A NEW LIFE OF ' ISS MILMAN'S Life ^: V. u which has just appealed, jc a book for the general reader rather than for the architect ; there is nothing- special to be learned from it by architects ; nor, as far as we see, is there anything new in it. But perhaps this may be all the better. People out- side the architectural profession in j England really know so' little about I Wren, and there is so much to know I about him that is worth knowing, even independently of his architecture, that ' a readable, interesting, and popular life of him ;.eems an excellent possession for the public of readers to have. It is one recommendation of the book that it brings out a good deal more than is commonly known in regard to Wren's family history, and his very remarkable personality and character.' When Wren's name is mentioned it j calls to mind principally, in nearly all i cases, the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral and of numerous City churches. Few people who hear him mentioiled realise that apart from this work, and long before he ever became an architect, he was recognised by many learned and intellectual men of his day as a yaung man of remarkable genius ; " the wonder of the age," he was once called, with perhaps a little pardonable exaggeration^; ^ " that incomparable genius, my worthy friend. Dr. Christopher Wren," .is. I 'Evelyn's reference to him. In lis ' • "Sir Christopher Wren." ' By Lena Milmaii. London : Duckworth & Co. 1908. JOHN LOVEKIN NA 997.W93M65"i9m''"''"'^ Sj'; Christopher Wren DATE DUE ■^msmm '>Me?i'^ DWf"^ »P^'V ■»tir— «« rr*W* 5'w*t5'tS^'3 RT^ Mkm iWWHi ,iiP SmmUbMIHS" ■n ,g|m-,-^rjia ^lAW *ittiffli bUifi^ - '""'^^'"'W MIBi mt^ Hiite'. _y - ^^twSH Mi^ PRINTKO IN U.S.A. I fa? SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN " I never yet saw an Historian that was clear from all Affection ; that it may be were not so much to be called Integrity as a stoickal Insensibility." Sprat's " History of the Royal Society," The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016184453 Photo by Emery Walker Plate l.-POETKAIT OF SIE CHRISTOPHER WEEN, BY KNELLEE I^mitispiece SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN BY LENA MILMAN LONDON: DUCKWORTH AND CO. NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1908 All rights reservtd. Printed by Ballantvnb &" Co. Limited Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London THE WBITBE DEDICATES THIS BOOK TO HER FATHER PREFACE In preparing this book I have met with much kind help, but that of which I have the most eagerly availed myself has been that afforded me by my cousins Margaret and Bertha Milman, who revised my manuscript chapter by chapter, and by Mr. James Britten, who carefully criticised it in proof. My thanks are also due to my cousin Charles Williamson, who kindly translated Wren's boyish elegiacs into English verse, to Mrs. Lawrence Pigott, to the Reverend Lewis Gilbertson of St. Martin's, Ludgate, and to Mr. Eric Maclagan, who patiently answered many questions. LENA MILMAN. King's House, The Tower of London, Annunciation of Our Lady, 1908. CONTENTS ji I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XTII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. / XVIII. Emmanuel A Note on Later (Roman) Renaissance Introduction . Childhood and School-days London .... Oxford .... Gresham College . O^QRD : the Royal Society ^P^ .... Repairing Old St. Paul's Destruction of Old St. Paul's ; College Chapel . First Designs for St. Paul's Sheldonian, Temple Bar, Monument Trinity Library, Cambridge ; Honywood LiBRARYj Lincoln Observatory, Greenwich ; Royal Hospitals of Chelsea and Kilmainham , Brickwork and Domestic Architecture . St. Paul's Parish Churches Gothic Hampton Court, Kensington, Greenwich Declining YSars and Death . PAKE XV I 6 i6 27 32 49 69 85 93 114 126 140 156 182 194 219 254 260 279 X CONTENTS APPENDICES: a. Genealogy b. Chronological List of Works c. Latin Elegiacs d. Letter from Dr. Sprat, i663 e. Letter to Lord Brouncker /. Letter to a Certain Friend g. Letter to Sir Paul Neile h. Letter from Paris . i. Report on Salisbury j. Letter to Treasurer of Christ's Hospital k. Letter Concerning Fifty Churches . I. Memorial Concerning Westminster PAGE 302 304 310 3" 318 323 32s 328 33» 337 339 347 List of Authorities Chiefly Consulted Index 362 365 ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Portrait of Sir C, Wren, by Kneller . Frmtispiece 2. Pascal's Problem 3. Wren's Solution 4. ' Doorway, North Transept, Ely Cathedral 5. Pembroke College Chapel, Cambridge . 6. Exterior of Emmanuel College Chapel, Cambridge 7. Temple Bar ...■•.... 8. Trinity College Library, Cambridge 9. River-Front, Trinity College Library, Cambridge 10. Trinity College Library, Cambridge 11. Hon}rwood Library, Lincoln .... 12. a. Doorway, Honywood Library and Cloister, Lin coin Cathedral h. Honywood Library, Lincoln Cathedral 13. Kilmainham Hospital, North Front 14. Kilmainham Hospital, Cloister 15. Kilmainham Hospital, entrance to Great Hall 16. Kilmainham Hospital, North-eastern Elevation 17. Chelsea Hospital, South Front 18. Chelsea Hospital Chapel, Altar-piece 19. Interior of Trinity College Chapel, Oxford . 38 56 68 108 132 144 146 148 150 152 162 164 166 166 172 174 180 xii ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 20. Door of St. Paul's Deanery . . . . .182 21. Storehouse, Tower of London . . . .186 22. Bishop's Hostel, Cambridge ..... 186 23. Latin School, Christ's Hospital . . . .188 24. Doorway in King's Bench Walk . . . .190 25. Great Schoolroom, Winchester College . . .190 26. St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf 190 27. a. Middle Temple Gateway . . . . .192 h. Doorway in Temple . . . . .192 28. a. Windsor Town Hall 192 b. Windsor Town Hall . . . . .192 29. Morden College, Blackheath 192 30. Guildhall, Rochester . . . . . .192 31. St. Paul's Cathedral, from the West . . .196 32. St. Paul's Cathedral, South Door .... 198 33. St. Paul's Cathedral, Section through the Dome . 202 34. St. Paul's Cathedral, Ground-Plan . . . 204 35. St. Paul's Cathedral, View across West End of Nave 204 36. St. Paul's Cathedral, Nave 206 37. Templum Pacis ....... 208 38. St. Paul's Cathedral, Dome and Choir . . .210 39. St. Paul's Cathedral, Inner Side of Bastion . .210 40. St. Paul's Cathedral, Roof of Lord Mayor's Vestry . 214 41. St. Paul's Cathedral, Dean's Door, Upper Portion . 216 42. St Paul's Cathedral, Within Dean's Door . . 216 43. St. Paul's Cathedral, Library 216 44.0. St. Paul's Cathedral, Detail of Carving . .216 6. St. Paul's Cathedral, Detail of Cai-ving . .216 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii PAGE 45. Interior, looking West, St. Stephen's, Walbrook . 228 46. Interior of St. Mary Abchurch . . .236 47. Staircase at St. Mary Abchurch . . -238 48. Doorway in Vestry of St. Laurence Jewry . -232 49. Vaulting above Gallery, St. Clement Danes . . 242 50. Doorway, St. Margaret's, Lothbury . . . 242 51. Steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside . . . 246 52. a. St Bride's, Fleet Street 248 h. Christchurch, Newgate Street .... 248 53. a. Steeple of St. Stephen's, Walbrook .250 h. Steeple of St. Margaret Pattens .... 250 54. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford ..... 254 55. Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford . . .258 56. Hampton Court Palace . . . .262 57. Hampton Court Palace,-South Front . 264 58. Hampton Court Palace, Fountain Court . 266 59. Kensington Palace, Doorway 272 5o. Kensington Palace, Orangery . . . .272 61. Kensington Palace, Orangery . . .272 62. Alcove, Kensington Gardens . . . .272 63. Ground-Plan of Greenwich Hospital . . 276 64. Greenwich Hospital, Angleof Queen Mary's Quarter 276 A NOTE ON LATER (ROMAN) RENAISSANCE The characteristic features of this style (defined by Mr. Charles Moore as "that architecture which derived its character primarily from the influences that were active in Rome from the beginning of the sixteenth century") are the replacing by piers of the pillars whence roof-support was derived in the buildings of the^aily~Renaiiiance-a»d^ that adorning of wall-spaces, by .engaggSl^rders -which has led certain depreciators to describe it as "surface architecture." "The columns," s ays Mr. W. Anderson in describing the nave of a T.at.pr Bprmigi^ancp church, " carry a decorative entablature backed by an arcade formed in a wall which does the constructive -work, as at the Colosseum and in Roman work generatty." That the slender pillars of the Early (Florentine) Renais- sance constantly required the supplementary strength of iron ties is a fact familiar to travellers in Italy (exemplified in the cloister of the Badia at Fiesole, in the Palazzo del Consiglio at Verona, and in the Palazzi Fava and Bevilacqua at Bologna). With this extraneous aid it was the aim of Later Renais- sance architects to dispense, and their careful study of the remains of Imperial Rome resulted in the securing of perfect stability : but this could only be achieved by what Mr. Moore xvl LATER (ROMAN) RENAISSANCE contemptuously describes as "a use of the orders rarely based upon any structural need." There are no great public buildings of the Early Renais- sance style in England, but it is exemplified in Oxford by the Landian cloister at S. John's College, and in Cambridge by the cloisters of Neville's Court at Trinity and of the Pepysian Library at Magdalen. Wren, familiar with all these and with an example now destroyed, i.e., the arcades of Grcsham College, London, built his Lincoln cloister alone in this style. The Roman Renaissance in Italy may be said to have begun with Bramante's Tempietto (1502) and to have waned on the death of Palladio in 1580, after which the influence of Scamozzi (1552-l6l6) and Longhena (l604-l675) brought about the triumph of Bai-oque. INTRODUCTION The invective of moralists has expended itself in vain on checking Man's proneness to draw comparisons, a proneness which tends to mar the enjoyment of this by a lurking preference for that, a cynical delight in standing as Paris of old in the presence of Beauty, to allot the apple to this one or to that of its rival manifestations. The Arts espe- cially, appealing as they do to the shifting surface as well as to the more enduring depths of the soul, are subject to comparison and contrast according as the moment's mood incline us to delight chiefly in the brilliance of pigment or to linger rather over those elusive curves which to seize is the art of the sculptor. Architecture