dr. in
Divinitie and Rector now.' This is in the entries for 1631 (O.S.),
followed by those for March, and is dated only '10th.'
This 'second Christopher' is the one who was to make the name afterwards
so famous; but the date is very perplexing. Dr. Wren and his son both
reckoned the latter's age from his birthday, October 20, 1632, as
appears again and again in the 'Parentalia,' notably in Dr. Wren's own
MS. note to a letter from his son.[20] The East Knoyle Register would,
if the baptism is rightly put among the entries for _March_ 1631 (O.S.),
make the birthday October 20, 1631; but it seems more likely that this
is an error, and 1632 the correct date.
[CHANCEL AT EAST KNOYLE.]
At East Knoyle Dr. Wren appears to have passed most of his time, leaving
it occasionally, as he had done his previous living, to attend on Bishop
Andrewes. He was a good scholar, if less deeply learned than his
brother; a mathematician, a good musician, and had besides some
knowledge of drawing and architecture. He employed himself in decorating
East Knoyle chancel, and to him, in all probability, are owing the[21]
'flower borders, figures, and texts of Scripture in raised plasterwork'
which, though much defaced, still cover the chancel. The subjects
are--'Jacob's Dream,' 'The Ladder with the Angels,' 'Jacob anointing the
Pillar.' Over the chancel arch 'The Ascension of our Lord.' Round the
capitals of the columns are quaint inscriptions:
Sic ae Am a
pr sis. a. A Deo pta.[22]
ut o or o
'Unum necessarium.' The texts of holy Scripture, which are very well
chosen, are all quoted from that earlier translation known as the
'Bishops' Bible,' to which the Psalms, Offertory sentences, and
'Comfortable Words' of the Prayer Book belong.
Besides this, Wren contrived a new roof for the church, as the old one
was falling into decay. In the hall of the rectory he put up the
following inscription:
'In quamcunque domum introeritis primum dicite:
paX sIt hVIC DoMVI
Tam solenni præcepto, tempestivo voto
Subscripsi introiens
C. W. RECTOR,
Julii 28. Anno dicto.'[23]
The inscription is not a little characteristic of the gentle,
peace-loving nature of Christopher Wren, and the quaint conceits in
which the wits of the time delighted. This form of chronogram was one
which he frequently used. His second daughter, Susan, was born in 1627,
and as she and the 'second Christopher' clung closely together in after
life, and the others are never mentioned, it seems likely that they two
were the only survivors of the seven children. Christopher was a very
delicate, weakly boy, who early gave promise of brilliant abilities. No
records say when Mrs. Wren died, but various things seem to show that
she died when her children were still very young.
Dr. Wren had been one of the King's chaplains in ordinary since 1628,
and so well did he acquit himself that when his brother the Bishop
resigned the deanery of Windsor and the registrarship of the Garter, the
King appointed Christopher to the vacant post. It was an appointment
which suited him well; he took up with equal energy his brother's work,
of arranging the documents and records, and continuing the history of
the Order. Two autograph letters relating to this are preserved in the
'Parentalia,' one from the chancellor of the Garter, Sir Thomas Rowe:--
'Reverend Sir,--I had wayted on you before this tyme, but that I
have been punished with Lamenes, both for my owne advantage to
learne of y^u and to acquaint y^u with some orders I have received
from his ma^{tie} and to give y^u ye summe of ye last chapiter as I
conceived it.'
[GARTER RECORDS.]
Sundry particulars follow, and he promises a record of the members of
the Garter from its foundation. The King, he says, is anxious that every
'chapiter of the Order' should be fully recorded. Sir Thomas asks for
'the papers of Sir John Fynnet' in order to send them to King Charles,
'who is very curious of them.' 'On all occasions,' the letter concludes,
'I shall be glad to give y^u ye testimonye of my desire to be esteemed
and to be y^r affectionate friend to serve y^u,
'THO. ROWE.
'Cranford, 9 Jan. 1636 (O.S.)'
The Dean's answer comes promptly:--
'Jan. 10, 1636 (O.S.)
'Honorable Sir,--How much you obliged me I shall endeavour to
demonstrate to you upon better opportunities. For ye present I
returne y^r books and promise you ye sight of another some^{wt} of
them(?) w^{ch} phaps you will not dislike, though I begin to think
your exact diligence hath lefte none of those monuments lye
undiscryed, where they might be gained. I send back likewise Sir
John Finet's Paps; whereof I reserve ye copyes. And now that I
begin to finde a little respiration, I will draw y^m up into acte.
Till I had y^m I could not well begin, and now that you are pleased
to send me ye last, drawne up into forme, I shall ye better
accomplish ye whole business of my little time. Whereof I will send
you ye whole contextures, Deo dante, ere longe. I should however
give you a formall thanks that you imploy yourselfe soe largely,
soe nobly for me in present, and in promise more. Knowing your
reality in all worth, I abstain from other compliments then those
wherein Affection must pforce speake yf she speake at all. Once for
all, that branch of our comon oath is never out of my minde:
Sustentabis Honores hujus Ordinis atq. omni^m qui in eo sunt. Of
w^{ch} omni^m you are Pars Magna and shall ever be to your
affectionate ob: servant friend,
'CHR. WREN.
'To the Honble Sr. Tho. Row Chancelor of ye most Honble
Order of ye Garter.'
The Garter history appears to have been carefully continued, and Dean
Wren describes, in a long picturesque account, the admission on May 19,
1638, of the Prince of Wales, then but eight years old, as a 'companion
of the Garter.' The little Prince, Dean Wren says, acquitted himself
admirably during the three days of intricate ceremonial, doing his part
with accuracy and spirit, a sweet dignity, and an unwearied patience
until all was completed.
He must have been a very hopeful, engaging, boy, and it is sad to think
how little his after life fulfilled its early promise: had he remained
in his father's care a very different record might have been left of him
in English history. The Service of Admission is a curious one, and the
prayers on the putting on the Garter, the ribbon, the collar, and the
mantle have considerable beauty. On this occasion the festival was
celebrated with great splendour. King Charles presented two large silver
flagons, cunningly carved and very richly gilt, offering them on his
knees with these words: 'Tibi, et perpetuo Tuo servitio, partem
bonitatis Tuae offero Domine Deus Omnipotens.'[24]
These were added to the treasury of the Garter, which contained many
articles of great value. There was a set of triple gilt silver plate
wrought by Van Vianen[25] of Nuremberg, estimated at over 3,000_l._,
several other pieces of plate, Edward IV.'s steel armour, gilt, and
covered with crimson velvet embroidered with pearls, rubies and gold,
fifteen rich copes embroidered in gold, altar-cloths and hangings worked
with the same costly material.
[GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.]
There was also the blue velvet mantle, the George and Garter of Gustavus
Adolphus, each letter of the motto made in diamonds. These had been sent
to the King of Sweden by Charles I. at the close of the campaign in 1627
as a mark of friendship and respect for his valour, and were the richest
ever sent even to a sovereign.
After the heroic king's death on the field at Lutzen, in 1634, a solemn
embassy brought the mantle and the jewels back to England, when they
were consigned to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, with a charge from
King Charles to lay them up in the treasury 'for a perpetual memorial of
that renowned King, who died in the field of battle wearing some of
those jewels, to the great honour of the Order, as a true martial prince
and companion thereof.'
A few years later King Charles presented Dean Wren to the rectory of
Great Haseley[26] near Oxford, with a fine old church containing two
crusaders' tombs.
In the parish of Haseley is the manor of Ryecote (or Ricot), which by
marriage had become the property of Sir Henry Norris, Queen Elizabeth's
ambassador to France, whom she created Baron Norris (or Norreys) of
Ryecot, and whose descendants, now the Earls of Abingdon, possess the
manor to this day. During Dr. Wren's incumbency, a strange event took
place. Among the retainers of Lord Norris was an old man who had charge
of the fish ponds; he had one nephew, who was the heir of all his
uncle's possessions and savings. The nephew enticed the old man out one
night, waited till he fell asleep under an oak tree, murdered him by a
blow on the head, dragged the body to one of the ponds, tied a great
stone to the neck and threw the corpse in. There it lay _five weeks_,
during which time Lord Norris and all the neighbours wondered what had
become of the old man. At length the body was found by the men who were
about to clean the pond, and were attracted to the spot by the swarms of
flies; they raised the corpse with great difficulty and recognised it.
[AN AWFUL WITNESS.]
The stone tied to the neck was evidence of foul play, though no one
could guess at the murderer. Lord Norris, in order to detect the
criminal, after the usual manner, commanded that the corpse, preserved
by the water from the last extremity of decay, should on the next Sunday
be exposed in the churchyard, close to the church door, so that everyone
entering the church should see--and touch it. The wicked nephew shrank
from the ordeal, feigning to be so overwhelmed with grief as to be
unable to bear the sight of his dearest uncle. Lord Norris, suspecting
that the old man had been murdered by the one person whom his death
would profit, compelled him to come, and to touch with his finger, as so
many had willingly done, the hand of the dead. At his touch, however,
'as if opened by the finger of God, the eyes of the corpse were seen by
all to move, and blood to flow from his nostrils.' At this awful witness
the murderer fell on the ground and avowed the crime, which he had
secretly committed and the most just judgment of God had brought to
light. He was delivered to the judge, sentenced, and hanged.
The event must have made a deep impression on Dean Wren, who recorded it
at length in Latin and signed the record to attest its truth.
He also mentions that in the east window of the church was the
'Coat of France azure fretté and semé of Flower de Lyces or, put
there together with his own coat by Lord Barentine, knight of
Rhodes and a great benefactor to that church. A man of great valour
and possessions in France as well as in England, his tomb at the
north-east side of the chancel shows he was of a gigantic stature;
and his statue of one entire stone, which I digged out of a heap of
rubbish there, makes it appear he was (not two inches lower than)
seven foot high.'
Dr. Wren seems to have divided his residence between Haseley and
Windsor, probably spending most of his time at the Deanery, where many
of the learned men and philosophers of the day sought his society. Among
these was the Prince Palatine Charles, who was a frequent guest at the
Deanery, enjoying its learned quiet, and interested in his host's young
son, whose great gifts were early remarkable. Many a little note did
Dean Wren make of curious things that came under his observation,
particularly of an oak that grew in the New Forest and sent out young
fresh leaves on Christmas Eve. So much discussion was raised about it at
court and King James would so little believe it, that good Bishop
Andrewes sent a chaplain on Christmas Eve to the forest, who gathered
about a hundred fresh shoots, stuck them into wet clay, and sent them
straight to the court, where Dr. Wren witnessed the opening of the
boxes. The tree was then cut down by some spiteful fellow, 'who,' says
the Dean, 'made his last stroke on his own leg, whereof he died,
together with the old wondrous tree.'
King Charles engaged Dr. Wren to make an estimate for a building at
Windsor for the use of the Queen; it was to be of considerable size,
containing a chapel, a banqueting room, galleries and rooms for the Lord
Chamberlain and court officials. The estimate exists in business-like
detail, the total amounting to 13,305_l._; but it was probably not even
begun.
[CHRISTOPHER AT WESTMINSTER.]
To his other employments the Dean added the tender care of his young
son. Christopher's case was one of those rare ones in which a precocious
child not only lives to grow up, but also amply fulfils his early
promise. His delicate health was the cause of much anxiety to his father
and to his sister Susan, and it may be that the skill in nursing and
medicine for which she was afterwards famous, had their beginning in her
watchful care of her little brother.
His frail health seems to have been rather a spur than a hindrance to
his studies, and when very young he had a tutor, the Rev. W. Shepheard,
who prepared him for Westminster, where he was sent in his ninth or
tenth year. Westminster was then under the rule of its famous headmaster
Dr. Busby, to whose especial care young Christopher was committed.
The school with its stir of life, the grand abbey, the Houses of
Parliament then empty and silent, Lambeth, from which his uncle's
friend, Archbishop Laud, might be seen frequently coming across the
river in his barge; the whole surroundings must have been wonderful to
the country-bred boy who was one day to connect his name indissolubly
with that of London. Did he, one cannot but wonder, ever on a holiday
take boat down the river, shooting the dangerous arches of London
Bridge, and look at S. Paul's with its long line of roof, its tall tower
and shattered spire; little S. Gregory's nestling by its side, and all
the workmen busied on the repairs which had been begun after King
James's solemn thanksgiving in 1620? Laud, while Bishop of London, had
carried on the works with a vigour that had given them a fresh impetus,
and was one great cause of his unpopularity. Inigo Jones had
superintended them and finished the interior, and at the west end, the
stately portico of Portland stone, which, though incongruous, was in
itself beautiful, was being erected by King Charles's orders. How little
could the boy have guessed at the ruin which was approaching those pious
builders, or the desecration and destruction that awaited the fine old
building itself!
At school no pains were spared with so promising a pupil as young Wren
soon showed himself to be. His sister Susan married, in 1643, Mr.
William Holder, subdean of the Chapel Royal, of a Nottinghamshire
family, a good mathematician, and one 'who had good skill in the practic
and theoretic parts of music'[27] Susan Wren was sixteen when she
married, and though childless the marriage was a very happy one.
Mr. Holder early discerned his young brother-in-law's talent for
mathematics and gave him private lessons. Mr. Holder was subsequently
appointed to the living of Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire, which he held
until 1663.
[THE FIRST FRUITS OF HIS PAINS.]
Among the few autograph letters of Christopher Wren's which remain in
the family, is one written to his father from Westminster in a boy's
unformed hand, the faintly ruled lines still showing.
[28]'Venerande Pater,--Sententia apud antiquos vulgata est, quam
ex ore tuo me habuisse memini, Parentibus nihil posse reddi
æquivalens. Frequentes enim curae et perpetui labores circa pueros
sunt immensi quidem amoris indicium. At praecepta illa mihi toties
repetita, quae animum ad bonas Artes, & Virtutem impellunt, omnes
alios amores superant. Quod meum est, efficiam, quantum potero ne
ingrato fiant hac munera. Deus Optimus Maximus conatibus meis adsit
et Tibi, pro visceribus illis Paternae Pietatis, quae maximè velis
praestet.
'Id orat Filius tuus, Tibi omni obsequio devotissimus,
'CHRISTOPHORUS WREN.
'Has tibi primitias Anni, Pater, atq. laborum
Praesto (per exiguas qualibet esse sciam)
Quas spero in messem posse olim crescere, vultu
Si placido acceptes tu, foveasque sinu.
'To you, Deare Sir, your Son presenteth heere
The first-fruits of his pains and of the yeare;
Wich may (though small) in time an harvest grow,
If you to cherish these, your favour shew.
