The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sir Christopher Wren, by Lucy Phillimore

Transcriber’s Note

For detailed information about any corrections made, consult the Note at the end of this text.

CHRISTOPHER WREN, D.D. DEAN OF WINDSOR.
MATTHEW WREN, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF ELY.
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ARCHITECTURE HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.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.

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 50l. 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.

CONTENTS.

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 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.’

‘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.

[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
ut pr ae
o sis. Am
or a. A Deo a
o pta.[22]

‘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 3,000l., 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 13,305l.; 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 436l. for his charges, besides a fine of 500l. 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 10,000l.; 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.’

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, “Ἐν ᾧ κόσμος ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ τῷ κόσμῳ,” 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.

CHAPTER IV.
1646–1658.