differs from her sister arts most conspicuously in this, that, whereas pictures and statues are obvious beauty-snares, a building has almost invariably a purpose apart from the creating of aesthetic impression. It is raised for worship, for shelter ; only the privileged may enter, and the crowd without, swayed now by envy, now by contempt, of those within, takes note rather of the impenetrability of the enclosure than of its proportions. It is no doubt partly owing to this indifference of the crowd, the giving or grudging of glory having ever been 2 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN its prerogative, that so few names of architects have come down to us. The name of Phidias, who modelled the great goddess and the metopes of the Parthenon, is a household word, but of the designers of those majestic columns, of the apportioners of those appealing spaces, the names are rarely on our lips. And yet, for any such artists among them as are content if only their work meet with ultimate recognition, there is much compensation for architects in the indisputable fact that Man has loved his house, the landmarks about the scene of his early days, more passion- ately perhaps than any work of painting or sculpture. The spire of Salisbury, the soaring vault of Kings', the tower of Magdalen — memories of these and such as these have knit Englishmen together all the world over, and have stood for home in the hearts of many. Sentiment and associa- tion may count for much, but who can say how much the beauty may have availed to condense the sentiment ; and though the names of Richard Poore and Alan de Walsingham be unknown to many who love their work, was it not for the stirring and maintaining of emotion that they laboured, and has emotion not been both stirred and maintained by their labour to this day? The man, however, whom we are about to consider has suffered no such injustice : the name of Christopher Wren was honoured in his own day as in ours. His it was to imprint physiognomyon the otherwise amorphous accumu- lation of London, and more especially on the banks of her great river. The colonnades of Greenwich, the spires and towers of the City, the dome of St. Paul's, Chelsea — are not these among the most conspicuous points of INTRODUCTION 3 that confused mass which we sum up as London? Nor did Wren's influence die when his long life was done, since it is distinctly traceable in the stern street archi- tecture of Bloomsbury and Portman Square in an austerity which concentrated ornament on fanlights and porches, and consented to the uncompromising angularity of sash-windows as best adapted to England's capricious climate. It is true indeed that during the Gothic revival of the early nineteenth century, ecclesiastical taste-tinkers went so far as to tamper with Wren's work, and even introduce tracery into the windows of some of his City churches, but soon the tide of his reputation was again running high, and it would seem to be still rising. Just as we owe the dignity of our national worship to the zeal of William Laud, so, had it not been for the genius of Christopher Wren, Later Renaissance might have remained an exotic in England, since Inigo Jones never succeeded in acclimatising classical architecture. Those, therefore, whose admiration for Italian form inclines them to demand its literal reproduction will prefer Inigo Jones's Palladian transcriptions to the greater simplicity of Wren's domestic buildings, although the incomparably wider in- fluence of the latter is undeniable. The poHicoes of Belgravia, the gables that distinguish the Cadogan estate, testify to Wren's greatness, those in their failure to achieve symmetry by unbroken monotony, these by their vain attempt to enlist interest by means of a commercial caprice which dictates varied angles on the sky-line and the squandering of mouldings on fafades. We have spoken of Man's inherent incapacity for empha- 4 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN sising his appreciation of one thing, unless by a vehement depreciation of another, and just as this leads to heated argument between the exponents of the rival arts, so to no less fierce differences between devotees of the several periods of each of these — between disciples, for instance, of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. Like most diver- gences of opinion, the quaiTel is that between warring temperaments : the man who delights in difficulties over- come, in effort even though it be futile, will " fret himself because of the ungodly" and extol the aspiration, the contempt for material limitation, of Gothic, while his brother "delights himself in fatness" and approves the cheerful acceptance of the inert and its properties, the indifference to symbolism which characterises the Renais- sance. It was natural enough that in an age so essentially material as that of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an age for which enthusiasm was anathema, the art of effort should meet with little appre- ciation. Gothicism became as current a term of reproof as it had been in the beginning. Christopher Wren was a typical son of his century, a century which shunned mystery, which had no quarrel with the inexorable laws of nature, no longing to escape life's durance, no eagerness for a higher state of spirituality than is easily compatible with the life of every day. Gothic belongs to an early stage of civilisation, when the world was young and loved to wonder, while Renaissance is a renewal of youth, and renewals are of necessity self-conscious. As surely as youth loves to wonder, so surely maturity prefers to understand, and it is mature man's delight in reason which the art and literatui-e of that day so admirably illustrate. As in INTRODUCTION 5 the great Puritan epic, the poet, dealing with matter of awful import, obviously loves to slip the yoke for a while and refresh himself by sensuous description and musical epithet (concessions to a need for recreation which Puri- tanism was powerless to root out), so, to work as severely scientific as Wren's, garlands and pouting putti give relief. Gothic relaxes effort in grotesque, while the Renaissance prefers the dimpled limbs and irresponsible laughter of little children. CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS The precise date of Christopher Wren's birth is a matter of dispute, but most authorities agree in setting aside his baptismal entry dated 1631 as inaccurate, and accepting October 20, 1632, as the day on which a second son w£is born to Christopher Wren, Rector of East Knoyle, in the county of Wilts. Two years earlier in the register another son's birth is recorded, but since to both alike there was given their father's name in baptism, it would seem certain that the elder died in infancy. There is no mention of any other son, nor, with one notable exception, is anything known of five daughters except their names.^ It is curious that we should search the pages of registers and Parentalia * in vain for any information respecting 1 Three are known to have married : Anne (1634-67), the Kev. H. Brunsall ; Catherine, Richard Fulhurne, of New Windsor ; and Susan, the Rev. W. Holder. 2 The chief source of information for the biographers of Sir Chris- topher Wren is the capriciously selected, carelessly compiled record known as Parentalia, collected by the great architect's son Christopher, and published by his grandson Stephen in 1750. It is divided into three parts, which deal respectively with Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely ; Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor ; and the subject of this book. An heirloom copy, interleaved with many original manuscripts, &c., is in the possession of Sir Christopher Wren's lineal descendant, Mr. Pigott. 6 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 7 the death of the mother of the family (a Cox of Font- hill Abbey), but she cannot have survived to see her son through early childhood, since we read of his sister Susan, but five years his senior, that she stood for him in the place of a mother. Of the old rectory in which Christopher Wren spent those first years, the scanty remains form but a wing of the present late-Georgian house ; but the church, which stands high above the road on a hillside, is externally much as it was in the Wrens' time, with a fifteenth-century tower of remarkable slsrength and dignity, and a fine roof of Hors- ham slate. While a disastrous restoration under Wyatt has fatally injured the interior, especially in a mischievous modification of the chancel arch, the north and south walls of the chancel retain the curious pargetting reliefs designed by the elder Christopher, and executed when his son was nine years old, the insidious "Popery" of which furnished the Puritans some ten years later with excuse for depriving him of the living. The Ascension above the arch on the west wall is almost obliterated ; the symbols of the Blessed Tiinity and the crucifix, to which exception was specially taken, have vanished from over the altar ; but the figures and texts on the north and south walls of the Dean's scheme are almost intact, the frames and frieze exhibiting the strapwork so favourite an ornament in the domestic architecture of the earlier Renaissance, of which Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren rarely, if ever, made use. Susan was nine years old, her brother but four, when, upon the translation of their uncle, Matthew Wren, from the See of Norwich to that of Ely, and his consequent resignation of the Deanex'y of Windsor and Registrarship 8 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN of the Garter, the King conferred these two latter offices upon the Rector of East Knoyle, in his brother's stead, and accordingly the household moved from Wiltshire to Windsor. In such favour did Dean Wren stand with the King that when, shortly after, the rectory of Great Haseley, in Oxfordshire, also fell vacant, that, too, was given to him, and, except for a short period in 1643 which he spent with the Royalist army at Bristol, his life, until he was forced to retire " because of oppression," was passed between his parsonages (he did not resign East Knoyle) and his official residence within the walls of Windsor Castle. There is little personal record of those early days, but, in a letter addressed to Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, in after years, Christopher writes of that devotion which