'E. Musaeo Meo. 'Calendis Januarii 1641 (1642 N.S.)'
[DIOCESE OF ELY.]
While young Christopher was thus delighting his father with his
'first-fruits,' his uncle the Bishop was encountering many adversities.
While he was busied in Norwich, and in the midst of his work, Dr. White,
Bishop of Ely, died; he had resided mostly in London, as was then too
commonly the habit of the bishops, and it is to be supposed that there
was plenty of work to be done in the diocese. Laud reckoned it as a very
important one on account of its university, and could think of no one so
well suited to the post as Bishop Wren, who was a distinguished
Cambridge scholar. To Ely accordingly the Bishop was translated, May 5,
1638, and rejoiced in renewing his connection with the university where
his early years had been spent. The expenses attending so many removals
must have fallen heavily upon him; all the more, as in Norwich the
palace was out of repair and he lived for some time in a house of his
own at Ipswich, which was probably a part of Mrs. Wren's property,
finding that much attention was required by that part of his diocese.
Prynne was born at Ipswich, and though shut up in the Tower of
London,[29] retained friends in his native town; thus the Bishop knew he
was entering a hornet's nest. Prynne speedily produced his
'Quench-Coal,' which professed to answer a tract called 'A Coal from the
Altar,' wherein were explained the reasons for placing the Holy Table
altarwise, and railing it in. Next came 'The News from Ipswich,' which
reviled all bishops under the names of 'Luciferian Lord Bishops,
execrable Traytors, Devouring Wolves,' and the like; especially
attacking Wren, and declaring, that, 'in all Queen Marie's time, no such
havoc was made in so short a time of the faithful ministers in any part,
nay in the whole Land, than had been made in his Diocese.' There was one
great riot at Ipswich, which the Bishop was able to quell. Prynne was
fined, branded, and imprisoned in Carnarvon Castle, and the town was for
the time tranquil, but Prynne was destined to be a deadly and utterly
unscrupulous enemy.
For nearly two years after his translation to Ely, Dr. Wren was able to
govern his new diocese in comparative peace. Little opposition seems to
have been made, for the factious spirit which was rampant in Norfolk and
Suffolk was less violent here. In his beloved university there were many
points which needed amendment. When he was master of Peterhouse and
built the chapel, he gave it that which many colleges then lacked, and
were lacking still when he returned, to visit Cambridge.
The churchyards of the parish churches had been in many instances
encroached upon and profaned, and in most of the chancels were 'common
seats over high and unfitting that place.' 'In all these businesses,'
says Archbishop Laud in his yearly report to the King, 'the Bishop hath
been very tender, both out of his respect to his mother the University
of Cambridge, and because divers of the benefices are impropriations
belonging to some of the Colleges there.' Nor was Wren's care alone for
the fabrics of the Church; he was careful to secure resident and
diligent clergy in all the parishes as far as he could and to see that
they did their duty. His advice and help were readily given. A
clergyman, Mr. John Bois, applied to him for advice in the case of a
woman of twenty-nine, of whom no one knew whether or no she was
baptized. Mr. Bois had applied by letter and word of mouth to the
previous Bishops of Ely (Bishops Buckeridge and White), and could get no
answer. Bishop Wren replied to him promptly, directing him to baptize
her forthwith, which was accordingly done.[30] Upon these peaceful
labours the long-pending storm broke and called Wren to harder duties.
In 1640 the discontent of the times declared itself openly in Scotland,
where the Puritan party took up arms against the King, and began to
league themselves with the party in England whose opinions or prejudices
coincided with their own. King Charles had summoned a parliament, and
again dismissed it, having obtained no assistance against the Scotch.
'The minds of men had taken such a turn,' says Hume, 'as to ascribe
every honour to the refractory opposers of the King and the ministers.
These were the only patriots, the only lovers of their country, the only
heroes, and perhaps, too, the only true Christians.' The mob of
sectaries in London, encouraged by the successes obtained by the Scotch,
burst into S. Paul's, where the High Commission then sat, and tore down
the benches, with cries of 'No Bishops--no commission!' Before this they
had attacked Lambeth Palace, threatening to tear the Archbishop in
pieces, and would probably have done so had he not been prepared for
them. From that time he knew his life to be in constant peril. An
unknown friend had written to warn him that the Scotch Puritans
justified assassination, and openly hoped the Primate might meet the
same fate as his early friend and patron, the Duke of Buckingham. His
integrity and singleness of mind, to which Clarendon gives high
testimony, had made him bitter enemies. A hasty temper and sharp mode of
speech alienated many who could not but respect him. The difficulties of
his task had been doubled by the lax, un-Catholic rule of his
predecessor at Lambeth. Both Puritans and Romanists alike reckoned him
as their greatest opponent. He was nearly seventy years old, and sadly
felt that 'there wanted not many presages of his ruin and death.' The
King's return, on October 30, brought a gleam of sunshine.
[A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.]
Evelyn[31] says:--
'I saw His Majesty (coming from his Northern expedition) ride in
pomp and a kind of ovation with all the markes of a happy peace,
restored to the affections of his people, being conducted through
London with a most splendid cavalcade; and on 3 November following
(a day never to be mentioned without a curse), to that long,
ungrateful, foolish, and fatal Parliament, the beginning of all our
sorrow for twenty years after, and the period of the most happy
monarchy in the world.' In truth its opening augured ill for the
country and for the Church.
Lord Strafford was impeached and sent to the Tower, and the Archbishop
next attacked. Sir Harbottle Grimston, in a virulent speech, vented his
hatred against Archbishop Laud; 'and those prelates he hath advanced--to
name but some of them: Bishop Manwaring, the Bishop of Bath and Wells,
the Bishop of Oxford, and Bishop Wren--the last of all those birds, but
one of the most unclean ones.' The debate which followed ended--as in
the temper of the House it was certain to do--in a vote that the
Archbishop was a traitor. Allowed the afternoon at Lambeth to collect
papers for his defence, he attended the evening prayers for the last
time in the chapel that he had repaired and adorned with loving care.
The service, which he had restored to its full beauty, soothed that
bitter hour. 'The Psalms of the day (December 18) and chapter l. of
Isaiah gave me great comfort. God make me worthy to receive it,' he
wrote in his diary. The poor thronged round Lambeth Palace, and bitterly
lamented the departure of their best friend, showering blessings on his
head as he was carried away. He remained in the custody of Maxwell, the
Usher of the Black Rod, ten weeks, compelled to pay 436_l._ for his
charges, besides a fine of 500_l._ He was then transferred to the Tower.
[WREN UNDER CENSURE.]
The Archbishop being secured, the Bishops were next attacked. Hampden
came to the Lords with a message to acquaint their lordships that the
Commons had received matters of a high kind against the Bishop of Ely,
for the 'setting up of idolatry and superstition in divers places, and
acting the same in his own person;' adding that he was intending to
escape from England, and that they therefore desired he might be put in
security, to be forthcoming and abide the judgment of Parliament. Bishop
Wren was in his place in the House when this summons came, and was
ordered to find bail for 10,000_l._; helped by three of the bishops, he
managed to do so. When the Primate was in custody, and Wren under
censure, at the beginning of the next year Lord Strafford was attacked.
Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, not long released from the Tower,
anxious to please the Commons, declared that the canon law forbade the
Bishops to sit as judges in a case of blood. He spoke in the name of the
other Bishops; and the decision was too welcome to Strafford's enemies
not to be agreed to instantly; but it was a concession afterwards very
dangerous to those who made it. The issue of that iniquitous trial,
perhaps as great a perversion of justice as England had ever then known,
needs no repetition here.
The King's best advisers were in prison or under restraint, except good
Bishop Juxon, who bravely told him he ought not, upon any considerations
in the world, to do anything against his conscience; and Bishop
Williams, who hated Strafford and Laud alike, sent by the Commons to
induce the King to sign the death-warrant, had a fatal success.
Bishop Wren came to Windsor after this to marry Princess Mary, the
King's eldest daughter, to William, eldest son of Henry Frederick,
Prince of Orange, whom he succeeded in six years. The alliance was one
which gratified the Parliament, being so Protestant a connection.
Little, however, could they have guessed how deadly an enemy Princess
Mary's son would prove to the house of Stuart. Ten days after this
wedding came May 12, when 'the wisest head in England was severed from
the shoulders of Lord Strafford.' So writes John Evelyn. To the
Archbishop, his friend's death must have been a terrible blow. He was
just able to bestow a parting blessing through his prison window, and to
hear Lord Strafford say, 'Farewell, my lord. God protect your
innocency.' The Princess's marriage was the last occasion on which
Bishop Wren was to officiate as Dean of the Chapels Royal.
The Commons had been industriously at work against him since the first
attack in December, and as Archbishop Laud said of Prynne, 'by this time
their malice had hammered out somewhat.' The committee sent in a report,
charging the Bishop with 'excommunicating fifty painful ministers,
practising superstition in his own person, placing "the table"
altarwise, elevation of the elements, the "eastward position," as it is
now called, at the Eucharist, bowing to the Altar, causing all seats to
be placed so that the people faced east, employing his authority to
restrain "powerful preaching," and ordering catechising in the words of
the Church Catechism only, permitting no prayer before the sermon but
the bidding prayer (canon 5), publishing a book of articles, to which
the churchwardens were sworn, containing 187 questions.'
[BISHOP WREN'S RESIGNATION.]
Upon this report a debate ensued, ending in a vote that it was the
opinion of the House that Matthew Wren was unworthy and unfit to hold or
exercise any office or dignity in the Church, and voting that a message
be sent to the House of Lords to desire them to join the Commons in
petitioning his Majesty to remove Bishop Wren from his person and
service. Evelyn's expression, 'to such an exorbitancy had the times
grown,' aptly describes the state of matters when, for details such as
these of the government of a diocese, and for practices which, if they
had been proved, were both legal and reasonable, an assembly of laymen
presumed to pronounce a bishop unfit for his office in the Church.
Whether the petition ever came before the King does not appear, but Wren
thought it best to take the initiative; for he writes in his diary five
days after the debate: 'I hardly obtained leave from the King to resign
the deanery of the Chapels Royal.'
FOOTNOTES:
[20] _Vide infra_, p. 43.
[21] I am indebted to the kindness of the Rev. R. N. Milford,
rector of East Knoyle, for this account. See Sir R. C. Hoare's
History of Wiltshire. The inscriptions on the columns have
been destroyed.
[22] So guide and govern as to profit souls. Love, Pray. One thing
needful. Ask fit things from God.
[23] Into whatsoever house ye enter, first say
Peace be to this house.
To so solemn a precept, by a seasonable vow,
I, entering, have set my name.
C. W. Rector.
July 28. In the said year, i.e. MDCXVVIII.
[24] 'To Thee, and to Thy service for ever, I offer a portion of
Thy bounty, O Lord God Almighty.'
[25] Christian Van Vianen was an embosser and chaser of plate, much
esteemed by Charles I. The gilt plate above mentioned was
wrought at the rate of 12_s._ per oz.--_Anecdotes of
Painting_, Walpole, vol. ii. p. 323.
[26] William Lenthall (born at Henley-on-Thames 1591), Speaker of
the House of Commons 1640-1653 and 1660, lived chiefly at
Lachford Manor in Great Haseley parish, which had been in his
family since the reign of Edward IV. The property was sold by
his eldest son. It may have been owing to the influence of the
Speaker that Dean Wren escaped imprisonment during the
Rebellion.
[27] Wood, _Fasti Oxon._, p. 139.
[28] 'Revered Father,--There is a common saying among the ancients
which I remember to have had from your mouth; there is no
equivalent that can be given back to parents. For their cares
and perpetual labours concerning their children are indeed the
evidence of immeasurable love. Now these precepts so often
repeated, which have impelled my soul towards all that is
highest in man, and to virtue, have superseded in me all other
affections. What in me lies I will perform, as much as I am
able, lest these gifts should have been bestowed on an
ungrateful soul. May the good God Almighty be with me in my
undertakings and make good to thee all thou most desirest in
the tenderness of thy fatherly love. Thus prays thy son, most
devoted to thee in all obedience,
'CHRISTOPHER WREN.'
'Script. hoc, A^o Ætatis suae, Decimo. Ab Octobris 20^o elapso'
is the note in different hand of Dean Wren, who may very
probably have felt that in the fast-rising storm all this fair
promise might be swept away.
[29] Heylin, _Cypr. Ang._, p. 309.
[30] _Desiderata Curiosa_, p. 336. Peck. It will be borne in mind
that the Office for the Baptism of such as are of Riper Years
was only added to the Prayer Book at the last revision in
1662. Mr. John Bois was made a Prebendary of Ely by Bishop
Andrewes, and was one of the translators of the Bible
(1604-1611); he was on the Cambridge Committee, and assisted
in the translation of the Apocrypha.--_Key to the Holy Bible_,
p. 28. Rev. J. H. Blunt.
[31] _Diary_, October 30, 1640.
CHAPTER III.
1641-1647.
BISHOP WREN ACCUSED--WESTMINSTER ABBEY ATTACKED--IMPRISONMENT OF
THE BISHOPS--BISHOP WREN'S DEFENCE--'UTTERLY DENIETH ALL POPISH
AFFECTIONS'--THE GARTER JEWELS--ARCHBISHOP LAUD
MURDERED--CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD--PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS.
For though outnumber'd, overthrown,
And by the fate of war run down,
Their duty never was defeated,
Nor from their oaths and faith retreated;
For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon.
_Hudibras_, pt. iii. canto 2.
The concession Bishop Wren had thus made did not satisfy the Commons,
and on July 20 they drew out the report into twenty articles of
accusation, containing all the former charges and several additional
ones, among which were the setting up of altar-rails, ordering the Holy
Communion to be received kneeling, ordering the reading of the 'Book of
Sports,' and preaching in a surplice; causing by prosecutions 3,000 of
the King's poor subjects to go beyond the sea.
For these offences they prayed that Bishop Wren might answer, and suffer
such punishment as law and justice required. The articles were
transmitted to the House of Lords at a conference, and were read by Sir
T. Widdrington, Recorder of York,[32] who prefaced them by a venomous
speech against the Bishop of Ely, whom he compared to 'a wolf devouring
the flock; an extinguisher of light; a Noah, who sent out doves from the
ark, and refused to receive them back unless they returned as ravens, to
feed upon the carrion of his new inventions, he himself standing with a
flaming sword to keep such out of his diocese.' He accused the Bishop of
raising fines for his own profit; called him a great robber, a
malefactor, 'a compleat mirror of innovation, superstition, and
oppression: an oppugner of the life and liberty of religion, and a
devouring serpent in the diocese of Norwich.'
These are but a few phrases from Sir Thomas's speech; he used no
argument, adduced no proof, but contented himself simply with clamour
and reviling, and these were amply sufficient. In the Long Parliament it
was enough to accuse anyone, especially a bishop, of Popery,
superstition and 'innovation'--which was a term invented by Bishop
Williams, then as now commonly applied to the oldest dogmas and
practices of the Church--to insure his imprisonment, or at the least a
heavy fine. In Wren's Diary opposite the day of the month is merely,
'Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.' Dr. Pierce, Bishop of
Bath and Wells, was attacked at the same time; but at first no active
steps were taken against them, perhaps because the Commons found matters
not yet ripe for a wholesale imprisonment of the Bishops. Dr. Wren well
knew that matters would not stop here, and while awaiting the next
attack began to prepare his Defence against the Articles of Accusation.
The mob in the meanwhile were encouraged by caricatures, libels, and
invectives to rail against the Bishops and impute every misfortune and
every trade failure to them, by which means the Puritan leaders
contrived to stir up a yelling mob of men and women.
[ATTACK ON WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
[THE DECOY DUCK.]
All petitions against the Church were received and the petitioners
encouraged and praised. The populace insulted the Bishops whenever they
appeared, and threatened their lives. Westminster Abbey was attacked,
when the Bishops were there, by a violent mob, led by Wiseman, a knight
of Kent. The officers and choirmen of the Abbey with the boys of the
School, among whom must have been Christopher Wren, defended it
gallantly, and the fray ended when Wiseman was killed by a tile thrown
from the battlements by one of the defenders. After this the Bishops who
were in London met in the Deanery at Westminster, the lodging of
Williams, Archbishop of York, who had just been translated from Lincoln
to York, in succession to the late Archbishop Neile,[33] to consult what
should be done. At the Archbishop's suggestion, they drew up a paper,
remonstrating against the abuse offered them, and the manner in which
they had been hindered from coming to the House of Lords, their coaches
overset, their barges attacked and prevented landing, and they
themselves beset and threatened. They claimed their right to sit in the
House of Lords and vote, and protested against all that had been done
since the 27th of that month (December, 1641), and all that should
hereafter pass in time of this their forced and violent absence. This
paper was signed by the Archbishop and eleven Bishops, of whom Bishop
Wren was one, and presented to the King, who delivered it to Littleton,
the Lord Keeper, to be communicated next day to the Peers. The Lord
Keeper, who had already deserted his benefactor, Lord Strafford,
contrary to the King's orders showed the paper first to 'some of the
preaching party in both Houses,' and then to the Peers. Upon the reading
a conference was desired between the Houses, and the Lord Keeper
declared that the Bishops' paper contained 'matters of high and
dangerous consequence, extending to the deep intrenching upon the
fundamental privileges and being of Parliament.' The Commons, whose
part, like that of the Lord Keeper[34] was pre-arranged, impeached the
Bishops of high treason; the usher of the Black Rod was despatched to
find and bring them before the House. They, lodging in different parts
of London, were not all collected until eight o'clock on the winter's
night, and then, their offence being signified, were committed to the
Tower.[35] The Bishops of Durham and Lichfield, both aged and infirm,
obtained leave to be in the custody of the Black Rod. The other bishops
were carried to the Tower on the following morning. A libellous
pamphlet was published at this time, entitled 'Wren's Anatomy,
discovering his notorious Pranks &c., printed in the year when Wren
ceased to domineer,' has in the title-page a print of Bishop Wren
sitting at a table; out of his mouth proceed two labels: on one,
'Canonical Prayers;' on the other, 'No Afternoon Sermon.' On one side
stand several clergy, over whose heads is written 'Altar-cringing
Priests.' On the other, two men in lay habits, above whom is this
inscription, 'Churchwardens for Articles.' It serves to show what were
considered as really the Bishop's crimes, and that he had a fair
proportion of faithful clergy.[36] The Archbishop of York had served the
Commons' turn in procuring the King's assent to Lord Strafford's
death-warrant, and had enjoyed for a short time a remarkable though
transient popularity both on that account and as Laud's bitter opponent.
The Commons were, however, soon weary of him, and gladly availed
themselves of the pretext afforded by the protest to throw him aside. A
pamphlet was published, which had a great success, entitled the 'Decoy
Duck,' in allusion to the fens of his former diocese of Lincoln, in
which he was represented as only released from the Tower in order to
decoy the other bishops there. It was thought prudent that the bishops
should make no attempt either to see each other, or Archbishop Laud, who
had preceded them to that dreary lodging, so that only loving messages
passed between the prisoners. So many bishops being in custody, and five
sees vacant, the Commons took their opportunity, and brought in a Bill
depriving the Bishops of their seats in Parliament, and of the power of
sitting as judges or privy councillors. It was feebly opposed by the
Churchmen, who had been alienated by the prelates' desertion of Lord
Strafford, and was finally carried. The remark made a little later by
Lord Falkland on Sir E. Deering's 'Bill for the Extirpation of
Episcopacy,' when the Churchmen, weary of their attendance, left the
House at dinner-time, and did not return--'Those who hated the bishops,
hated them worse than the devil, and those who loved them did not love
them so well as their dinner,'--appears to have been applicable to this
occasion also. Not very long after the first-named Bill had passed, some
of the bishops were set at liberty, but Bishop Wren was not released
until May 6, 1642.
[IMPRISONMENT.]
It was a brief respite. He went down to his diocese, to a house at
Downham, near Ely, where his wife and children were living, and there,
August 17, he kept the last wedding-day that he and his wife were ever
to celebrate together. On August 25 King Charles set up his standard at
Nottingham and the Civil War began. On the 30th of the month Bishop
Wren's house was entered by soldiers and he was taken prisoner, without,
it will be observed, the shadow of a legal charge against him. On
September 1st he was again thrown into the Tower, leaving Mrs. Wren with
a daughter only eight days old and mourning for their son Francis, who
had died in the previous month. Matthew, the eldest son, was then only
thirteen years old. Bishop Wren's was a singularly steadfast, hopeful
nature, and it may be that he expected to be speedily released by the
victorious Royalist armies. Could he have foreseen the duration of his
imprisonment and the miseries which were to befall the Church and the
country, even his dauntless spirit might have been crushed. He did not
seek an interview with Archbishop Laud, lest they should be accused of
plotting, and so each injure the other. Otherwise it would not have been
difficult, as the Archbishop was at first carelessly watched, in the
hope that he would, by escaping, rid the Commons of a difficulty. The
Archbishop 'would not, at seventy years, go about to prolong a miserable
life by the trouble and shame of flying,' though Grotius sent him an
intreaty to copy the example of his own marvellous escape from
Loevenstein Castle twenty-one years previously.[37] The services in the
Tower Chapel, where they probably met at first, could have given them
little comfort, marred and mangled as the services were by the
intruders, who came often with no better object than to preach insulting
sermons against the prelates.
Dr. Wren busied himself in the completion of the 'Defence,' to which
allusion has been made in the first chapter.[38] It is too long to allow
of being set out in full, but a few points may be touched upon. Of the
'fifty painful ministers' whom he was said to have excommunicated, for
some of the sentences there was, as has been said, very sufficient
reason. As the Bishop says, 'Excommunication doth by law fall upon
those that are absent, either from visitation, or synods; and
suspension is a censure which in the practice of those courts is
incurred in one hour and taken off in another, and is of little or no
grievance at all except it be wilfully persisted in.' He complains of so
vague a charge, not stating who the clergy were, and proceeds as well as
he can recollect to mention those who had fallen under his censure. For
those whose licence to preach had been withdrawn, the greater number
ought never to have received it at all; one had been a broken tradesman
in Ipswich, one a country apothecary, another a weaver, another 'no
graduate, not long translated from common stage-playing to two cures and
a publick lecture.' Yet still when all were reckoned who had ever been
censured or admonished, the Bishop thinks that the fifty will hardly be
made up.[39]
[BOWING TO THE ALTAR.]
It is a curious instance of the temper of the times that one head of so
serious an indictment should be that 'To manifest his Popish Affections,
he in 1636, caused a crucifix to be engraven upon his Episcopal seal.'
Bishop Wren carefully addresses himself to the defence of this point,
and to that of bowing at the name of our Lord, and to the Altar.
'He began so to do by the example of that learned and holy Prelate
Bishop Andrewes, now with God, under whom this defendant was
brought up from his youth, and had depended upon him more than
forty years since, and constantly and religiously practised the
same upon all occasions ... as his own years and studies increased
he found first, the bowing at the name of the Lord Jesus, had not
only been practised by the clergy but had also been enjoined to all
the people, ever since the first reformation, as appeareth by the
Injunctions, 1^o Eliz. Cap. 52, thereby to testify our due
acknowledgment that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and Eternal Son
of God, is the only Saviour of the world, in whom alone the
mercies, graces and promises of God to mankind for this life and
the life to come are fully and wholly comprised, 1^o Jac. Can. 18.'
For bowing to the Altar, while setting out how old a practice of the
Church it was, designedly continued at the Reformation, how a like
reverence was paid always to the King, or to his chair of estate if he
was not in the Presence Chamber,
'No Christian would ever deny that bowing or doing adoration, was
to be used as a part of God's worship, the affirmative act being
necessarily included in the negative precept, "Non adorabis ea,
ergo adorabis Me."' 'No more as he humbly conceiveth is it any
superstition, but a sign of devotion, and of an awful apprehension
of God's divine Presence, to do Him reverence at the approach into
the House of God, or unto the Lord's Table....
For the crucifix--
'He utterly denieth all popish affections, and saith that
the figure of Christ upon the Cross may be had without any popish
affection, and that the said figure upon his seal did itself
declare what affection it was to manifest. For there was this posy
engraven with it, "[Greek: En hô kosmos emoi kagô tô kosmô]," being
taken out of S. Paul, Gal. vi. 14.... In an holy imitation whereof
this defendant beareth divers coats of arms (as the use is) upon
the said seal, to wit, the arms of the See of Norwich, and the arms
of the See of Hereford, and of the Deanery of Windsor, and of the
Mastership of Peterhouse, together with his own paternal coat of an
ancient descent; he, considering with himself, that these were
emblems all, and badges but of worldly and temporal glories, and
desiring that the world should have a right apprehension of him,
and to testify that he did no way glory in any thing of this
transitory world, but humbly endeavoured to wean himself from all
temporal and vain rejoycing, he therefore caused such a small
figure of Christ on the Cross to be set over all the said coats.'
He adds that he principally used it in signing 'presentments of
Popish recusants.' ... not to say that although the said seal lay
all the year long locked up in a chest, but at the time of sealing,
and that when any sealing there was no worship done by any; yet
nevertheless, as soon as he understood that any had taken scruple
at it, he presently, to avoid all pretence of scandal, caused the
said seal to be altered and the figure of Christ to be wholly
omitted.'[40]
[_EASTWARD POSITION._]
The part of the Defence, which has been most challenged, is that for the
use of the 'Eastward position.' It is, however, important to remember
that the Bishop had to defend himself against the charge, that once,
while celebrating in the Tower Church at Ipswich, he had 'used
idolatrous actions' in administering the Holy Communion, Consecrating
the Elements with his face eastward, elevating the Paten and Chalice
'above his shoulders and bowing low either to or before them when set
down on the Table.'
The charge of 'idolatry' divides itself into three heads. The last two
Wren met by a full denial, the first he confesses, while explaining his
reason for his position in _that special instance_, when, as he says,
the Elements being on the middle of the Holy Table, 'were farther from
the end thereof than he, being but low of stature, could reach over his
book unto them and yet still proceed in reading the words without stop
or interruption and without danger of spilling the Bread and Wine ...
and he humbly conceiveth that although the Rubrick[41] says that the
Minister shall stand at the north side of the Table, yet it is not so to
be meant as that upon no occasion during all Communion time he shall
step from it.' For the rest, the whole tone of the Defence is brave and
dignified; and despite the knowledge that his life was at stake, despite
of the 'humbly conceiveth' which runs through it, it is evident that the
Bishop considered his position to be in reality unassailable, and that
he was more or less condescending in making these explanations. There is
an irony in the studied simplicity with which the scholar and theologian
explains elementary truths and ordinary rules of church discipline to a
House of Commons who certainly stood in need of instruction in such
matters.
The Bishop, when his part was done, and he had received notice to
prepare for trial on a day appointed, put his manuscript, with an
injunction of secresy, into the hands of a lawyer who was supposed to be
friendly, that he might give his advice on the technical and legal
parts.
'The person,' says the 'Parentalia,' 'thus intrusted discovering
(on the perusal) matters of such moment, as he conceived might be
very expedient for the Prosecutors to be forewarned of, betrayed
his trust, and to ingratiate himself treacherously delivered up the
Bishop's papers to the chief persons in power of the governing
faction. The consequence thereupon was--that the resolution which
had been taken to bring him to trial for life was suddenly
countermanded and an order by the House of Commons made to continue
him in prison during their pleasure.'
[_GARTER JEWELS._]
So began the long years of Bishop Wren's captivity. Few trials could
have been harder for a man of vigorous active nature to bear than this
one which rendered him powerless, when all he held dear was at stake,
loaded him with calumnies and prevented his uttering a word in his
defence. The diary gives no hint of what his feelings were. In silence
he resigned himself, resolved to afford no triumph to his enemies. Dean
Wren was somewhat better off, though he had his share of misfortunes.
The valuable plate and treasures belonging to the Order of the Garter
were a serious responsibility, and, though the treasure-house was
strong, he could not feel that it offered a sufficient security. The
plate and armour were not easily hidden, but the Diamond George and
Garter of Gustavus Adolphus he determined, if possible, to save.
Accordingly, with the help of one trustworthy person and every
precaution for secresy, he dug a hole in the treasury floor and there
deposited them, concealing the place with the utmost care, and leaving a
note in the hand of one worthy person intimating where the jewels might
be found in the event of his death. He had good cause to rejoice in this
precaution, for a few months later, in October 1642, down came
'one Captain Fogg pretending a warrant from the King and demanding
the keys of the Treasury, threatening if they were denied him by
the Dean and Prebendaries, to pull the Chapel about their ears.'