he conceived " while yet a child, when the Elector was pleased to honour his father's house with his presence " ; and this must have been about the year 1637, when little Christopher was five years old, during the Elector's first visit to Eng- land, undertaken for the purpose of persuading the King to espouse his cause and assist him to regain the Palatinate by force of arms. With England and Scotland equally disturbed, the King's refusal of aid was a matter of course, but the Elector spent his time between Theobalds and Whitehall, and, in the words of Parentalia, occasionally made use of the Deanery House " for retirement and benefit of the air," welcome, no doubt, as the King's own nephew, in that Royalist household, and as yet unsuspected of any leanings towards that ignoble defection to the side of the Parliament by which, some five years later, he blackened his memory for ever. It was the austere custom of those days to send boys to CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 9 school at a very early age, but Parentalia explains that little Christopher's first education in classical learning was (by reason of tender health) " committed to the care of a domestick tutor, the Reverend William Shepheard," until such a time as he should go to Westminster, which was not until he had passed what was then considered the mature age of nine. It is easy to conceive how this pro- longed sojourn at home served to impress the family tradi- tions of love for Church and King on a child of unusual parts, endowed with the precocious mental sensitiveness which is both cause and effect of physical weakness, and how the impression must have been subsequently deepened by the staunch Royalist tone of his school. True that not until the boy's days of home teaching were over did his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, enter on his long term of eighteen years' imprisonment, but already he had been attacked with the virulent vulgarity rarely separable from Protestant polemic, and seemed likely to fall a victim to any violence which should be meted out to Primate and King. We can imagine the intense interest with which close relations with many of the principal actors caused public events to be followed by the family circle at the Windsor Deanery, for the girls and boy must have shared in their father's indignation as news came, now of an attack on St. Paul's, now of a mob of fanatic insui'gents threatening the Archbishop with violence at Lambeth Palace, and later of Laud, whom they revered next to the King's sacred Majesty himself, thrown into the Tower. It was in the second year of the Long Parliament of 164 1, " that long ungratefuU, foolish and fatal Parliament," as Evelyn calls it, that Christopher Wren, small in stature. lo SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN but having apparently outgrown much of his early delicacy, was entered at Westminster School, of which the atmo- sphere under the rule of that uncompromising Royalist, Dr. Richard Busby, must have been entirely sympathetic to the boy's early prejudices, and the head-master's proverbial severity surely relaxed a little towards a boy of precocious talent, especially committed to his care by a family con- spicuous for their devotion to the house of Stuart. Lambeth Palace, visible across the river, must have kept the boy in constant mind of the Archbishop now in the Tower, and he must have envied his schoolfellow, Philip Henry ,^ who could boast of having often earned smiling thanks from Laud, " who had taken a particular kindness to him when he was a child, because he would be very officious to attend at the water-gate (part of his father's charge at Whitehall) to let the Archbishop through when he came late from Council to cross the water to Lambeth." Near to Christopher Wren, too, in the school, was Robert South," who, whatever of caution he may have learned with years, was, as a boy, amongst the most zealous for King Charles, and who has testified "that" Westminster School was so untaintedly loyal that he could truly and knowingly own that in the very worst of times he and his companions were really King's scholars as well as called so." " Here," he continues, " upon that very day, that black and eternally infamous day of the King's murder, I myself heard that the King was publicly prayed for but an hour or two before his sacred head was cut off." ' Philip Henry (1631-96), a famous Nonconformist divine. 2 Robert South (1634-1716), an Anglican diviije, famous as a Court preacher. CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS ii Civil war broke out the very year that Christopher Wren went to Westminster, and among the scholars none can have watched history more anxiously than the nephew ot Matthew, Bishop of Ely, who, during the boy's school-days, enjoyed but four months of liberty. Nor were the West- minster boys denied an opportunity of active share in public events, for they aided the choristers and vicars-choral in successfully defending the Abbey against the apprentices' attack in 1642, while, in the same year, the growing power of Puritanism is traceable in an enactment that " the Col- leges of Westminster, Eton, and Winchester be added and comprehended within the order of February 17, concerning the imposing upon young scholars the wearing of surplices." The order was as follows : " That the statute made in the University of Cambridge which imposeth the wearing of Surplices upon all graduates and students under several pains and reinforced by the law of 1603 ought not to be pressed or imposed upon any Student or Graduate, it being against Law and Liberty of the subject." Meanwhile Dean Wren and his daughters were them- selves sufferers at the hands of the insurgents. We have noted that, in addition to the Deanery, Christopher Wren the elder held the office of Registrar of the Order of the Garter, with the care of the insignia thereto pertaining. The rapacity of Parliament was as proverbial as its detes- tation of all trappings of State, and, fearing an attack, the Dean took all precautions in his power, even " to burying the diamond George and Garter of Gustavus Adolphus.' This fear proved only too well founded, for in October 1642 came " one Fogg, pretending a warrant from the King and demanding the Keys of the Treasury, threatening if they 12 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN were denied him by tlie Dean and Prebendaries, to pull the Chapel about their ears." Finding his threat barren of effect, he forced the door with iron bars and carried off all on which he could lay his hands. The Deanery too was ransaclied, and the personal property as little respected as the rest, for the Dean lost books and manuscripts and plate, including two silver tankards, gifts of the Elector Pala- tine. The Chapel altar-plate, too, was carried off by the soldiers, and the Registry of the Garter burst open and rifled. Susan Wren was spared the pain of taking up life again in the despoiled Deanery, for a few months later, in 16435 she was married to the Sub-Dean of the Chapel Royal and Rector of Bletchington in Oxfordshire, the Rev. William Holder. He was, according to Aubrey,^ " a handsome, gracefuU person of delicate constitution," very helpful in the edu- cation of his young brother-in-law, " a youth of prodigious inventive wit, of whom he was as tender as if he had been his owne child." He it was who gave the boy his " first instruction in Geometrie and Arithmetique." The same authority tells us further that " it ought not to be forgot the great and exemplary love between this Doctor and his virtuose wife, who is not lesse to be admired in her sex and station than her brother. Sir Christopher, and (which is rare to be found in a woman) her excellencies do not inflate her. Amongst many other gifts she has a strange sagacity as to curing of wounds, which she does ' Jotn Aubrey (1626-97), an antiquary, who left a collection of bio- graphical notes of his contemporaries, published after his death as Brief Lines, CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 13 not doe so much by precedent and receipt bookes as by her own excogitancy considering the causes, effects, and cir- cumstances." " On one occasion," so Aubrey rambles on, " King Charles II. had hurt his hand, and the surgeon could do nothing for his relief. Then some one told the King what a rare shee-surgeon he had in his house ; she was presently sent for at 1 1 o'clock at night ; she made ready a pul- tisse and applyed it and gave his Majestic sudden ease and he slept well." Soon she perfectly cured him, " to the great grief of all the surgeons who envie and hate her." But the early years of Susan Wren's married life must have been very full of anxiety, for directly after her wed- ding she accompanied her husband and father to the Royalist camp at Bristol. Heavy indeed must have been the hearts of the travellers as each mile of the way set them at a greater distance from London, where Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, and William Laud, Archbishop of Canter- bury, lay fellow-prisoners in the Tower. And presently the news came to Bristol that the Primate, whom they both loved and reverenced, and who had worked so zealously and fearlessly to restore the beauty of God's house and dignity to His desecrated altars, had been led out to martyrdom on Tower Hill. It was the January of Christopher's last year at Westminster, and with their young love of life, how he and his schoolfellows must have marvelled at the courage and confidence of that prayer of the Primate's passing which begins so simply, " Lord, I am coming as fast as I can," and which brought him such comfort that he laid his head on the block " down as upon a bed." Those were dark days: "the misery of oui- common 14 SIR! CHRISTOPHER WREN Mother the Church," to use a phrase of South's, was to increase in bitterness for many years to come ; but we must be careful not to exaggerate the influence of any individual man in the gradual restoration of some measure of Catholic dignity of ceremonial to the Church of England. We should consider how impossible it would have been, in those days of difficult travel and little popular reading, to inaugurate a new state of things, to restore a broken tradition. Deep in men's hearts, among the horrors of civil warfare and that dread of foreign interference which had been the chief incentive to Reformation in England, there must have lain an eagerness to shake off" the