As his threats had no effect, he forced the stone jambs of the doorway
with crowbars, and carried off all the treasures except those which the
Dean had buried. These, however, did not long remain secure, for in
1645 they were discovered and placed in the keeping of Colonel Ven, then
governor of Windsor Castle, and finally, through several hands, reached
the trustees of the Long Parliament, who sold the jewels to Thomas
Beauchamp, their clerk. The Deanery was not spared during the first
pillage of the chapel, though the Dean possessed a formal protection
from the Committee of Public Safety, but was ransacked by the soldiers,
and the Registry of the Garter, sealed by order of the House of Lords,
broken open, and the records stolen. Dean Wren lost many things of
value--books and manuscripts dear to the careful scholar, and also
plate, including two large silver tankards, the gifts of the Elector
Palatine. Of his own effects the Dean was only able, after an interval
of six years, to recover one harpsichord valued at ten pounds; but he
succeeded, after much expense and frequent attendances at Somerset
House, by the favour of the trustees' chairman, Major Wither, in
regaining the registers of the Order of the Garter, known from the
colours of the velvet in which they were bound as 'the Black, the Blue,
and the Red,' though not until a considerable space of time had passed;
they contained all the principal records of the Order, and were
therefore very valuable. The diamonds however, he was never able to
regain, or the Altar Plate. After the first plunder of the Chapel and
the Deanery Dr. Wren appears to have left Windsor and to have followed
the Court for a time.
Christopher, meanwhile, was at Westminster advancing steadily in
learning, while the loyal principles of his family must have been
confirmed by the whole tone of the school which was ardently royalist.
South, in a sermon for January 30, says,[42] speaking of Westminster:
'Upon that very Day, that black and eternally infamous Day of the King's
murder, I myself heard, and am now a witness, that the King was
publickly prayed for in this School but an hour or two (at most) before
his sacred head was struck off.'
[_INCREASING TROUBLES._]
Whether at this period Christopher ever saw his uncle in the Tower does
not appear. The Bishop's position was sad enough. During 1643 and 1644
his diary records the death of five of his children; in the monotony of
his prison life these sorrows must have pressed on him with double
force. Nor was there any consolation to be derived from public matters.
The royal cause, prosperous at first, grew less and less so, as the
King's lack of money became an ever-increasing difficulty. Another
grief, keenly felt by all Churchmen, was the order of the Parliament for
the abolition of the Prayer Book and the alteration of the Thirty-nine
Articles in a sense pleasing to the Puritans. Then came the
long-deferred trial of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was treated with
a cruel disregard of his high position and of his age, every kind of
insult and indignity being offered him. He however rose superior to it
all, and defended himself with an eloquence, vigour, and courage which
dismayed and enraged his enemies, though it could not change their
purpose. The Bishop of Ely's name was frequently mentioned, and his
promotion objected to as one of the Archbishop's crimes; but no further
steps were taken against him then, as he was safe in custody, and the
Commons had enough on their hands.
In his defence, the Archbishop thought it prudent to say nothing
respecting the Bishops whose advancement was objected against him,
deeming it for their interest to entangle them as little as possible in
his misfortunes. They were able to speak for themselves he said, but the
memory of the dead Archbishop Neile he warmly defended. The trial was
long protracted in order to give a specious colouring of justice to the
predetermined sentence.
For this Prynne 'kept a school of instruction' for the witnesses, and
tampered with the Archbishop's papers, of which he had forcibly
possessed himself. The spirit that guided the whole trial was shown in
his reply to one who said the Archbishop was a good man. 'Yea, but we
must make him ill.' The Peers raised a feeble opposition. The King,
whose consent the Parliament had not attempted to procure, sent to the
Archbishop by a sure hand, from Oxford, a full pardon under the Great
Seal, but neither received the least attention.
[_ARCHBISHOP LAUD MURDERED._]
On January 10, on Tower Hill, the unjust sentence was fulfilled. Few
things are more touching than the account given by his chaplain and
biographer, Heylin, of the way in which the Archbishop met that cruel
fate. It is some comfort to remember that, though the Church Services
were then forbidden, yet his enemies did not interfere, but suffered the
Burial Service to be read in All Hallows, Barking, where he was first
interred. After the Restoration, the coffin was removed to S. John's
College, Oxford, and buried under the altar in the chapel. He left
Bishop Wren and Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, executors of his will.
It contained a great number of bequests for charitable foundations,
especially for his native town of Reading; but as his whole estate had
been taken from him, these were unfulfilled. His murder was an immense
triumph to all the Sectarians in England and Scotland, who probably
considered it as a death-blow to the Church.
The Bishop of Ely in his cell must have listened in grief and horror to
the tolling of the Tower bell which proclaimed the bloody death of the
friend with whom he had laboured for many years, latterly his patient
fellow-prisoner. The entry in the diary is brief: 'Parce, O Deus
Requisitor sanguinis.' The same fate seemed very near to himself, and he
was ready to follow the Archbishop; but he had eighteen years of close
imprisonment to endure, and a different work to do.
Early in 1644, George Monk, then a colonel in the King's service, was
taken prisoner by Fairfax in his attack upon the army besieging
Nantwich, in Cheshire. He was imprisoned first at Hull, and then, as he
was thought too important to be exchanged except for some considerable
prisoner, he was sent to the Tower, and there remained two years. The
Tower charges were high, and a long confinement in its walls was a
strain upon the resources of a prisoner, which reduced those, whose
fortune, like that of Monk, was scanty, to extreme poverty. The King,
who knew Monk's condition, contrived to send him a hundred guineas, and
upon this he existed for some time, and resisted the offers of Cromwell,
then rapidly rising in power and authority.
Somehow or other, Monk contrived to obtain several interviews with
Bishop Wren, who did his best to confirm the soldier in his loyalty. He
perceived that Monk, whose popularity with the army was very great, and
whose military talents were thought to be of a high order, might one day
be a valuable ally, and a useful counterpoise to Cromwell. At length,
when the King's cause appeared for the time lost, and Monk himself was
reduced to extreme poverty, he yielded to Cromwell's request, and
accepted a commission in the Irish army, under his kinsman Lord Lisle.
Before his release, Monk had a final interview with the Bishop of Ely,
and, as he knelt to ask the Bishop's blessing, bound himself with a
solemn engagement never to be an enemy to his king, and said he was
going to do his majesty the best service he could against 'the rebels in
Ireland, and hoped he should one day do him further service in England.'
Bishop Wren held firmly to his trust in Monk's loyalty, though many
things might well have shaken his confidence. In the curious life of Dr.
John Barwick, one of the King's most faithful agents, from whom Sir
Walter Scott may have taken many of the features of his indefatigable
plotter 'Dr. Rochecliffe,' it is said that[43] 'he' (Dr. Barwick) 'often
heard the Right Reverend Bishop of Ely promise himself all he could
wish from the General's fidelity.' As Monk gave no other hint of his
intentions, refusing even to receive Charles II.'s letters, this
assurance was precious to the Royalists.
[_CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD._]
In 1646, Christopher Wren left Westminster, and at the age of fourteen
went up to Oxford, and was entered as a Gentleman Commoner at Wadham
College. He had, young as he was, distinguished himself at Westminster,
inventing an astronomical instrument, of which no description remains,
and dedicating it to his father in a short Latin poem,[44] which has
been often praised for the flow and smoothness of its lines; a set of
Latin verses in which the signs of the Zodiac are transformed into
Christian emblems, is, in spite of its ingenuity, much less successful;
a short poem on the Nativity also in Latin, belongs probably to the same
date, and is of the same order of poetry.
Far more graceful are the playful lines cut on the rind of an immense
pomegranate sent to 'that best man, my dearest friend E. F., by
Christopher Regulus,' in which on the 'Pomo Punico,' as he calls it,
Christopher rings the changes on 'Punic gifts' and 'Punic faith,' and
declares his pomegranate is connected neither with the one nor the
other.
One English poem, an attempt to paraphrase the first chapter of S.
John's Gospel, fails of necessity from the impossibility of such an
attempt, and Wren handles the English verse far more stiffly and
uneasily than he did the Latin. What however is striking is the
penmanship of the 'Parentalia' autograph; the writing, the capital
letters, and the little flourishes are executed with a delicate finish
really remarkable.
There is no date to this autograph, but the handwriting appears firmer
and more regular than that of the dedication to his father, and it was
probably an Oxford composition.
Christopher came up to Oxford a slight, delicate boy, with an
understanding at once singularly quick and patient, readily seconded by
very dexterous fingers, and keen powers of observation. He brought with
him a reputation for, in the phrase of the day, 'uncommon parts,' and
speedily showed that besides a classical education, he had acquired a
strong bent for the experimental philosophy of the 'New learning.'
Oxford, when Wren came there, was not only the seat of learning, it was
a Court and a Camp as well, to which all the Royalist hearts in England
turned. In the midst of these curiously differing influences,
Christopher pursued his studies under the care of the 'most obliging and
universally curious Dr. Wilkins,'[45] as Evelyn calls him, a man as
devoted to experiments as Christopher himself. Dean Wren had been in
Bristol with his daughter and son-in-law, accompanying Prince Rupert,
and on the Prince's unexpected surrender of the town to Fairfax (1645),
seems to have returned with Prince Rupert and Mr. and Mrs. Holder,
either to his own living of Great Haseley, or to Mr. Holder's at
Bletchingdon.
[_KING CHARLES LEAVES OXFORD._]
In those times no place could long be a tranquil habitation. The King's
affairs went from bad to worse, and at length the near approach of
Fairfax with his victorious army made it evident that Oxford could no
longer be a safe refuge for the Court. King Charles accordingly left
Oxford in disguise, and, attended only by Mr. Ashburnham and Dr. Michael
Hudson,[46] who was well acquainted with the lanes and byeways of the
country, proceeded by Henley-on-Thames and St. Albans, to Southwell in
Nottinghamshire, throwing himself on the loyalty of the Scots, then
encamped at Newark. How unworthy of his confidence they proved to be,
and how they finally sold him to the Parliament, are matters of history
too notorious for repetition here.
Oxford, thus saved from the ruin of a siege, capitulated to Fairfax June
24, 1646, on the express condition that the University should be free
from 'sequestrations, fines, taxes and all other molestations
whatsoever.' But the Parliament was not famous for keeping its
engagements, and at once proceeded to break through those made with
Oxford and reduce it to the same condition as Cambridge, which they had
devastated in 1642. A passage from 'Querela Cantabrigiensis,' which is
supposed to be written by Dr. Barwick, gives some idea of what this
condition was:
'And therefore,' he says, 'if posterity shall ask "Who thrust out
one of the eyes of this kingdom, who made Eloquence dumb,
Philosophy sottish, widowed the Arts, and drove the Muses from
their ancient habitation? Who plucked the reverend and orthodox
professors out of their chairs, and silenced them in prison or
their graves? Who turned Religion into Rebellion, and changed the
apostolical chair into a desk for blasphemy, and tore the garland
from the head of Learning to place it on the dull brows of disloyal
ignorance?" If they shall ask "Who made those ancient and beautiful
chapels, the sweet remembrances and monuments of our fore-fathers'
charity and the kind fomenters of their children's devotion, to
become ruinous heaps of dust and stones?"... 'Tis quickly
answered--"Those they were, who endeavouring to share three Crowns
and put them in their own pockets, have transformed this free
kingdom into a large gaol, _to keep the liberty of the subject_:
they who maintain 100,000 robbers and murderers by sea and land,
_to protect our lives and the propriety of our goods_ ... they who
have possessed themselves of his majesty's towns, navy, and
magazines, _to make him a glorious king_; who have multiplied
oaths, protestations, vows, leagues and covenants, _for ease of
tender consciences_; filling all pulpits with jugglers for the
Cause, canting sedition, atheism, and rebellion, _to root out
popery and Babylon and settle the kingdom of Christ_:... The very
same have stopped the mouth of all learning (following herein the
example of their elder brother the Turk), lest any should be wiser
than themselves, or posterity know what a world of wickedness they
have committed."'[47]
[_PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS._]
Wadham College probably suffered less than many, as its head, Dr.
Wilkins, who had married Cromwell's sister, was very submissive to the
then Government. As matters settled down somewhat at Oxford towards
1648, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. Wallis, Mr. Theodore Hank,
who came from the desolated Palatinate, and Mr. S. Foster, the Gresham
Professor of Astronomy, met together weekly, 'to discourse and
consider,' writes Dr. Wallis, '(precluding theology and state affairs),
of philosophical enquiries, and such as related thereunto: as physick,
anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, staticks, magneticks,
chymicks, mechanicks, and natural experiments with the state of those
studies as then calculated at home and abroad.'
The meetings, at which Christopher Wren, young as he was, appears to
have been a constant attendant, were frequently held at the house of Dr.
Goddard for the convenience of his having there a workman skilled in the
nice work of grinding glasses for microscopes and telescopes. Dr.
Goddard became body physician to Cromwell, was by him made Warden of
Merton College, Oxford, and subsequently represented the university in
Parliament. Dr. Wallis, a famous Oxford mathematician, was employed by
the Parliament to decipher the King's cabinet of letters taken at
Naseby, and also was proved by Matthew Wren, the son of the Bishop, to
have deciphered several very important letters sent by Charles II. to
England, and intercepted at Dunkirk.
As by degrees these meetings were more largely attended, and men came
who held very different opinions from those of Dr. Goddard and Dr.
Wallis, the exclusion of theology and politics from the discussions was
a needful precaution. Many inventions of Christopher's date from this
time, a design for a reflecting dial for the ceiling of a room,
ornamented with quaint figures and devices, some Latin lines ending in a
chronogram of his age, and the date of the invention, suggested probably
by the one in the rectory at East Knoyle, which he had known from a
child; an instrument to write in the dark; and an instrument of use in
gnomonics.[48] At the same time he had attracted the notice of Sir
Charles Scarborough, a friend of Dean Wren's, then just rising to fame
as a surgeon. Christopher, whose health, as has been said, was delicate,
fell dangerously ill and considered that he owed his life to the skilful
care of his new friend. Dr. Scarborough, who could recite in order all
the propositions of Euclid and Archimedes, and could apply them, found
in his patient a kindred spirit, and induced Wren, young as he was, to
undertake the translation into Latin of the 'Clavis Aurea,' by the Rev.
W. Oughtred, a mathematical treatise of great reputation.
[_MR. OUGHTRED._]
That Christopher was able to satisfy the old man is evident from the
preface, even while making allowance for the complimentary style of the
time. Mr. Oughtred speaks of--
'Mr. Christopher Wren, Gentleman Commoner of Wadham College, a
youth generally admired for his talents, who, when not yet sixteen
years old, enriched astronomy, gnomonics, statics and mechanics, by
brilliant inventions, and from that time has continued to enrich
them, and in truth is one from whom I can, not vainly, look for
great things.'[49]
Mr. Oughtred was a Canon of Chichester, and after the siege of the city
and the wanton sack of the cathedral by Sir E. Waller in 1642, deprived
and heart-broken, wandered to Oxford, refusing the offers of home and
emolument which came to him from France, Italy, and Holland. He gladly
availed himself of young Wren's services in the work of translation,
which he had not energy to undertake himself, and waited, hoping for
better times. When at length they drew near, and he heard of the vote
passed at Westminster (May 1, 1660), for the Restoration of the Royal
Family, the relief was too great, and Mr. Oughtred 'expired in a sudden
ecstasy of joy.'[50]
Dean Wren, in the meanwhile, though deprived of his living, does not
seem to have been in any personal danger, having a protection from
Parliament, possibly obtained by his friend the Elector Palatine, or
Speaker Lenthall, by favour of which he boldly attended the Committee
Meetings at Somerset House. He made an attempt to gather together the
Knights of the Garter, and addressed the following petition, an
autograph copy of which is contained in the 'Parentalia':
'_To ye Right Honble ye Knights of ye Most Noble
Order of ye Garter._
'Dr. C. Wren Register and Secretarye of ye sd Most Noble Order of
ye Garter in discharge of his sworne service.