shackles of Puritan severity. Little children must have been taught to fold their hands and bend their knees in prayer, tp pray too in the hallowed words of past centuries while taught to think sadly of a beauty departed, of which fragments still lin- gered. A boy of Wren's sensibility, marvelling at the wrecked carvings of the Ely Lady-chapel, very early rejoiced in the recognition that, in the religion of his father, there was no tenet to account for such violence, no prohibition of beauty, no grudging of grace such as man has loved to offer to God, no justification for the Government's action in 1641, when Commissioners had been sent to every county with express orders "for the defacing, de- molishing, and quite taking away of all images, altars, crucifixes out of all churches and chapels." Of Christopher Wren's achievements at Westminster there is little detailed record, but he displayed remarkable ability, and had already shown his natural bent towards invention by making an astronomical instrument, of which Parentalia vouchsafes no more precise description than CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 15 that it was " of general use," which, together with a school exercise, " De Ortu Fluminum," he dedicated to his father in Latin verse of remarkable fluency, of which a translation follows : Look on the handiwork of thy fond child. Dear Sire, if ever cares admit relief. There I have sought to paint the starry wild In all its moods, and trace the heavens in brief ; How seasons long since fled again appear, The century, the month, th' unequal day ; How the sun goes, returns, tempers the year. Once more caught back, renews his lengthy way, While the young moon puts on a slender guise. And grown, is seen resplendent with full light. At the month's end she no more decks the skies, But with her torch extinct defrauds the night. Thus while I strive these Deities to con. To pierce the height and tread the hidden way. Direct the flight of thy still unfledged son. Be present, kind, whether he fly or stay. Lest overbold like Icarus he try To test his power and fall with like disgrace. From thee comes courage for this learning high Till thou art bidden seek the Higher Place. It will be seen that the boy's first lines describe his father as harassed by cares, and indeed they are dated November 1645, soon after the battle of Naseby so fatal to the Royal cause ; in the spring of that year, Dean Wren's house at Windsor had been sacked, and he had been deprived of the living of Great Haseley. CHAPTER II LONDON There is an interval of three years between Christopher's leaving Westminster and going up to Oxford, an interval during which disaster after disaster befell the Royalists and culminated in the treason of Whitehall. The Windsor Deanery was again rifled in 1645, the hiding place so carefully contrived was discovered, and the diamonds were carried off. Nor did Dean Wren's trouble end here, for he was also persecuted at East Knoyle. On July 22, 1646, John NifFen deposed " that Dean Wren did cause to be made in frette work suspicious pictures in the Chancell — amongst the rest the picture of Christ ascend- ing in a longe robe and the upper part thereof was out of sight . . . and a picture of Christ upon the Cross and a Crucifix." A year later, April 1647, "George Style said : that the morrow after Lady Day last was two years that there came into his house a great Company of the King's force about 10 of ye clock at night and Doctor Wren came in with them in their Company, and this Examinant's ^ wife provided him and one of the King's Commanders a bed and they lodged together. At the Doctor's first coming inn he saluted this Examinant by ^ I.e., witness. i6 LONDON 17 the name of Landlord and in the morning as he lay in bed hee spoke these words to the Commander that lay with him — -' Sir, all is well — there's no danger for I left word with my wife if there were she should send word over the grounds." And again on May 8, 1647 . "Robert Brookway, of Quinton in Dorset, Plaisterer, swome saith, that about July last was eight years or thereabout Dr. Wrenof Knoyle sent for this Examinant and agreed with him to make and set up at the Chancell at Knoyle in frett-work the picture of the 4 Evangelists and such other things as afterwards the said Doctor should invint, . . . And further saith that the said Doctor Wren himself made a bargain with him for the work and gave him II' and VI* in earnest and paid him the remainder according to his agreement — and that the said Doctor Wren came every day himself to viewe the worke and to give his directions in itt.' " The malignity of the persecutors seems even to have roused the indignation of their own faction, since an appeal was made to the Wiltshire Committee from the Committee of Lords and Commons touching Dr. Wren, pleading that " it appeareth that Dr. Christopher Wren hath been much employed by this Parliament and hath suffered many violences and plunderings in the performance of these employments. And likewise he hath contributed very large sums to the service of ye state, and being a paynefull labourer in ye work of ye Ministry about these thirty years all which doe justly induce us to 1 8 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN believe that he is a Person farr from meriting the Doom of Sequestracion." Notwithstanding this appeal, Dean Wren was deprived of his benefice, and William Clifford, a Dissenting minister, appointed in his stead. It appears none the less that the Dean was allowed to retain the Rectory-house, at al events for a time, and that, when the Royalist camp was dispersed at Bristol, he and the Holders took refuge at East Knoyle. Meanwhile his son's continued progress in learning was the Dean's chief source of consolation. The boy would seem to have stayed on in London, introduced by his father to Sir Charles Scarborough,^ who, although but just thirty, had already attained to eminence in the medical profession, but had lately suffered ejection from his fellowship at Caius on account of his loyalty. Mathematics in those days were not a part of the regular academic curriculum, but Scar- borough had devoted much of his time at Cambridge to self-tuition in that branch of learning, with Seth Ward for fellow student. Among the books which they found most helpful was a certain Clavis Mathematicae, and so keen was their love of learning, that, finding the understanding of a passage in that text-book beyond their powers, they were at the trouble of travelling to Albury, where the author, William Oughtred,^ was Rector, to ask him to expound it to them. From the old scholar's natural delight at such eager seeking after knowledge there sprsmg up a great friendship between him and the two young men, who were to achieve no little distinction in after • Sir Charles Scarborough (1616-94), physician to Charles II. and later to James II. and Queen Mary. 9 William Oughtred (i 575-1660), a famous mathematician, LONDON 19 life. We have Oughtred's authority for saying that Scarborough had a memory of so prodigious a tenacity that he could recite in order all the propositions of Euclid and Archimedes and apply them. Christopher Wren would seem to have occupied the position of assistant, especially in the prepai-ation and dissection of anatomical specimens, in which his deft fingers must have stood him in good stead. An illness of Christopher's, too, at about this time must have drawn master and pupil yet closer together, how closely we can judge from the following letter, a rendering of the Latin original addressed by Christopher to his father in 1647 : " HoNOURKD Father, — "I am greatly enjoying the society of the famous Physician (Sir Charles Scarborough) who is most kind to me ; so gracious and unassuming is he as not to disdain to submit those Mathematical Studies in which he has so distinguished himself to what I will not call my Judgement but rather my Taste, so that he even lends a patient Ear to my Opinions and often defers to my poor Reasonings ; while, in my turn, I impart to him anything of merit which I have lit upon or which I owe to you in Organics or Mechanics ; one of these Inventions of mine, a Weather clock namely, with Revolving Cylinder, by means of which a Record can be kept through the night, he asked me but yesterday to have constructed in Brass at his Expense. The other day I wrote a treatise on Trigonometiy which sums up as I think, by a new method and in a few brief rules, the whole Theory of Spherical Trigonometry. An Epitome of this I re-wrote 20 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN on a brass Disc of about the size of one of King James's Gold Pieces, and having snatched the Tool from the Engraver, I engraved much of it with my own Hand which Disc Sir Charles had no sooner seen than he insisted upon having a similar one of his own. " You know how there exists in the vulgar tongue a most esteemed Tract by Dr. Oughtred on Geometrical Dialling which Tract the Author (worn out with years) has often besought Sir Charles to render into Latin, but he, with weightier Business in Hand, appointed me to the task which I have just completed. I shall now only add a Letter to the Author so that, to my great advantage, as Sir Charles promises, I may both gain an old Man's Favour, and, at the same time win that of all those Students of Mathematics who acknowledge Dr. Oughtred as their Father and Teacher." The letter to the author is less natural in style, but it is spontaneous compared with many dedicatory epistles of that date, and not a little interesting in that all the imagery is, as in his Latin poem, derived from astronomy, the science to which for the next ten years Christopher Wren chiefly devoted himself. Christopher Wren's Letter to the Author prefixed TO HIS Latin Rendering of Dr. Oughtred's " Golden Key " "To the Venerable Author of the Key well-termed Golden, to him of whose achievements in higher Geometry his Time must ever be proud, greeting. " Welcome indeed (Most gifted of Men) was the Shining of your Key upon the Sphere of Mathematics in this Age LONDON 21 of ours, so that even the most learned have regarded it, nor undeservedly, as a Guiding Light since, led by Thee, they have been able safely and surely to cross the great stormy ocean of Algebra and so attained to other and unexplored Regions of Mathematics, Some indeed were so blear-eyed as to sneer at a Star so minute as dim and mistyj just as those tiny Specks of Light in the Sky which indicate