'Prayeth, that according to ye commission directed to all ye Honble
Peers of ye said Most Noble Order or to any Three of them [to
muster and consult in ye absence of ye Sovraine upon all such
emergent occasions as may concerne ye advancement or indemnity of
ye said Most Noble Order]
'It may therefore please your Honors to give yr. consent for some
sett Time and Place of meeting with such convenient speed as may
best stand with ye great Affairs. That yr. humble Servant ye
Register may Represent to yr. Honors some few Things, w^{ch} hee
humbly conceaves may much concerne ye Honor & Interest of ys. Most
Honble Order to bee provided for.'
'I delivered this Petition in ye Parliament Howse before they sate,
Jan. 23d. 1647.' (O. S.)
[_GOD'S PRISONER._]
A copy of this Petition he sent to the Deputy Chancellor. It would seem
to have startled the Knights, and Dr. Wren evidently wishes the way
smoothed. His letter, also an autograph, is headed
'Copye of my letter sent to the Deputie Chancelor for removal of
some scruples w^{ch} arose among ye Knights of ye Order before ye
Time of their meeting in Council.'
'Honble Chancelor.--I have no pticular aime in this my humble suite
to ye Lords of ye Order to propose any private or Personal Interest
of my owne, or any other man's, much lesse to engage their Honors
in anything that may seeme to contest w^{th} or dissent from ye
Highe Court of Parliament wherein they now sit & from whence I am
not ignorant ye Most Honble Society of ye Most Noble Order receaved
as at first Life and Being soe now holds its establishment. My
humble & earnest desires, are to represent such Things only as I
humbly conceave may nearly concerne ye Honor & Interests of their
Most Noble Order. To w^{ch} (next as yr. Selfe Honored Sir) I am by
oath obliged: (to preserve ye Honor thereof, & of all in itt to my
utmost Power) For zeale of this duty w^{ch} upon ye intimation of
what I here profess, I presume they will not reject, I beseech you
to give y^m this assurance as yf itt were from ye tender of my owne
mouthe, who am at this period God's Prisoner, & under Him,
'Yr servant, C. W.'
Whether the Dean succeeded in gathering the Knights together, and what
the 'Things nearly concerning their Honor' may have been if they were
_not_, as the letter implies they were not, the King's deliverance, the
'Parentalia' does not say, neither does it give any hint of the illness
to which the end of the Dean's letter appears to point.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] _Vide supra_, p. 17.
[33] R. Neile, successively Bishop of Rochester, Lichfield,
Lincoln, Durham and Winchester, and Archbishop of York, died
1640. Godwin speaks strongly of his loyalty to Church and
King, and the hatred borne to him by the Puritans.--_Praesul.
Ang._
[34] 'The Commons not being able to come at their intended
alterations in the Church while the Bench of Bishops remained
entire in the House of Peers, formed several schemes to divide
them.'--_Hist. of the Puritans_, vol. ii. p. 388. Neale.
[35] 'We, poor souls,' says Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, in his
_Hard Measure_, 'who little thought we had done anything that
might deserve a chiding, are now called to our knees at the
bar, and charged severally with high treason, being not a
little astonished at the suddenness of this crimination
compared with the perfect innocency of our own intentions,
which were only to bring us to our due places in Parliament
with safety and speed, without the least purpose of any man's
offence; but now traitors we are in all the haste, and must be
dealt with accordingly. For on December 30, in all the
extremity of frost at eight o'clock on the dark evening, are
we voted to the Tower; only two of our number had the favour
of the Black Rod, by reason of their age, which though desired
by a noble lord on my behalf would not be granted; wherein I
acknowledge and bless the gracious Providence of my God, for
had I been gratified I had been undone both in body and purse;
the rooms being strait, and the expense beyond the reach of my
estate.'--_Annals of England_, p. 420.
[36] _Biographical History of England_, vol. ii. p. 157. Grainger.
[37] _Vide Life of Barnevelde_, vol. i. p. 408. Motley.
[38] P. 26.
[39] 'Certainly,' says Nalson, 'notwithstanding this black
accusation (he is speaking of the 'fifty painful ministers'),
there cannot be a greater demonstration of the innocence of
this worthy prelate than the very articles; and that this
accusation wanted proof to carry it further than a bare
accusation, and a commitment to the Tower, where, with the
courage and patience of a primitive Christian, he continued
prisoner till the year 1660.'--_History of the Puritans_, vol.
ii. p. 223. Grey, Examination of Neale's.
[40] It is curious that nearly as violent an attack was made a
hundred years later upon Bishop Butler (the author of the
_Analogy_), because, when Bishop of Bristol, he put up a
plain, inlaid, black marble cross in the Chapel of the Palace
there. He died 1752.
[41] The Rubric before the Prayer of Consecration in the Prayer
Book of 1559-1604, was simply:--
'Then the Priest, standing up, shall say as followeth.'
The first rubric of position at the beginning of the service had
placed him 'at the north side of the Table.' For a full and
very interesting defence of Bishop Wren, see _Worship in the
Church of England_, Right Honourable A. B. B. Hope, and, _Dean
Howson 'Before the Table,'_ by the same author, in the _Church
Quarterly Review_, January, 1876.
[42] South's _Sermons_, vol. v. p. 45, ed. 1727.
[43] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 267, ed. 1724.
[44] See _Appendix I._
[45] Dr. Wilkins published a book (_A Discovery of a New World_),
concerning the art of flying, in which he said he did not
question but in the next age it will be as usual to hear a man
call for his wings when he is going a journey, as it is now to
call for his boots. The Duchess of Newcastle objecting to Dr.
Wilkins the want of baiting places on the way to his New
World, he expressed his surprise that the objection should be
made by a lady who had all her life been employed in building
castles in the air. (_The Guardian_, No. 112. Addison.) This
scheme does not seem to have reached the length of an
experiment!
[46] A most zealous Royalist; King Charles called him 'my
plain-dealing chaplain,' because Dr. Hudson told him the truth
when others would not. He was murdered at Woodcroft House,
Northamptonshire, 1648. _Desiderata Curiosa_, p. 378. Peck.
[47] _Annals of England_, p. 432.
[48] i.e. the art of dial-making.
[49] _Lives of the Gresham Professors._ Ward, p. 96.
[50] _Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 290.
CHAPTER IV.
1646-1658.
DEATH OF MRS. M. WREN--KING CHARLES MURDERED--A MONOTONOUS
WALK--INVENTIONS--A DREAM--ALL SOULS' FELLOWSHIP--BEGINNINGS OF
ROYAL SOCIETY--ASTRONOMY--AN OFFER OF RELEASE--THE
CYCLOID--CROMWELL'S FUNERAL--LETTERS FROM LONDON.
La Royauté seule, depuis vingt ans, n'avait pas été mise à
l'épreuve; seule elle avait encore à faire des promesses auxquelles
on n'eut pas été trompé.... On y revenait enfin, après tant
d'agitations comme au toit paternel qu'a fait quitter l'espérance
et où ramène la fatigue.--_Monk_, par M. Guizot, p. 69.
A heavy sorrow fell upon the imprisoned Bishop of Ely at the close of
1646. His wife was worn out by grief for the loss of her children and
anxiety for her husband, for whom Laud's fate seemed but too probable,
and the Bishop's diary records that on 'December 8, 1646, Ad Christum
evolavit pia anima conjugis E. mediâ post 5^{vum} matutinam.'[51] The
diary contains no remark, no murmur, though this loss left Bishop Wren
very desolate and full of anxiety for his seven surviving children, of
whom the eldest, Matthew, was but seventeen. Upon such troubles as these
prison life must have pressed heavily, and if Bishop Wren's captivity
was half as strict as was that of Dr. John Barwick, who was consigned to
the Tower in 1650,[52] it was a sufficient hardship. Every rumour which
reached his ears from the tumultuous world outside must have added to
his grief. The King's affairs grew more desperate, and the shadow of
Cromwell loomed larger and larger. Probably the Bishop did not expect a
long captivity. It must have come to his ears that in the proposed
treaty of Newport (1648), 'the persons only who were to expect no
pardon were the Princes Rupert and Maurice; James, Earl of Derby; John,
Earl of Bristol; William, Earl of Newcastle; Francis, Lord Cottington;
George, Lord Digby; Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,' and some fifty
others.[53]
Condemned thus without a trial, without a chance of his vindication
being known, the Bishop betook himself to prayer, and to writing a
commentary on the Holy Scriptures, a task for which, as a fine Hebrew,
Greek and Latin scholar, he was well qualified. In this work he found
solace and support, and quietly waited until the tyranny should be
overpast.
There is no need to recall in detail the thickcoming sorrows of that
time; it is but too easy to guess how doubly galling imprisonment must
have been to Bishop Wren when the royalists who were at liberty were
straining every nerve, exhausting every device to save if possible their
beloved King from his fate. In vain--at length came the fatal January 30
(1649), and King Charles, attended by Bishop Juxon, walked to the
scaffold and uttered his final words, 'I have a good cause and a
gracious God on my side; I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible
Crown where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.' There
was one of the King's loyal subjects who, we may well believe, envied
Bishop Juxon his privilege of attendance on his master to the
last--Bishop Wren, who had been with him in bright early days, had
attended him when Prince of Wales, on his romantic journey to Spain,
and, when the weight of the corruptible crown first came upon the
prince's head, had accompanied him on the journey to Scotland for his
coronation at Scone, who ever since then had been so trusted by him.
No word of his own grief, of his unavailing longing to see his King once
more, and once more kiss his hand, is expressed in the brief record in
his diary. It is simply 'A sanguinibus, O Deus!'
[_A MONOTONOUS WALK._]
Horror at the crime, at the stain of innocent blood which now defiled
his country, seems to have swallowed up all expression of personal
feeling. By degrees the rigour of his imprisonment appears to have been
a little relaxed, and by the connivance of his gaoler he obtained the
opportunity, rarely granted to prisoners, of walking upon the leads of
one of the towers. Thither he daily went for his exercise, and, says the
writer of the 'Parentalia,'
'by a just computation, he walked round the world. The earth being
affirmed to be 216,000 miles in compass (at a calculation of sixty
miles to a degree);[54] if it were possible to make a path round
the earth, an able footman going constantly twenty-four miles a
day, would compass it in 900 days, and so on in proportion of time
and miles.'
It would seem that the Bishop, finding his life was for the time spared,
and having a steady conviction that the evil days would pass, had
determined to keep himself ready in body, as in soul, for what work the
future might bring. A prison life leaves little to be recorded; the days
wore away in the Tower, divided between devotion, study, and that
unchanging monotonous walk which at least gave the prisoner a distant
glimpse of the world from which he was excluded.
He was allowed the Bible and paper and ink, but no other books. It is
the testimony of one who has studied Bishop Wren's manuscript--
'He wrote in an exquisite hand, in very fair Latin, a commentary on
much of Holy Scripture enough to fill an oak box of no mean
dimensions. This box he committed to the care of Dr. Beaumont,
master of S. Peter's College.[55] Had the Puritans read the MS.
they would have found some antidote to their poison.'
Two sermons and some treatises were also written during his captivity.
Probably suspicion attached to anything that he did, for it is said to
have been all written by stealth.
His nephew's life differed as widely from his own as did their
characters. Christopher was at Oxford, deep in the experiments of the
'New learning,' and in the inventions which it suggested to his ready
brain and dexterous fingers.
[_DIPLOGRAPHIC PEN._]
One invention which he was at the time proud of was that of a--
'diplographic instrument for writing with two pens,' whose uses he
thus describes; 'by the help of this instrument, every ordinary
penman may at all times be suddenly fitted to write two several
copies of any deeds and evidences, from the shortest to the
longest length of lines, in the very same compass of time, and
with as much ease and beauty, without any dividing or ruling; as,
without the help of the instrument, he could have despatched but
one.'
So successful was this instrument, that he obtained a patent for it for
seventeen years. In the same year an exact duplicate of this invention
was brought from France, and another patent taken out for the same
number of years, by Mr. William Petty,[56] who claimed to be the
inventor.
Wren was indignant at the notion that he had copied another person's
idea, and gives good reasons for his belief that his own instrument had
been described to Petty by a friend of his. Three years later Wren wrote
of it as 'an obvious Thing, a cast-off Toy;' ending, 'Indeed though I
care not for having a Successor in Invention, yet it behoves me to
vindicate myself from the Aspersion of having a Predecessor.'
Another invention Wren describes as a 'weather clock.' It consisted of a
clock affixed to a weather cock that moved a rundle covered with paper,
upon which the clock moved a black-lead pencil, so that the observer,
by the traces of the pencil on the paper, might certainly conclude what
winds had blown in his absence for twelve hours' space. The 'Parentalia'
contains a careful drawing in pen and sepia of this invention
elaborately worked out and remarkable for the truth and finish of the
drawing. Some of these designs, and an instrument for sowing corn,
nearly identical with a modern 'drill,' he dedicated in a quaintly
formal letter to his father's friend, the Prince Palatine. He appeared
before the Prince in another character, due probably to his Westminster
training. A play was performed (about 1652) at Oxford before the Prince,
Dr. Seth Ward,[57] and several others, entitled 'Hey for Honesty, down
with Knavery,' translated by Thomas Randolph from the Plutus of
Aristophanes, in which Christopher sustained the part of Neanias.[58] It
is provoking to have this bare record merely, and no clue as to the
success or failure of any part of the performance, especially where the
young actor was concerned.
To about the same date belongs a Latin letter written by Christopher to
his father, signed 'Christophorus Regulus,' describing in glowing terms
a visit paid in the spring to a friend's house. Some pretty touches give
'the lofty woods with their clamorous republic of rooks, the great
fountains, the placid pools--without, you might say a terrestrial
paradise, but within, heaven itself.' It may have been, though there is
nothing in its favour but conjecture, that this was Bletchingdon House,
and that among 'the virgins singing holy psalms,' whom he mentions, was
his future bride Faith, (or as she spelt it, 'ffaith') Coghill. The
letter says much, as does all that passed between them, for the warm
affection existing between father and son, and the sincerely religious
tone of Christopher's mind.