celestial bodies both huge and effulgent, in size equal to this great globe of ours or at least to others of our System, by Reason of their hanging hidden by vast spaces, forfeit some Measure of their Glory by their very sublime Remote- ness and are unheeded by the crowd. Wisely then since the Reputation of your work is growing not only at Home but abroad, you, by a second edition, have made this Star to shine even more brightly for in the former edition it appears unaccompanied by the little torch which so delight- fully illumined the Art of Clock-making. Therefore, in order that in a language more majestic than ours it may adorn your Key as a drop-pearl, a jewel, the renowned Doctor Scarborough has set me this task. " Sir Charles is too intimately your Friend, his Attain- ments are too widely known, to make it necessary for me to speak here of his Familiarity not only with the most recondite branches of Medicine but with the whole Field of Polite Literature ; it is to his Kindness and Liberality of Mind that I am indebted not alone for any little skill that I can boast in Mathematics, but for Life itself which, when suffering from recent sickness, I received from him as from the Hand of God, Forgive me if, in devoting so many words to his Praise,! seem to come short of Courtesy to you; while endeavouring with no more than a boy's skill to match your words which need no adorning but 22 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN sparkle by their very Brevity, that Brevity, I say, which to have attained is to have reached the very Summits of Literature ; for very wisely in your Key you have rejected the Reasoning which is in common use among Men but which is useless in matters so abstruse ; to this you have preferred symbols and figures which, without an Array of Words, enable the Reader to grasp your Meaning at a Glance. It is a hard method but for this very Hardness, to my thinking only the more Divine, since it is an Imitat- ing of those Celestial Beings who, unimpeded by Hindrances of Human Speech, by laying bare the soul, reveal all Mysteries. I have therefore endeavoured to render your Treatise on Clocks almost Word for word (this was the easier perhaps since you wrote it for practical use and therefore a little carelessly). I was only fearful lest, owing to Ignorance of mine, one Point of Learning should be lost, Learning to be the humblest Seeker after which I consider my proudest boast only asking of you (if even this be not more than I deserve) that you include among your most devoted Admirers. " Cheistopher Wren." It must have been in the company of Sir Charles Scarborough that Christopher Wren first met Dr. John Wilkins,^ who had for some time past filled the post of Chaplain to the Elector Palatine, his skill in mathematics having originally recommended him to a prince who was a great lover and patron of the science. Wilkins had been appointed before the outbreak of civil war, and his leaning to Puritanism must have inclined his royal master's favour ' John Wilkins (1614-72), a divine of Erastian tenets ; Bishop of Chester, 1668. LONDON 23 still further towards him, since the society of a Royalist chaplain would have made his own change of politics more obviously and constantly conspicuous. Wilkins, struck by young Wren's attainments, presented him to the Prince, whose treachery and ingratitude seem to have been, for a time at least, overlooked in the boy's pleasure at meeting once more with a friend of his childhood. There is still extant the draft of the pompously expressed letter which Christopher Wren addressed to Charles Louis and accompanied with a present of some of those mecbanical contrivances in the invention of which he exhibited such prodigious versatility. Reference has already been made to this letter, in which he alluded to the days when the Prince had been a frequent guest at the Deanery. While attending on the Prince who lodged at White- hall, Wilkins's light duties as Chaplain had allowed him leisure to pursue scientific inquiry as one of a little knot of enthusiasts who, from about 1645, were accustomed to meet weekly in London to communicate to one another the results of such experiments as they had already made, and to devise further research. Robert Boyle, a philosopher at eighteen. Sir Charles Scarborough, Seth Ward, and Dr. Wilkins were of the number who in those days of divided houses found welcome distraction in considering that larger world in which politics play no part and in which competition for more intimate acquaintance rouses no personal animosity. Boyle, the chief exponent since Bacon of experimental as opposed to scholastic philosophy, was wont to speak of these meetings as those of the " Invisible College," a term which seemed expressly to deprecate any interference from 24 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN the outer world, and indeed a rule was made absolutely prohibiting any reference to the two subjects ever most liable to lead to strife, namely, religion and politics. From these informal assemblies, held now at Boyle's lodgings, now at a Cheapside tavern, sprang that famous Royal Society which, says Doctor Gardiner, "brought together men who thought more about air- pumps than about the mysteries of theology, and whose enquiries by and by made any renewed triumph of Puritanism impossible." But Dr. Gardiner is writing of a time many years later than that period of Christopher Wren's life which we are now considering, and certainly in 1647-9 the triumph of Puritanism must have appeared complete. In dealing with this time we are constantly puzzled to account for the tolerance, often amounting to expressed goodwill, which members of one faction were able to main- tain towards those of the other, and this while civil war was raging in different parts of the country ; and later on, more strangely still, when the Royalists were under the heel of the Puritans. As related above, Oughtred, Scarborough, and Wren seem to have associated familiarly and daily with Wilkins and others of his colour; and we shall find John Evelyn, the ardent Churchman and Royalist, speaking of Wilkins as " his dear and excellent friend." Philosophy was in the air, philosophy which avails above all else to detach men from their differences by drawing them into search after indivisible Truth. Well perhaps that it was not given to the wisest of that little company to foresee that the very name of their society formally enrolled would be a vindication of the Divine Right of LONDON 25 Kings to sanction expeditions to that very region of abstract thinking on which Englishmen, weary of strife between King and Commons, had set out and found peace. Of the few letters of Christopher Wren's that have come down to us, the most charming is one written to his father about this time. It is especially interesting as illustrating the public sadness which lay on his heart in the midst of his personal enjoyment. It is not known which house he describes, but some think that it is Bletchingdon in Oxford- shire, which adjoins what was henceforth his home : his brother-in-law's rectory. " Dear and honor'd Father," it runs : " Most kindly made welcome by the best of Friends, I have spent my Easter Holydays as happily as you will gather from the following brief Description of the Locality : the noble Mansion (not indeed unworthy to be a Palace for a Prince in Dimensions, in the symmetry of the Fabric or in the Splendour of the appointments) stands almost on the topmost Brow of a Hill. Delightful Gardens sur- round it, furnished with innumerable walks, some laid down with Gravel, some with swelling Turf, nor are Pools lacking, nor Groves of Trees whose topmost Branches support a clamourous Commonwealth of Rooks, whole Hamlets, I had almost said Townships, of them, there is moreover a Park adjoining, both pleasant and spacious, out of doors one might call it a terrestrial Paradise, within : Heaven itself (you might say of it, more truly than the Poet of old of Caesar's palace : that the house was like Heaven and the Lord of it better than his House). 26 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN " Why indeed should I not call so charming a Spot Heaven? a spot in which the Piety & Devotion of another age, put to flight by the Impiety and Crime of ours, have found Sanctuary, in which the Virtues are all not merely observed but cherished, a Spot which the three Graces (Divine so to speak !) have chosen for their Par- nassus, as a very Pindus of the Gospel, in which finally holy Mothers and Maids singing divine songs, offering the pure incense of their Prayers, reading, meditating and conversing of Holy Things, spend almost all Day in the Company of God and His Angels. What were it but Tautology to say that, under these happy circumstances, I am well? I have nothing left to wish unless it be' that you may long be spared to bless your Devoted Son. "Chkistopher Wren." CHAPTER III OXFORD The influences of Christopher Wren's home and school had been exclusively Royalist. Although, as we have seen, his circle of acquaintance comprised men of opposite politics, yet his immediate superiors had been devoted adherents of the King ; but when, in 1649-50, he was entered as Gentleman-Commoner at Wadham College, he found Parliamentarian rule supreme at Oxford. Nor was its arbitrariness discernible merely in the recent changes among the professorial staff of the University, for the outward effect of the Presb3i;erian and Independent Visi- tations following closely on one another is vividly described in Allibond's ^ macaronic Latin ballad, in a contemporary translation of which occur the following stanzas : Whilst out of town, strange news alarmed My earSj which sounded oddly, That Oxford was to be reformed By Dunces known as Godly, Ent'ring the City to inspect These blessed Regulators, There only found a meagre sect Of formal, ugly creatures. ' John Allibond ( 1597-1658), a parish priest of Gloucestershire. 