[_BATTLE OF WORCESTER._]
The desperate efforts of the Royalists shortly after this period to
overthrow Cromwell's tyranny and to put Charles II. on the throne,
received a cruel check in the disastrous battle of Worcester (1651),
Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' This crushed the hopes of the Royalists and
obliged them to turn their every effort and thought to effecting the
escape of their prince. He must have passed very near Knoyle Hill, when
he crossed Salisbury Plain and met at Stonehenge the friends who at last
succeeded in conveying him to the coast. Knoyle Hill had its own
fugitive to shelter.
Aubrey, the Wiltshire Antiquary, gives the account of a vivid dream
which Christopher Wren had, when staying, in the autumn of 1651, with
Dean Wren at Knoyle. He
'dreamed he saw a fight in a great market-place, which he knew not,
where some were flying and others pursuing; and among those who
fled, he saw a kinsman of his, who went into Scotland with the
King's army. They heard in the country that the King was come into
England, but whereabouts he was they could not tell. The next night
came his kinsman to Knoyle Hill, and brought with him the
disastrous news of Charles II.'s defeat at Worcester.'[59]
It seems likely that this 'kinsman' was Bishop Wren's son Matthew, who
afterwards went to the Hague. There also, when his escape had been with
great difficulty contrived, went King Charles, as his brother-in-law,
the Prince of Orange, was his steady friend. In the hope of utterly
putting down the Cavaliers, the greatest severity was shown at this time
to all who had helped the King, and even to those who merely boasted of
their good will towards him. Among those who suffered was Inigo Jones,
who had been architect to James I. and to Charles I., had been steadily
loyal to the Stuarts, and was therefore an object of suspicion. He lived
to see what was thought the utter downfall of the monarchy, and
following upon this the desecration and ruin of the finest churches in
England. S. Paul's, on which he had spent much labour and skill, was, as
being connected with Archbishop Laud, an object of special hatred to the
Puritans. It suffered every possible injury. The fine portico designed
by Inigo Jones was filled with stalls, blocked up by booths, and used as
a market-place. The year after the battle of Worcester, Inigo Jones
died, poor and lonely, in a lodging close to the defaced cathedral. He
and Christopher Wren must probably have met. Wren had a sincere
admiration for his predecessor's skill, and spoke of the S. Paul's
portico as 'an exquisite piece in itself.'
[_MAKING HIMSELF._]
In the autumn of 1653, Wren, then just twenty-one, was elected to a
fellowship at All Souls, and happy in the comparative tranquillity of
Oxford, pursued the various studies which he loved. All this time he was
'making himself,' as was said of Sir Walter Scott in his childhood on
the Scotch hills, though perhaps at the time no one could have guessed
the particular manner in which he would distinguish himself.
In the following summer he made acquaintance with John Evelyn, who had
come up to Oxford to hear the 'Philosophy Act.' Evelyn mentioned that
after a dinner at All Souls he 'visited that miracle of a youth Mr.
Christopher Wren, nephew to the Bishop of Ely.'[60]
'A day or two later Evelyn dined with 'that most obliging and
universally curious Dr. Wilkins at Wadham College, who showed him
his "transparent apiaries, built like castles, and so ordered one
upon another as one might take the honey without hurting the bees,"
his "hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words, by a
long, concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks
through it at good distance;" and his gallery filled with
mathematical and other curiosities; a "thermometer," still a
curiosity, though fifty-two years had elapsed since Galileo
invented the first; a "way-wiser," which, when placed in a coach,
exactly measured the miles it travelled, and showed them by an
index; "a monstrous magnet," and many other inventions, most of
them of his owne and that prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher
Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble which he had
stained with a lively red very deepe, as beautiful as if it had
been natural.'
The acquaintance thus made with Christopher Wren ripened into a
friendship lasting until Evelyn's death in 1706.
Dr. Wilkins was also of Evelyn's friends, though he was very submissive
to Cromwell.[61] It is curious to contrast two accounts which occur in
the same page of Evelyn's diary.
'_December 25, 1655._ There was no more notice taken of Christmas
Day in churches. I went to London, where Dr. Wild preached the
funeral sermon of Preaching, this being the last day, after which
Cromwell's proclamation was to take place, that none of the Church
of England should dare either to preach or administer Sacraments,
teach schoole etc. on paine of imprisonment or exile. So this was
the mournfullest day that in my life I had seene, or the Church of
England herselfe since the Reformation; to the greate rejoicing of
both Papist and Presbyter. So pathetic was his discourse (on 2 Cor.
xiii. 9) that it drew many teares from the auditory. Myself, wife,
and some of our family received the Communion; God make me
thankfull that hath hitherto provided for us the food of our soules
as well as bodies! The Lord Jesus pity our distressed Church, and
bring back the captivity of Sion!
'_February 10, 1656._ I heard Dr. Wilkins preach before the Lord
Mayor in S. Paul's, shewing how obedience was preferable to
sacrifice. He was a most obliging person, who had married the
Protector's sister, and tooke greate paines to preserve the
Universities from the ignorant sacrilegious commanders and
souldiers, who would faine have demolished all places and persons
that pretended to learning.'
[_GERM OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY._]
Dr. Wilkins appears, like too many of that time, to have regarded the
Church as utterly overthrown, and probably believed honestly in his
peculiar interpretation of the text upon which he preached. Much credit
is however due to him for the idea of the Oxford meetings, and for the
hospitality which he showed. These meetings were the germ of the Royal
Society, and to them Dr. Thomas Sprat (afterwards Bishop of Rochester),
a great friend of Christopher Wren's, bears testimony:--
'Wadham College,'[62] he says, 'was then the place of resort for
virtuous and learned men. Their first purpose was no more than
only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing
in quiet, one with another, without being engaged in the passions
and madness of that dismal age. And from the institution of that
assembly it had been enough if no other advantage had come but
this; that by these means there was a race of young men provided
against the next age, whose minds receiving from them their first
impressions of sober and generous knowledge, were invincibly armed
against all the enchantments of enthusiasm.... It was in good
measure by the influence which these gentlemen had over the rest,
that the university itself, or at least any part of its discipline
and order, was saved from ruin.... Nor indeed could it be
otherwise, for such spiritual frenzies, which did then bear rule,
can never stand long before a clear and deep skill in nature. It is
almost impossible, that they who converse much with the subtilty of
things, should be deluded by such thick deceits. There is but one
better charm in the world than real philosophy, to allay the
impulses of the false spirit, and that is the blessed Presence and
assistance of the True.'
In 1656, on the 29th of May, Dean Wren died. Sorrow and anxiety, the
desolation of the Church, the apparent ruin of the monarchy, had worn
out his gentle spirit; and probably little thinking how great a change
was approaching to free the country, he passed away, aged 69, at the
house of his son-in-law, Mr. Holder, and was buried in the chancel of
Bletchingdon Church.[63] When we look back to the years of the
Rebellion, their darkness is lightened for us by the knowledge that the
Restoration came at last, and it is difficult to realise fully how the
times appeared to those who actually lived in them, to whom the years
brought only fresh losses and sorrows, and the sickness of hope
deferred.
Knowing how, on the 29th of May, but four years later, all England was
welcoming back the King to 'enjoy his own again,' one can hardly forbear
wishing that Dean Wren might have been spared to see that day; yet those
who loved him best cannot have grudged him the fulness of that peace
which all his life he had desired, and which he had invoked upon his
first home. Christopher was very warmly attached to his father, as all
his letters show, and must have grieved greatly for his death.
[_ASTRONOMY PROFESSORSHIP._]
Soon after this he was summoned to London. The Gresham professor of
astronomy, Mr. Laurence Rooke, retired in 1657, and the chair was
offered to Wren. He was but twenty-four and doubted whether he should
accept such a post while so young, and he clung to Oxford and his
studies there.
The friends whom he consulted advised him differently; accordingly he
came up to London and delivered his opening address to a considerable
audience. It was in Latin, and after a brief apology for his youth
passed into a sketch of the history of astronomy. He dwells on the great
riches of the science, how it is the handmaid of theology, the queen of
sciences, speaks of the vast discoveries made by its means, touches upon
Copernicus, whose mind first grasped the idea that the earth moved round
the sun, then upon Kepler and upon Galileo, and the storms that had
arisen, when in 1632 he had demonstrated that truth at which Copernicus
had guessed; he praises highly Galileo's invention of the telescope,
pays a tribute to the great men who had lectured at Gresham on these
subjects, and especially to his own predecessor, Rooke, and winds up
with an eloquent description of London as a Pandora of cities to whom
each of the choir of planets gave a peculiar blessing, on whom the sun
shines benignly, who possesses more inhabitants than any city in the
world, a healthy air, a fertile soil stretching far around her,
beautiful buildings springing as of themselves from the earth, and,
lastly, is blessed by the moon, 'the governess of floods,' who alluring
the seas thus far inland by means of the beloved Thames, makes her the
city which nourishes the best seamen of the world. The rough draft of
this address, written by Christopher in a bold hand with a few changes
and corrections, is preserved in the 'Parentalia.'
This professorship obliged him to come up to London and give a course of
lectures every Wednesday in term time at Gresham College. None of these
lectures have been preserved, and it seems from a hint in one of Dr.
Sprat's letters, that Wren was in the habit of lecturing from rough
notes merely, and used no pains to keep any record of them.
['_HE MAY COME OUT AN HE WILL._']
At this time he made acquaintance with Richard Claypole, who was
married to Elizabeth, Cromwell's favourite daughter; both she and her
sister, Lady Falconbridge, were faithful members of the persecuted
Church of England. Dr. Hewet still read the Prayer Book services in S.
Gregory's Church, which adjoined S. Paul's, and there the two sisters
resorted, there Dr. Hewet secretly married Mary Cromwell to Lord
Falconbridge, as neither would be satisfied with the ceremony performed
by an independent preacher. Cromwell's daughters used all their
influence with their father on the side of mercy, but when the excellent
Dr. Hewet fell under his displeasure they pleaded in vain for his
life.[64] Mr. Claypole professed a fondness for mathematical science and
frequently invited Christopher Wren to his house. On one of these
occasions when Wren was dining there, Cromwell himself entered, and, as
was his custom in his own family, sat down to table without speech or
ceremony. After a while he fixed his eyes on Christopher and said, 'Your
uncle has been long confined in the Tower.' 'He has so, sir,' said Wren;
'but he bears his afflictions with great patience and resignation.' 'He
may come out an he will,' was Cromwell's unexpected reply. 'Will your
Highness permit me to take him this from your own mouth?' said Wren,
hardly able to believe his ears. 'Yes, you may,' said Cromwell briefly.
At the earliest possible moment Christopher hurried to the Tower to
communicate to his uncle the tidings that the long years of his
imprisonment were over. When he had poured out his news the Bishop
replied warmly that it was not the first time he had received the like
intimation from that miscreant, but he disdained the terms proposed for
his enlargement, which were a mean acknowledgment of his favour and an
abject submission to his detestable tyranny; that he was determined to
tarry the Lord's leisure, and owe his deliverance, which was not far
off, to Him only. Such an answer must have been startling enough to
Christopher, and may have opened his eyes to the causes of Cromwell's
seeming leniency. He left the brave old man to await the deliverance
which the keen sight of faith showed him as drawing near, and returned
to his own work.
The death of Mrs. Claypole in the following summer must have checked an
intimacy upon which Bishop Wren looked with little favour. She died of a
terrible illness, and in the paroxysms of her pain bitterly reproached
Cromwell for the innocent blood that he had shed, and particularly for
that of Dr. Hewet.
At about this period some experiments were made by Wren's philosophical
friends wherein he took a principal part, and to which the barometer,
now in common use, is mainly due. The first instrument of the kind was
invented by Torricelli, the pupil of Galileo, who used it in order to
ascertain the pressure of the air on fluids, the supposed cause of which
pressure was the passing by of the body of the moon. Pascal, in those
earlier days when his great genius employed itself on natural
philosophy, made several experiments at Rouen, in 1646, with a friend,
M. Petit, using 'Torricelli's tube,' as it was called. Similar trials
were afterwards made by M. Perier, his brother-in-law, among the
mountains of Auvergne. They then discovered that the rising and falling
of the mercury was due not to the moon, but to the differences in the
specific gravity of the atmosphere. Wren's experiments led him to the
same conclusion, and at a later period he and Robert Boyle continued
them until they produced the barometer, though it was not used commonly
as a weather-glass until a much later date. Pascal did not pursue his
discovery, but was satisfied with having proved the point for which he
was contending.
[_THE CYCLOID._]
Though Wren and Pascal never met, some communication passed between
them. Pascal, who was Wren's senior by eleven years, propounded a
problem, under the name of Jean de Monfert, to the mathematicians of
England, adding a challenge to them to solve it by a given day.
Christopher sent a solution, and in his turn propounded a problem which
seems never to have been answered. Pascal is said to have considered
Wren's solution very carefully, but the promised prize of twenty
pistoles was withheld by some trickery. Besides this, Wren wrote four
mathematical tracts on the cycloid, and sent them to Dr. J. Wallis, who
was publishing a book on mathematics. He corresponded with Pascal,[65]
who was writing on the cycloid by the name of _la Roulette_, the
problem being 'to determine the curve made in the air by the nail of a
coach wheel from the moment it rises from the ground, till the moment
when the continual rolling of the wheel brings it back to the ground,
after a complete turn, supposing the wheel a perfect circle and the
ground perfectly level.'
[_CROMWELL'S FUNERAL._]
Wren was engaged also in a series of observations on the planet Saturn.
These pursuits were, however, interrupted by an event that convulsed all
England. On September 3, 1658, during a fearful storm which swept over
London, Oliver Cromwell died. Hume[66] gives a terrible account of the
state of constant suspicion and fear of assassination in which Cromwell
passed the last year of his life; the secret armour which he wore, his
constant guard of soldiers wherever he moved, his fears on a journey,
his habit of never returning the way he had come, nor by the direct
road, seldom sleeping above three nights together in the same chamber,
or in any he did not choose himself, or without sentinels. His body lay
in state for a considerable time. The funeral, on October 22, Evelyn
calls 'superb.' He says:--
'I saw the Protector carried from Somerset House on a velvet bed of
state drawn by six black horses, houss'd with the same; the pall
held up by his new lords; Oliver lying in effigie in royal robes,
crown'd with a crown, sceptre, and globe like a king ... a knight
of honour armed _cap-à-pie_, and, after all, his guard, soldiers,
and innumerable mourners. In this equipage they proceeded to
Westminster; but it was the joyfullest funeral I ever saw, for
there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away
with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streets
as they went.'
Under the feeble rule of Richard Cromwell at first and then under the
multiform tyranny of the reassembled 'Long Parliament,' every kind of
disorder and oppression had free course. Monk grievously disappointed
the Royalist hopes by proclaiming Richard Cromwell. The day of
deliverance appeared more than ever distant.
[_LETTERS FROM LONDON._]
The Gresham Professors were all driven out of the college except Dr.
Goddard, Cromwell's physician, and the place was garrisoned by soldiers,
who did it great damage. Matthew Wren made an attempt two days after
Cromwell's funeral to enter the college, and sent a curious account to
Christopher, who had returned to All Souls at Oxford. He writes:
'Dear Cousin,--Yesterday being the first of the term, I resolved to
see whether Dr. Horton[67] entertained the new auditory at Gresham
with any lecture, for I took it for granted that if his divinity
could be spared your mathematics would not be expected. But at the
gate I was stopped by a man with a gun, who told me there was no
admission upon that account, as the college was reformed into a
garrison. Then changing my pretension, I scarce got permission to
go in to Dr. Goddard, who gave me assurance enough that none of
your colleagues intend to appear this term unless the soldiers be
removed, of which there is no probability. Upon these premises it
is the opinion of all your friends that you may save that journey
hither, unless some other occasion calls you; and for these I
expect you will make me your agent, if they be such as I am capable
of despatching.
'But it will not perhaps be amiss to take from hence the occasion
of a short and civil letter to the Committee, signifying that you
hope you have not deceived their expectations in choosing you, and
that you are ready to attend your duty but for this public
interruption and exclusion from your chamber; or what else you will
that looks towards this.
'I know no more domestic news than what everybody talks of.
Yesterday I was in Westminster Hall, and saw only Keudigate and
Windham in the two courts, and Wild and Parker in the Exchequer. In
the Chancery none at all; Bradshaw keeps the seal as if it were to
be carried before him in the other world, whither he is going. Glyn
and Fountain pleaded at the bar. They talk much of the mediation of
the two Crowns, and proceed so far as to name Marshall Clerambault
for the Embassador who is to come hither from France. My service
to all friends. Dear Cousin, your most humble servant,
'M. W.
'London, October 25, 1658.'
Dr. Sprat[68] writes also to Christopher at about the same time:
'Dear Sir,--This day I went to visit Gresham College, but found the
place in such a nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so
infernal that if you should now come to make use of your tube, it
would be like Dives looking out of hell into heaven. Dr. Goddard,
of all your colleagues, keeps possession, which he could never be
able to do had he not before prepared his nose for camp perfumes by
his voyage into Scotland, and had he not such excellent
restoratives in his cellars.'
FOOTNOTES:
[51] 'December 8, 1646. The pious soul of my wife Eliza flew up to
Christ at half-past five in the morning.'
[52] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, ed. 1724, p. 122.
[53] Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol.
iii. p. 333.
[54] It is really 24,899 miles.
[55] The box is, I believe, in Peterhouse Library to this day, but
a portion of the Commentary was published as a treatise
against the Socinians by the Bishop's son Matthew, under the
title of _Increpatio Bar Jesu, sive polemicae adsectiones
locorum aliquot S. Scripturae ab imposturis perversis in
Catechesis Racoviana collectae._
[56] Petty's history is a curious one. The son of a clothier of
Rumsey; he educated himself; was some years in the navy;
became Gresham professor of music; then a physician of some
fame; was also Henry Cromwell's secretary; was a commissioner
for Ireland, and married Sir Hardress Waller's daughter. Soon
after the Restoration he was knighted by Charles II. Petty
invented a 'double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and
tide; it was flat-bottomed, had two distinct keels cramped
together with huge timbers, so as a violent stream run
between: it bore a monstrous broad sail.' It excited much
interest at the time, made one very successful voyage, and was
afterwards wrecked in a frightful storm. Its model is still
preserved at the Royal Society, of which he became a member.
He died in 1687. _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, p. 217.
Ward. See also Evelyn's _Diary_ of March 22, 1675, for an
interesting account of Petty's career.
[57] Seth Ward, born 1617. Was Savilian Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford and an active member of the Royal Society. Afterwards
Bishop of Exeter and then of Salisbury; died 1689.
[58] _Life of Sir C. Wren_, by J. Elmes, p. 12. The full title of
the play was '[Greek: Ploutophthalmia Ploutogamia],' a
pleasant comedy intituled _Hey for Honesty_, &c., augmented
and published by F. J. A copy, published in 1651, and
containing a MS. note saying that Wren took the part of
'Neanias Adolescens,' was in the possession of Isaac Reed, a
commentator on Shakespeare and a great book collector, who
died in 1807. His epitaph (given in _Notes and Queries_,
series v., xiii. p. 304) was as follows:--
'Reader of these few lines take heed, And mend your ways for
my sake; For you must die like Isaac Reed, Tho' you read till
your eyes ache.'
T. Randolph was a friend and pupil of Ben Jonson's; he published
_The Muses' Looking Glass_, which satirised the Puritans; died
1634.
[59] Miscellanies, ed. 1696.
[60] _Diary_, July 13, 1654.
[61] _Præsul. Ang._, p. 779. Godwin.
[62] _Hist. of Royal Society._ Bishop Sprat, ed. 1722, p. 53.
[63] 'Dr. Christopher Wren, Deane of Windsor, was buried June 3,
1656,' is the entry in the register; there does not appear to
be any monument or brass to his memory. The _Parentalia_ and
Elmes's Life give 1658, but the dates are frequently
inaccurate in both books.
[64] Evelyn's _Diary_, March 31, 1658. 'That holy martyr Dr. Hewer
condemned to die, without law, jury or justice by a mock
council of State as they called it. A dangerous, treacherous
time. June 8, _ib._ That excellent preacher and holy man Dr.
Hewer was martyred for having intelligence of his Majesty,
through the Lord Marquess of Ormond. He was beheaded on Tower
Hill. The name was spelt Hewer, Hewet, and Hewett.
[65] Pascal is said to have written his treatise on the cycloid
from a religious motive. It was a common opinion in France
that the study of natural sciences, especially of mathematics,
led to infidelity. Accordingly Pascal, writing for
geometricians and mathematicians, wished to show, by the
solution, vainly sought before, of this problem, that the same
man who wrote the _Lettres à un Provincial_ could also
instruct them in abstract science, and he published his
treatise in the intervals of writing the _Pensées_. See _Vie
de Pascal, par sa soeur Mad. Perier, Pensées de Pascal_, p.
13, ed. 1839.
[66] _Hist. of England_, vol. vii. ch. lxi. p. 292.
[67] Gresham Professor of Divinity, confirmed in his post by
Cromwell.
[68] Thomas Sprat, D.D., Dean of Westminster, and afterwards Bishop
of Rochester; was an active member of the Royal Society, and
was educated at Wadham College with Sir C. Wren, whose
intimate friend he was: born 1636; died 1713.
CHAPTER V.
1659-1663.
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION--DIFFICULTY OF PRESERVING IT--LETTERS FROM
LORD CLARENDON--BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE--THE
RESTORATION--CONVOCATION--SAVILIAN PROFESSORSHIP--ROYAL
SOCIETY--'ELEPHANT IN THE MOON'--PEMBROKE CHAPEL BEGUN.
Yet bethink thee that the spirit whence those princely bounties flowed
To the ties of private feeling all its force and being owed;
Severed from the bonds of kindred, taught his lonely heart to school,
By his Father's chastening kindness or his Church's sterner rule;
Oft to spots by memory cherished, where his earliest love began,
In his age's desolation, fondly turned the childless man.
_Phrontisterion_, by Dean Mansel.
All was confusion, doubt and anxiety in the country; the Royalist plots
failed; the Parliament was powerless; no one knew whether Monk intended,
as was still hoped by a few, to bring back the King, or to support the
Parliament, or to make himself dictator; those were keen eyes which
could discern through the darkness any ray of approaching light.
Nowhere perhaps did matters seem more desperate than in the Church. Her
discipline and order, barely revived by the murdered Archbishop, had
been for eighteen years trampled upon and neglected; 'by the
licentiousness of the times,' many were growing up unbaptised and
ignorant of Christianity. The number of bishops living was but small,
many sees being already vacant when the Civil War broke out, and
imprisonments and hardships had so reduced the Prelates that, in 1659,
but ten survived, one of whom, Dr. Brownrigg, Bishop of Exeter, very
soon died. Of the nine others, many were very old; the Bishop of London
(Juxon) was very ill, and the Bishop of Ely was in prison. How was the
succession to be preserved if the troubles of the times continued? The
Scotch Church had been reduced by persecution; the Irish Bishops were in
as evil a plight as their English brethren, and the difficulty of
communication was great. There was then no daughter Church in America or
in the Colonies to render back in time of need the grace they had
themselves received. It was hardly possible for the English Bishops to
meet for consultation; but the indefatigable Dr. Barwick was
authorised[69]--
'not only to ride about among them all, and by proposing and
explaining to each what was thought for the Church's Service; to
collect the opinions and resolutions of every one of them upon all
difficult affairs; but also to procure the communication of all
that was needful between their lordships and His Majesty, which he
frequently did by letters written in characters' (_i.e._ cypher).
[_LETTERS IN CYPHER._]
Great difficulties lay in the way of the first step--a canonical
election--and in the face of the watchful enmity of the Church of Rome,
no doubtful step could be taken; and even were this difficulty
surmounted and three Bishops got together, the risk of imprisonment and
death to both consecrators and consecrated needed no one to point it
out. The two with whom Dr. Barwick principally consulted were the
Bishops of Ely and Salisbury. Many letters passed between Dr. Barwick
and Mr. Hyde,[70] at Brussels, in one of which, written on July 8,
1659,[71] the latter speaks of--
'much preferring the Bishop of Ely's judgment and advice in that
point (the method of election) before any man's. I pray remember my
service with all imaginable reverence to my Lord of Ely and assure
him, that the King will always return that candour, benignity and
equality to both the Universities, which he wishes; and I hope all
who shall be entrusted by him in that great affair will be as just
and dispassioned in all their interpositions and look upon them as
equal lights to learning and piety and equally worthy of all
encouragement and protection. And if at present my Lord of Ely will
recommend any person to his Majesty for the Bishoprick of Carlisle,
he shall be approved. And if my Lord will transmit a list of
persons to be specially recommended to the King for any dignities
of the Church, I dare promise the persons shall find that they
could not have been better recommended. I know not what more to add
but my hearty service to your sick friend,[72] whose health I pray
for as a publick concernment. To yourself I shall say no more but
that I shall think myself very faulty if I do not serve you very
heartily, and if you do not with the first receive some evidence of
the sense the King hath of your service.
'I am very heartily, Sir, your most affectionate servant,
'HYDE.'
These letters, thirty-six in number, were transmitted in cypher, and
with the utmost precaution and considerable delay in awaiting a safe
opportunity; the one quoted from is endorsed 'Received not till Aug.
29.' Nor was the cypher, however carefully contrived, always a security
when the letters fell into the wrong hands. Dr. Wallis, the
mathematician, was a most skilful decypherer, and was the person who
decyphered the King's papers taken in his cabinet at Naseby, though the
Royalists considered this a vain boast until Matthew Wren, the Bishop's
eldest son, obtained the proof of it from Dr. Wallis himself. One
important letter from Dr. Barwick to Mr. Hyde fell into Dr. Wallis'
hands; Mr. Allestry his coadjutor coming from Brussels was seized and
imprisoned as soon as he landed. Bishop Morton of Durham, the last
surviving Prelate of the province of York, had died, as his epitaph
says, 'deprived of all his goods except a good name and a good
conscience.' The rising in Cheshire had been unsuccessful. Monk refused
to give even his brother any hint of his intentions, and made no reply
to the letter which King Charles sent to him from Breda. In short,
matters were as adverse as it was possible for them to be, but yet Dr.
Barwick was undiscouraged; with fresh precautions the correspondence
with Mr. Hyde was resumed, and in truth the matter pressed; 'for,' says
Dr. Barwick, writing in Sept. 1659, after mentioning his circuit among
some of the surviving Bishops,[73] 'I fear this winter will go hard with
some of them that may worst be spared in the due performance of such a
work.' It is evident that Dr. Barwick was able to see and consult the
imprisoned Bishop of Ely whenever it was needful. These hurried
meetings, full of anxiety and peril as they were, must have been a great
refreshment to the Bishop, who thus still took part in the work of the
Church. He declined to send any list of names to the King, though he
pressed Dr. Barwick to accept the Bishoprick of Man. Mr. Hyde[74] wrote
a letter in September, which was not received till November 10, where he
says:--
['_WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THE CHURCH?_']
'The King hath done all that is in his power to do; and if my Lords
the Bishops will not do the rest, what is to become of the Church?
The conspiracies to destroy it are very evident; and if there be no
combination to preserve it, it must expire. I do assure you the
names of all the Bishops who are alive, and their several ages, are
as well known at Rome as in England, and both the Papist and the
Presbyterian value themselves very much upon computing in how few
years the Church of England must expire.' ... And again: 'His
Majesty is most confident that the Bishop of Ely will give all the
assistance and advice which his restraint will permit him to do....
I do beseech you,' says the next letter, 'present my humble service
to my Lord of Ely, whose benediction, I do hope to live to receive
at his own feet. I pray send me word our sick friend is in perfect
health.'
But little progress appears to have been made, since Mr. Hyde writes,
Nov. 28:--
'I can say no more with reference to the Church, but that if there
be nothing hinders it but the winter it be quickly over, whilst
preparations are making; and yet, God knows, it will be almost a
miracle, if the winter doth not take away half the Bishops that are
left alive; and I must still lament that some way is not found that
the Bishop of Ely may be at liberty; which would carry on this work
more than any expedient that I can think of.'
An entry in Evelyn's diary shows the general state of affairs at this
time:--
'_October 11._ The armie now turned out the Parliament. We had now
no government in the nation; all in confusion; no magistrate either
own'd or pretended but the souldiers, and they not agreed. God
Almighty have mercy on and settle us!'
Evelyn was not slack in doing what in him lay towards this much-desired
settlement:--
'_November 7._ Was published my bold "Apologie" for the King in
this time of danger when it was capital to speake or write in
favour of him. It was printed twice, so universally it took.'
A fast was kept in secret, apparently about once a fortnight, by the
Churchmen in London to pray 'for God's mercy to our calamitous Church.'