27 28 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Those who had slept in Darius' den An age and then awaking. Sure never saw such ill-looked men Or Monsters of God's Making. Crosses and Temples they beheld Entirely desecrated Which pious Guides took care to build When Virtue was respected. But in these Holier Times our Saints Hold Temples in derision. And pull down Crosses with Pretence They're signs of Superstition. This account is dated October 6, 1648, and four months later the treason of Whitehall had made England shudder and the Royal cause for a while seem lost. Closely upon the Visitations had followed the tyrannical expulsion of all such officials and heads-of-coUeges as declined to swear allegiance to Cromwell, and of Wadham it is recorded that the warden, Dr. Pitt, having been removed " for high contempt and denial of the authoritie of Parliament," the fellows and scholars were required, " as they would answer to the contrary at their peril," to receive Dr. Wilkins, the Parliamentary nominee, in his stead. This was in April 1648, a year before Christopher''s coming. The warden of Wadham was no stranger to the young undergraduate, and it is said of him that " the cavaliers gladly placed their sons under the care of one who strove to be tolerant." In all save politics Wilkins must have been a preceptor after the boy's own heart, of all men then in Oxford the best able to concentrate his pupils' intellectual effort on science. Among the scanty information we have concer n OXFORD 29 ing this period of Christopher Wren's life there is not a hint or suggestion of any leaning towards art. Ingeni- ous time-saving instruments, weather-clocks, astronomy, mechanics — with all these he appears to have busied him- self, exhibiting the results of his skill and ingenuity at the weekly meetings which Dr. Wilkins organised on the model of those in London, in which he could no longer share. That Christopher Wren should have been invited to attend is sufficient evidence of the high esteem in which his ability was held, for the assemblies appear to have grown in importance, while men of opposite political sym- pathies were equally made welcome, the prohibition of any mention of politics or religion obtaining here as in London. Side by side, round that tolerant table at Wadham, sat Thomas Willis, in whose rooms in Canterbury Quad the abolished Church Liturgy was daily read ; Goddard, the Protector's body-physician ; Oughtred, so devoted a King's man that he was said to have died for joy on the Restoration; Theodore Hack, a German of the Palatinate high in the Elector's favour; and besides Wren, an undergraduate, his junior by four years, Thomas Sprat, the first his- torian to tell of these meetings, in whose History of the Royal Society we read of the company that "their first purpose was no more than only the Satisfaction of breathing a free air and of conversing in quiet with one another without being engaged in the Passions and Madness of that dismal age." The closer our study of contempor- ary records, the more difficult it becomes to conceive of that circle of politicians, for, unless we except the visionary 1 Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), Bishop of Bochester and Dean of Westminster. 30 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Robert Boyle, all those of whom we have made mention are known to have been from time to time in the very thick of public events, pursuing studies so recondite while their country was in the throes of bitter strife. Our estimate of the mental effort of successfully concentrating the mind upon problems such as those of astronomy and physics, of which Christopher Wren delighted in attempting the solution, might lead us to conceive of him as callously indifferent to the cause for which his kinsfolk were enduring such hardships. Had he no thought for his uncle the Bishop, craving permission to take exercise on the Tower leads ; for his father, deprived ; for his young cousin, Matthew Wren, flying to and fro across the country in imminent danger of his life in the Royal service ? We have seen how in the few letters we have quoted there is reference to his grief at the com-se of public events, and now of his anxiety we can form some idea from the account, preserved by Aubrey, of a dream which haunted him during a vacation at East Knoyle. He " dreamed he saw a fight in a great market- place which he knew not, where some were flying, and others pursuing, and among those who fled he saw a kins- man of his, who went into Scotland with the King's army. They heard in the country that the King was come into England, but whereabouts he was they could not tell. The next night came his kinsman to Knoyle Hill, and brought with him the disastrous news of Charles the Second's defeat at Worcester, 165 1." It seems probable that the kinsman was Matthew, the Bishop's son. It is from John Evelyn's Diary that we can best form an idea of the desperate straits of all Churchmen. On Christmas Day 1652 we read, " No Church permitted to OXFORD 31 be open"; on the same day, 1653, " No Churches " ; and on the following Ash Wednesday, " In contradiction to all custom and decency the Usurper Cromwell feasted at the Lord Mayor's, riding in triumph through the City," while the Evelyns make their Easter Communion in a private house,there being " no such thing as Church Anniversaries." In July of that same year, 1654, John Evelyn visited Oxford at the end of the term, and supped at a magnificent entertainment in Wadham, invited by his "deare and excellent friend Dr. Wilkins," and, after a musical enter- tainment at All Souls next day, he " visited that miracle of a youth Mr. Christopher Wren, nephew of the Bishop of Ely." Two days later Evelyn tells us that he " dined at that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkin's, at Wadham College. He was the first who show'd me the transparent apiaries which he had built like castles and palaces, and so order'd them one upon another as to take the honey without destroying the bees. These were adorned with a variety of dials, little statues, vases, etc., and he was so abundantly civil on finding me pleased with them as to present me with one of the hives. . . . He had above in his lodgings and gallery variety of shadows of all perspec- tives, and many other artificial, mathematical and magical curiosities, a way-wiser, a thermometer, a monstrous mag- net . . . most of them of his owne and that prodigious young scholar Mr. Chrs. Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble, which he had stain'd with a lively red very deepe, as beautiful as if it had been natural." The acquaintance of Evelyn with the young scholar who had recently been made Fellow of All Souls grew fast into a friendship which lasted until the elder man's death in 1716, CHAPTER IV GRESHAM COLLEGE Mr. Laurence Rooke,^ Gresham Professor of Astronomy, vacating the Professorship for that of Geometry in 1657, the chair was offered to Christopher Wren, who, since he was but twenty-four, with the modesty which distinguished him, declined the honour on account of his youth. Oxford too had wrought her spell upon him, and he was unwilling to leave All Souls and his share in the researches of the " Philosophical Society," but his friends, urging him to reconsider his decision, finally overruled him to accept- ance. The rough English draft of the inaugural address, which, according to prevailing precedent, he delivered in Latin, makes us regret that so few of his writings have come down to us, for his periods are often so sonorous, his phraseology so distinguished, as to remind us that he was a contemporary of Sir Thomas Browne. The speech is too long to quote entire, but his opening words are full of a formal diffidence which, later on, gives place to a passionate enthusiasm for his subject, and this is very characteristic of the man all through his long life. Tasks were con- tinually thrust upon him, and, accepting them without eagerness, he threw his whole soul into their performance. 1 Laurence Booke (1622-62). 32 GRESHAM COLLEGE 33 " Looking with respectful Awe on this gi'eat and eminent Auditory, while here I spy some of the politer Genii of our Age, here some of our Patricians, there many choicely learned in the Mathematical Sciences, and everywhere those that are more Judges than Auditors ; I cannot but, with Juvenile Blushes, betray that which I must apologise for. And indeed I must seriously fear, but I should appear immaturely covetous of Reputation, in daring to ascend the Chair of Astronomy, and to usurp that big Word of Demonstration, Dico: with which (while the humble Orator insinuates only) the imperious Mathematician commands assent when it would better have suited the Bashfulness of my years, to have worn out more Lustra in a Pythagorean Silence." Is not the genuine faltering of youth as yet untried in any post of responsibility revealed in spite of the formal phrase of conventional courtesy ? " I must confess," he continues, " I had never designed anything further, than to exercise my Reading in private Dust unless those had inveighed against my Sloth and Remissness, with continual but Friendly Exhortations, whom I may account the great Ornaments of Learning and our Nation, whom to obey is with me sacred, and who with the Suffrages of the worthy Senators of this Honour- able City, had thrust me into the public Sand. That according to my slender Abilities, I might explain what hath been delivered to us by Ancients, concerning the Motions and Appearances of the Celestial Bodies and likewise what hath been found out of new by the Modems, fpr we have no b^wren Age." 34 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN His boast is rather of his times than of himself or even of his country, and indeed, just as we have seen fellow- countrymen of opposite parties content for a while to sit side by side and assist one another towards wisdom, so, among the rival nations of Europe, men forgot disputed frontiers and warring traditions, and corresponded with one another in the common language : Latin. The young professor goes on to deny any intention of troubling his audience with " a tedious encomium of Astronomy," which nevertheless he cannot refrain from declaring the most sublime of pursuits after pure mathe- matics, worthy indeed to stand " Queen Theology " herself in good stead, as he proceeds to prove in a curious digression concerning our Lord's three days' sojourn in the grave. " Astronomy," he continues, " it is that enlarged both our Understanding and Habitation ; hath given Politeness and consequently Religion and Laws to the barbarous World. He that looks upon that little Parcel of the World which the Ancients contented themselves with, and sees now, how we furrow the great Ocean, and gather our aromatick harvests from the remotest Parts of the Globe and can enjoy in our own Europe, whatever Thule or Aethiopia, the rising or setting Sun can produce, must needs rejoice that so much larger an Inheritance is falleti to Mankind, by the Favour of Astronomy. It was As- tronomy alone that of old undertook to guide the creeping Ships of the Ancients, whenever they would venture to leave the Land to find a neighbbur Shore ; though then she was a humoursome guide and, often vailing the Face pf Heaven with clouds, would crueller leave tbem to the GRESHAM COLLEGE 35 Giddy Protection of Fortune, and, for the most part, only tossed them up and down and sported herself with their Ruin ; but, if she deign'd to show them one glimpse of a Star, if but of Alcor, or the least Albicant Spot of Heaven, it was enough to pave a way for them homeward through the Horror of the Waves and Night." A mention of magnetics as the handmaid of astronomy gives an occasion for enthusiastic praise of Gilbert, the Physician of James I., of whom Christopher, in his young ardour of partisanship, says that Descartes " was but a Builder upon his Experiments." He concludes his oration by an eloquent panegyric on London which he deftly turns to praise of the citizens to whose suffrages he owed the chair which he was then occupying for the first time. After recounting the benefits conferred on London by each planet in turn, he continues : " Lastly the Moon, the Lady of the Waters, seems amourously to court this Place. ' Atque urbem magis omnibus unam Posthabita coluisse Dele' For to what City does she invite the Ocean so far in Land as here .'' Communicating by the Thames whatever the Banks of Maragnon or Indus can produce and at the Reflux warming the frigid Zones with our Cloth. . . . And now since Navigation brings with it both Wealth, Splen- dour, Politeness and Learning, what greater Happiness can I wish to the Londoners than that they may con- tinually deserve to be deemed as formerly, the great Navi- gators of the World, that they may always be the Masters 36 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN of the Sea, and that London may be an Alexandria, the established residence of Mathematical Arts ? " Dean Wi-en had not been spared to witness his son's triumph, for, the very year before Christopher's appoint- ment to the Gresham Chair of Astronomy, his father, who, deprived of both his Rectories, had taken refuge with the Holders at Bletchingdon, there breathed his last, worn out by the unremitting malice of the Parliament. Of depriva- tion of his Deanery there is no formal record, but, after the second sacking of his house at Windsor in 1645, he would seem not to have returned there. Although, no doubt, political affairs and the transference of many of the most distinguished members to appoint- ments at Universities prevented any regular enrolment, the meetings of the London group — Boyle's " Invisible Society," of which the " Philosophical Society of Oxford " was an ofF-shoot — seems to have continued, though at irregular intervals, and Dr. Wilkins, whose old intimacy with the Elector-Palatine often brought him to Whitehall, kept the two societies in touch. Wilkins's power with the Parliament was the stronger for his recent marriage with the Protector's widowed sister, Robina French, and this fact would seem to have given him boldness to preach before the Lord Mayor in St. Paul's in 1656 from the text, " We are glad when we are weak and ye are strong," the gist of which sermon Evelyn thus summarises in his Diary : " However persecution dealt with the Ministers of God's Word, they were still bound to pray for the flocke, as it was the flocke to pray for and assist their pastors," This implicit admission of sympathy with the GRESHAM COLLEGE 37 deprived priests and deacons of the •' distressed Church " leads Evelyn to call him " a most obliging person, who," he continues, " took great pains to preserve the Universi- ties from the ignorant sacrilegious Commanders and Soul- diers who would fain have demolished all places and persons that pretended to Learning." Nor was it only his friends and such as he had promoted to honour who deplored Cromwell's violence, for, in his own household, his most dearly-loved daughter, Mrs. Clay- pole, was as staunch a Churchwoman as her sister. Lady Falconbridge. Among the new acquaintances whom Christopher Wren owed to his London appointment was Claypole, Cromwell's Master of the Horse. Like most men of his time, he had a pursuit as well as a profession, and it was a common love of mathematics which made intimacy possible between the Parliamentary captain and the brilliant young professor whose name sufficiently identified him with the King's cause. One day, when Christopher Wren was dining with the Claypoles, the Protector himself came in unexpectedly and, as his custom was, sat sullenly down without greeting any one of the company. Presently, recognising the Gresham pro- fessor, he said dryly : " Your uncle has been long in the Tower." " He has so. Sir," said Wren, " but he bears his affliction with great patience and resignation." " He may come out an he will," said Cromwell ungraciously. " Will your Highness permit me to take him this from your mouth .'' " asked Wren, still incredulous. " You may," was the answer. So Christopher hastened from the table to tell his uncle how his long captivity was over, only to learn to his surprise from the old man's lips " that this 38 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN was not the first time he had received the like Information from that Miscreant, but disdained the Terms projected for his Enlargement, which were to be a mean Acknow- ledgement of his Favour and an abject Submission to his detestable Tyranny ; that he was determined to tarry the Lord's Leisure and owe his Deliverance (which he trusted was not far off) to him only." Among the troubles and anxiety of the time, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and others of whom mention has been made continued to meet, and it was no doubt Boyle's influence (since it is recorded that he despised astronomy) which led Wren to devote himself for a while chiefly to physics, which science lends itself to joint experiments more readily than does astronomy. Among Wren's boyish achievements we have already made mention of the weather clock, which he had exhibited to Sir Charles Scarborough, and now for a while he seemed to have devoted himself to meteorology with such success as to have been accounted by not a few the inventor of the barometer. Wren's inven- tion was, however, merely a further development of an experiment of Torricelli's, made some ten years before and completed by Pascal. The Italian's aim was to prove that the rising and sinking of mercury in a tube had to do, not with the moon's pressure, but with the weight of the atmo- sphere, and Pascal confirmed the truth of this conclusion by comparing the rate at which mercury rose and sank as the enclosing tube was carried up and down hill. Even more interesting, however, than his perfecting of Torricelli's invention is the solving by Christopher Wren in 1658 of the problem which Pascal, from his retreat at Port-Royal and under the pseudonym of Jean de Montfort, Sp^ctdNffiinos Vivos MyXTHESEOS PROrKSSORKS K( cilio.i prtvcJaro.f in Asai.iA Mal'hcniAlico.f.uthoc ProlWciiii .rolvei-c olionenhn"; IL'AWDEXONTFERT MARINE DESlDEiUM'.w Proposibcs. 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Ol,m KEPLERll5Giv Lomm-cn-flrils Ae niolitr.J J>l AP.Tisparff ^.il[-^■ IH-i- Jrv.v,< ;.i3rfjf//7L K Klf-'J"'^'' m*\lii' lii^hii. Pl.ia.:tAr;rln. ^ii.ilii^;.!.'', ,4l:Jm:vJiaut coreqiuijni i"nn..if;M-7 aZ^-jue Jiujiu^ Froh I c^v.:lIis .loZitr/orie pciij^YL-' niu.rL/a. erft , — 't.!:pLi!> jjcfiuirij nLf/7L.',{.i A^stiL-hi, ^tiA oc ciflfejiu-.ri, r /an.et's.j-n.m. m.^fii., ,Mi??ii;/i-V.'ni;/(- A/jnTc/ziJi^ari: naffintuj. >oIvitar a iioi^LS Protlciaa Ci5 O < H US H w EH O 15 CHELSEA HOSPITAL 167 of St. Clement Danes and of St. Bride, Fleet Street, were begun at the time), there is record, during the spring of 1680, of Wren's assiduous attendance at the Wednesday afternoon meetings of the Royal Society — meetings at which every conceivable branch of science met with that impartial attention which characterised the colossal curi- osity of the seventeenth century and accumulated data for the colder eighteenth to classify. On April 15, which fell in Easter week that year, there was a very thin attendance. Wren, as vice- president, was in the chair, and Hooke read a letter which he had just received from Leibnitz at Hanover, giving an account of his "prince's design of making a survey of his country . . . answering some propositions made to him by Mr. Hooke . . . hinting an invention of his . . . useful for the improving reason etc." Leibnitz had also addressed a letter to Dr. Grew^ desiring to be informed what the Royal Society was doing. This too was read aloud to the company. On May 27, Sir Christopher Wren and Henshaw, the vice-president, were desired to use their interest with the keeper that the bodies of such exotic animals as should chance to die in St. James's Park be handed over to the Royal Society for anatomical examination. On June 23 " Sir Christopher Wren described a pheasant of Surinam," and, on June 24, " affirmed that extreme freezing will sweeten salt water." Mr. Hooke, in July, read a letter from Paris containing, among other information, the news of the famous French traveller Chardin's return from India, " with a book in 1 Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712), secretary to the Koyal Society, 1677-9. i68 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN the Malabar language written on the bark of trees and on palm-leaves." Chardin came over to England shortly after, and, on August 30, John Evelyn, " desired by the Royal Society to salute him in their name," went to visit him, accompanied by Sir John Hoskyns ^ and Sir Christopher Wren. " We," writes Evelyn, " found him at his lodgings in his Eastern habit a very handsome person, extremely affable, a modest well-bred man, not inclin'd to talk wonders . . . After the usual civilities we ask'd some account of the extraordinary things he must have seene in travelling over land to those places where few if any Northern Europeans us'd to go, as the Black and Caspian Sea, Mingrelia, Bagdat, Nineveh, Persepolis, etc. . . . He was sorry he could not gratify the curiosity of the Society at present, his things not being yet out of the ship, but would wait on them with them on his return fi"om Paris, whither he was going the next day, but with intention to return suddenly, and stay longer here, the persecution