On _February 3, 1660_, Evelyn writes:--
'General Monk came to London from Scotland, but no man knew what he
would do or declare. Yet he was met on all his way by the gentlemen
of all the counties which he passed, with petitions that he would
recall the old, long-interrupted Parliament, and settle the nation
in some order, being at this time in most prodigious confusion and
under no government, everybody expecting what would be next and
what he would do.'
Later in the same month Mr. Hyde wrote almost in despair to Dr.
Barwick:[75]
'It would be very good news if I could hear of my Lord
of Ely being in full liberty, to whom I pray present my humble
service. The truth is I have but little hope of the business of the
Church but by his being at liberty, and therefore I hope he will
make no scruple of accepting it if it be offered, or if it can be
reasonably obtained.'
The suspense which Evelyn describes had not long to be endured. On
February 11, the very day after Monk had dismayed the city by breaking
down its gates and allowing the soldiers to march about it in triumph,
he turned out the Parliament then sitting at Westminster, and called
together the former one, to the great joy of the people. From this
moment all hearts and wishes turned to the exiled royal family as the
one hope left of tranquillity and order; thus suddenly, when the
royalist hopes were lowest, their hearts' desire was given to them.
[_BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE._]
Monk, now in supreme power, did not forget the Bishop of Ely, whose
fellow-captive he had been and who must have rejoiced to see Monk at
last justify his confidence. On March 15 the lieutenant of the Tower
received the order 'That Dr. Wren, Bishop of Ely, be discharged from his
imprisonment.' Thus the eighteen years of captivity came to an end, and
the Bishop came forth from the Tower, an old man of seventy-five,
broken by many sorrows.
It cannot have been with unmixed joy that he once more trod another path
than that wonted one on the leads of the Tower. True, the King was
coming home in peace to a people longing to receive him. This return was
a promise of deliverance for the Church, and an end to that difficulty
of preserving the Apostolical Succession which had so nearly proved a
fatal one. And yet, the flood, which in those eighteen years had passed
over the land, had swept away many whom the Bishop loved well. The King
might return in triumph, but he was not the sovereign whom, from his
youth, Bishop Wren had loved and served. The primate with whom he had
worked, had been cruelly murdered; and none could restore the wife and
children who had pined and died during the long years of his
imprisonment. The Church, however, remained, and for her Bishop Wren
would work while life lasted. Part of his employment in the Tower had
been the writing of treatises and sermons, one of which on the Scotch
Covenant, from the text 'Neither behave thyself frowardly in the
covenant,' he dispersed over the dioceses of Norwich and Ely, lodging
the while where he could in London, as he was not yet allowed to go back
either to Downham in Suffolk or to Ely House in Holborn. It appeared, as
was truly said, as if he had not been 'so much released as thrust out of
prison.'
Homeless and penniless as he then seemed, Bishop Wren's spirit was in no
respect daunted; when he left in safety the Tower where he had once
thought to lay his head on the block, he planned the thank-offering
which he would make to God. His children, from whom he had been so long
separated, who were scattered everywhere and had been reduced to the
greatest straits, he with much difficulty gathered together again, and
they awaited the event of Monk's decision.
[_THE RESTORATION._]
At length came that 29th of May so often described in history and
fiction. Evelyn's[76] account of it is interesting, as that of an
eyewitness:--
'This day his majestie Charles II. came to London, after a sad and
long exile and calamitous suffering both of the king and church,
being seventeen yeares. This was also his birthday; and with a
triumph of above 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords
and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strewed with
flowers, the bells ringing, the streetes hung with tapestry,
fountaines running with wine; the maior, aldermen, and all the
companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; lords
and nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windowes
and balconies well set with ladies: trumpets, music, and myriads of
people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were
seven houres in passing the citty, even from two in afternoone till
nine at night. I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed
God. All this was don without one drop of bloudshed, and by that
very army which rebelled against him.'
By degrees, matters settled down to a more ordinary level. The Church
Service was restored at Whitehall, and on June 28 Pepys mentions[77]
'poor Bishop Wren going to chapel, it being a thanksgiving day for the
King's returne.'
The vacant sees were now filled up as speedily as possible. Bishop Juxon
was translated to Canterbury, Sheldon succeeding him as Bishop of
London; the northern province, then wholly without bishops, had its
losses supplied.
The Prayer Book was not by any means commonly used again for some time.
Pepys characteristically says--[78]
'_July 1._--This morning come home my fine camlett cloak, with gold
buttons, and a silk suit which cost me much money, and I pray God
make me able to pay for it. In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a
good sermon by a stranger, but no Common Prayer yet.'
In the following November, to quote the same writer, 'men did begin to
nibble at the Common Prayer.' Matters were really progressing, the
cathedrals and the court chapels as well as those in the Bishop's
palaces setting the example. In February (1661) Evelyn heard 'Dr.
Baldero preach at Ely House on St. Matthew vi. 33; after the sermon the
Bishop of Ely gave us the blessing very pontifically.'[79]
[_ELY HOUSE._]
Ely House was an ancient possession of the see,[80] the gift of William
de Ludd, who in the reign of Edward I. gave the house and endowed it
with his manor of Ouldbourne, a name which soon grew into Holbourn. The
garden and its strawberries are immortalised by Shakespeare. It was
leased to Sir Christopher Hatton by Bishop Cox in Queen Elizabeth's
reign, and a struggle between the Hatton family and the Bishops of Ely
then began which lasted until 1772.[81] In Wren's time, the Bishops had
recovered some of the buildings, and he had lived here before the
rebellion. During that time the house had been used as a prison for
'malignant priests,' especially those of the city of London, and he must
have found the whole building sorely defaced and injured.
The chapel, dedicated to S. Etheldreda, is a beautiful piece of Gothic
architecture; and there, when it had been cleansed and restored to some
order, many of the new bishops were consecrated, and Bishop Wren
assisted at that preservation of the Apostolical Succession which but
two years before had seemed well-nigh hopeless.
Much was done at Ely House. In the May of 1661 the Convocation of
Canterbury met in S. Paul's, its marred, plundered condition not inaptly
showing the adversities through which the Church of England had passed.
The Convocation had much work before it, the most pressing being to
prepare a service for the baptism of those of riper years and for May
29. In order to this a committee of both Houses of Convocation was
formed, which met at Ely House, and of which Bishop Wren appears to have
been the ruling spirit. Many were still half afraid of their true
position and afraid of the Puritan party; eighteen years of confusion
and persecution had slackened all discipline, and many things seemed
natural to the new generation which neither Bishop Andrewes nor
Archbishop Laud would have tolerated for a day. It is implied in Dr.
Barwick's Life that many of those who should have upheld the Church
discipline were willing, from a mistaken notion of conciliation and
peace, to let it go. Bishop Wren set his face resolutely against this
doctrine.
[_REVISION OF THE PRAYER BOOK._]
In November the Convocation met again. Dr. John Barwick had been
appointed to the deanery of S. Paul's, and in spite of very failing
health, had resumed the weekly Communions, daily prayers, and musical
services of the cathedral, and had succeeded in making the choir, where
the Puritans had stabled their horses, once more fit for Divine service.
At this session of Convocation the Prayer Book was finally revised,
after the Bishops had heard at the Savoy Conference all that the
Puritans could urge against it. Bishop Wren had been actively engaged in
this work, and suggested a considerable number of alterations and
additions, many of which were adopted. A large number of grammatical
errors had crept in to the old book: for example, 'which' instead of
'who' was in almost all the collects and the Apostles' creed. It still,
by some oversight, survives in the Lord's Prayer.[82] 'The altering
whereof,' says Bishop Wren, 'if it may seem strange at first to
unskilful ears, yet will it not be a nine days' wonder, but for ever
after a right expression in all our addresses unto God.'
Page after page he corrected with the utmost care, from the very
title-page and calendar to the end. July has the characteristic note,
'Out with Dog-days from amongst the Saints.'--A considerable number of
his suggestions are part of the Prayer Book to this day. The final
clause of the prayer for the Church Militant beginning 'We also bless,
etc.,' though not Bishop Wren's composition, as he intended to have
replaced the Commemoration of the Saints and the Thanksgiving as it
stood in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., is yet due to his
suggestion. The whole series of notes and emendations is very
interesting, though they are more than can be given here. Two things
plainly appear: that he wished to return as nearly as possible to the
first Prayer Book of Edward VI., as the one most closely resembling the
offices of the Early Church; that he was very desirous to have the book
made as full, as plain, and as clear as the English language could make
it. He was anxious that no needless stumbling-blocks should remain in
the path either of Churchmen or of Nonconformists, but at the same time
he had no intention of bartering any portion of Church truth or
discipline for the doubtful advantages of 'comprehension.'
It is a proof that he was not, with all his high-minded firmness, the
persecuting prelate of Puritan pamphleteers, or the sour and severe man
which, in early days, Lord Clarendon thought him, that both in Norwich,
his former diocese, and in the one he then ruled, most of the clergy
renounced the Covenant.[83]
S. Bartholomew's day, 1662, was the time fixed for those who refused to
conform to the Church to resign their livings. It has been easy to
represent this as a piece of cruel tyranny, as the turning out of a body
of pious men who were labouring in the work which others neglected. In
truth, as even Milton says, they were 'time-servers, covetous,
illiterate persecutors, not lovers of the truth, like in most things
whereof they had accused their predecessors.' To this grave indictment
must be added that they were, in the strictest sense, intruders, thrust
into charges by Cromwell's authority, while the true priests were
imprisoned, fined, forbidden to minister, or even to teach as
schoolmasters, and literally left to starve.
'The majority of these were dead and none had been ordained to fill
up the gaps, during all the long years since the Church's
overthrow.... Of the eight thousand intruding Nonconformists, a
bare two thousand--1700 would probably be nearer the
number--refused conformity.
'In other words, the Church of the Restoration had to begin her
work with a clergy of whom at least three-fourths were aliens at
heart to her doctrine and her discipline. To the politician this
result was most satisfactory; to the Church little short of
disastrous.'[84]
[_GARTER RECORDS RESTORED._]
One of the earliest appointments made at the Restoration was that of Dr.
Bruno Ryves[85] to be Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Garter. In
the August of 1660, Christopher Wren went to Windsor, and solemnly
delivered to the Dean the three registers and the note books of the
Order of the Garter, which Dean Wren had, with so much difficulty,
recovered and hidden carefully until, at his death, he transferred the
charge to his son. Dean Ryves gave a written acknowledgment to
Christopher that he had safely received the books, and the service his
father had done in preserving them was fully admitted. Gresham College
had been cleansed and set in order after the Restoration, and
Christopher resumed his lectures there, which were largely attended.
After one of these lectures given in November, Lord Brouncker, Mr.
Robert Boyle, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Dr. Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray and
others withdrew with Wren to his room, where they discussed a project
for a philosophical College or Society. It was not an entirely new idea,
for it had been a favourite scheme of Evelyn's, also of the poet
Cowley's.[86] It was not a matter to be arranged in one sitting, and
accordingly they settled to meet weekly in Wren's rooms after his
lectures, and agreed that for incidental expenses each should pay down
ten shillings and subscribe a shilling weekly. A list was made of
between thirty and forty probable members, among them those previously
mentioned, and Christopher's old friend Sir C. Scarborough, Dr. Seth
Ward, Matthew Wren, Cowley, Sir Kenelme Digby, Mr. Evelyn and others.
Sir Robert Moray undertook to explain the project to King Charles, and
brought back a gracious message that he well approved of it, and would
be ready to give it every encouragement. One of the first orders of the
Society was that Wren should at the next meeting of the Society bring in
his account of the pendulum experiment, with his explanation of it: this
experiment related to 'the determination of a standard measure of length
by the vibration of a pendulum.'[87] There followed experiments for the
improvement of shipping, in which Wren worked with Dr. Petty and Dr.
Goddard. It was a question to what mechanical powers sailing, especially
when against the wind, was reducible; 'he showed it to be a wedge; and
he demonstrated how a transient force upon an oblique plane would cause
the motion of the plane against the first mover. He made an instrument
that mechanically produced the same effect and showed the reason of
sailing to all winds.'
But to give all Christopher's experiments would be to write over again
the already well-told history of the Royal Society. It had few more
assiduous members.
[_SAVILIAN PROFESSORSHIP._]
In 1661, Christopher resigned his Gresham Professorship, in order to
accept the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy, at Oxford.[88] It had
been held by Dr. Seth Ward, who was soon afterwards made Bishop of
Salisbury in succession to Bishop Hyde. Shortly after his appointment,
Christopher had a command from the King to make him a lunar globe,
according to the observations made with the best telescopes. He
constructed one 'representing not only the spots and various degrees of
whiteness on the surface, but the hills, eminences, and cavities moulded
in solid work.' This curious toy was highly admired, placed in the
King's cabinet at Whitehall, and esteemed a great 'rarity.'
In this year Wren took his degree as Doctor of Civil Laws, Oxford, and
received a similar honour from the University of Cambridge. King Charles
purposed paying a visit to Oxford, and the Philosophical Society both
there and in London resolved to give him an entertainment. Lord
Brouncker wrote from London to Wren to consult him. Wren wrote back:--
'My Lord,--The Act and noise at Oxford being over, I retir'd to
myself as speedily as I could to obey your Lordship and contribute
something to the collection of Experiments designed by the Society,
for his Majesty's Reception. I concluded on something I thought
most suitable for such an occasion; but the stupidity of our
artists here makes the apparatus so tedious that I foresee I shall
not be able to bring it to anything within the time proposed. What
in the meanwhile to suggest to your Lordship I cannot guess.'...
'Geometrical problems, and new methods, however useful, will be but
tasteless in a transient show.' He enumerates various things which
he had thought of and rejected: 'designs of engines, scenographical
tricks, designs of architecture, chymical experiments, experiments
in anatomy, which last are sordid and noisome to any but those
whose desire of knowledge makes them digest it.' 'Experiments of
Natural Philosophy are seldom pompous, and certainly Nature in the
best of her works is apparent enough in obvious things, were they
but curiously observed; and the key that opens treasures is often
plain and rusty, but unless it be gilt it will make no show at
Court.'
He proposed to show an experiment with a 'weather wheel to measure the
expansions of air.' Another--'no unpleasing spectacle--of seeing a man
live without new air as long as you please;' this was to be effected by
an instrument of Wren's invention which cooled, percolated, and purified
the air. Also 'an artificial eye truly and dioptrically made as big as a
tennis-ball.'
['_SO MUCH TATTLE._']
'My Lord,' the letter ends, 'if my first design had been perfect I
had not troubled your Lordship with so much Tattle, but with
something performed and done.
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