in France not suffering Protestants to be quiet. He told us that Nineveh was a vast citty, now all buried in her ruines, the inhabitants building in the subterranean vaults which were as appeared the first stories of the old Cittie . . . that the women of Georgia and Mingrelia were universaly and without any compare the most beautiful creatures for shape, features and figure in the world . . . that there had within these hundred years been Amazons among them, a race of valiant women given to warr . . . that Persia was extremely fertile . . . ' Sir John Hoskyns (1634-1705), second baronet, President of Royal Society, 1682-3. CHELSEA HOSPITAL 169 he spoke of the many greate errors of our late geographers, as we suggested matter for discourse. We then took our leaves, faihng of seeing his papers, but it was told us by others that indeed he durst not open or show them till he had first shown them to the French King." On November 30 of this same year, 1680, the Royal Society elected Robert Boyle President, but he declined the post, and Wren was elected in his room and sworn in on January 12, 1681, upon which occasion he "dis- coursed upon earthquakes." • Among the more practical questions discussed at the Royal Society meetings for the last ten years had been the disposal of that Chelsea property which Charles II. had granted to the members when made homeless by the Great Fire. Since Hooke and Wren had both prepared plans for a house upon the plot of ground near the Strand made over to the Society by Howard,^ it is obvious that the members had never seriously contemplated an estab- lishment in the then remote village of Chelsea. At the time when a suitable site was being sought for the Observatory, it had seemed as though a way had been found out of the difficulty, but Wren's selection of Greenwich had frustrated this hope of settlement, and although various offers of purchase had been made, the mere commercial disposal of land graciously bestowed by the King's most excellent Majesty was felt to be a serious dilemma. So it was that fourteen years had passed and still the Chelsea fields were empty of all save the fragment of > Henry Howard (1628-1684), ninth Duke of Norfolk, a friend of John Evelyn's. He presented A library to the Boyal Society. 170 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN building which had been intended, under the auspices of James I., to develop into a College of Polemical Protes- tantism. Laud's contemptuous nickname of" Controversy College " and the flagging of enthusiasm which besets the pursuit of ideals merely negative had blighted the scheme, and Charles II. 's action in devoting its land to scientific purposes seemed equally doomed to failure. But, in 1681, came a solution of the difliculty fi'om an unexpected quarter — a solution which appealed to the King's love of lavish expenditure without making coitc- sponding demands on his purse, and allowed the Society to appear to act from motives of loyalty while actually ridding themselves of the King's gift. Among the many notable men whose friendship Sir Christopher Wren shared with John Evelyn at this period, few can have been more agreeable to him than Sir Stephen Fox, who, remarkable alike for "beauty of person and towardliness of disposition," had passed fi-om the choir-school of Salisbury to the court of the exiled Charles II. without sacrifice of integrity. Appointed at the Restoration to the lucrative post of Paymaster- General, he had in twenty years accumulated a fortune of some =£'200,000 "honestly got and unenvied which is almost a miracle," writes Evelyn, and accounts for it by adding that Fox continued " as humble and ready to do a courtesie as ever he was." It was possibly Wren's account of the scheme just set on foot at Kilmainham that attracted Fox's attention to the urgent need of a similar establishment in England, a need of which, as Paymaster to the Army, he must have been peculiarly abk to j udge. CHELSEA HOSPITAL 171 On September 14, 1681, Evelyn dined with Sir Stephen, who proposed to him the purchasing of Chelsea College, "which His Majesty had sometime since given to our Society and would now purchase it again to build an hospital or infirmary for soldiers there," in which he desired Evelyn's " assistance as one of the Council of the Royal Society." It was evidently to Wren's ready initiative that the Society attributed the speedy conclusion of the negotiations, for, on January ii, 1682, the Council voted thanks to the President for haying disposed of a property which " had been a source of continual annoyance and trouble to them."i A fortnight later (January 27) Evelyn was once again Fox's guest at dinner, and was acquainted by him " with His Majesty's resolution of proceeding in the erection of a Royal Hospital for emerited soldiers on that spot of ground which the Royal Society had sold to his Majesty for ;^r30o." The King, moreover, had signified his willingness to settle ;^Sooo a year on the institution, and build to the value of ;^20,ooo.^ '' Sir Stephen," adds Evelyn, in a mood as near to satire as he ever came, " was, I perceived, to be a gi-and Benefactor." Every detail of the scheme seems to have been discussed by the two friends over the fire of Sir Stephen's study that evening, and Evelyn, at all times over serious, even insisted that the plans must embrace a library, and " mentioned several bookes since some soldiers might possibly be studious." 1 Quoted in Birch's History of Moyal Society, vol. i. p. 229. 2 The total cost of the building was estimated at ;^i5o,ooo. 172 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Three weeks later, on February i6, 1682, Charles II. laid the foundation-stone of the Hospital, to which Wren was not, however, formally appointed architect until 1683. Still he seems to have made plans as a matter of course, for, on May 25, 1682, he and Sir Stephen invited Evelyn to accompany them to Lambeth, in order to gain the Arch- bishop's approbation of the plot and design of the college to be built at Chelsea. " It was,'" adds Evelyn, " a quad- rangle of 200 feet square, after the dimensions of the larger quadrangle at Christ Church, Oxford. . . . This was agreed on."" This account of the origin of Chelsea Hospital, making it the practical outcome of a virtuous man's benevolence, had in it so little of romance that a legend attributing the first idea of its foundation to the King's mistress, Eleanor Gwynne, found such popular acceptance that it cannot be ignored, nor indeed is it unlikely that some careless, kind impulse of his favourite's may have prepared the King's mind for approving Sir Stephen Fox's gene- rosity. The story goes that the miserable condition of certain soldiers of the disbanded garrison of Tangier came to the knowledge of the King, and that, in the presence of Madam Eleanor Gwynne, an hospital was suggested for their accommodation. The King hastily oflFered the spot on which one-eighth of King James's College stood empty.^ Hastily recollecting himself, he exclaimed : "Odso, 'tis true I have already given that land to Nell here ! " Upon 1 This part of the story seems irreconcilable with the Royal Society's long official tenure of the property. CHELSEA HOSPITAL 173 which the woman, whose kindness of heart had won her the love of the people, asserted her willingness to waive her claim. " Have you so, Charles ? then I will return it to you again for this purpose." The fact that the Archbishop's approbation had been granted to his first plan of a quadrangle did not deter Wren from altering it to one preferable, considering the position of the building looking south across gardens towards the river. A quadrangle would have left three fa9ades comparatively sunless, whereas the Hospital — as it stands, a long building with wings — has in its southern side a very sun-trap, a purpose to which Wren's plan of a pro- jecting piazza with colonnades specially lends itself. The middle point is a lantern-crowned octagon, on the eastern side of which lies the chapel, the corresponding space west being the great dining-hall. Chapel and hall are alike in length 108 feet, in width 37 feet 9 inches ; but, while the chapel has a finely decorated ceiling, the roof of the hall is flat save for a cove above the cornice. If, as has been suggested, Charles II., in promoting the building of Eilmainham and Chelsea, had some thought of rivalling Louis XIV. 's Invalides, of whose splendour, since the building had not been begun until long after his return to England, he can only have known by hearsay, the contrast between the French and English realisations of the same philanthropic idea is but the more interesting. The main difference between the private houses of the rival nations will be found to have consisted in this : that the French architects built town-houses in the country, and the English, country-houses in the towns. Bruant thought best to honour the men whio had served their country by 174 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN building them a residence of palatial proportion. Wren thought to house them more suitably in the homely, almost rural, simplicity which, together with dignity, characterises Chelsea. The Invalides, with its stern northern aspect, its pompous pavilions and formal arcades, appealed to the French passion for display just as the brick walls and stone coigns of Chelsea addressed themselves to the English clinging to comfort and homeliness. Nor is the panelled external wall of the sunny piazza the only evidence of Wren's thought for the infirm inmates, for the well-lit wooden staircases, with broad handrails and low wide treads, that lead to the upper stories, tell the same tale of tenderness. Although it is a statue of Charles II. as founder which stands facing the river opposite the centre of the south front, it is the names of William and Mary that are written upon the cornice of the colonnade, for the Hospital, begun in 1682, took ten years to complete. Wren's plan of connecting Chelsea and Kensington by a great avenue was, like so many of his dearest schemes, never realised, and is only commemorated by the pompous title of Royal Avenue, which inappropriately distinguishes two rows of small houses on either side the strip of neglected tree-planted land which runs from a point immediately opposite the north front of Chelsea Hospital to the King's Road. Mr. Basil Champneys in his Life of Coveittry Patmore tells how Carlyle said to him one day of Chelsea Hospital : " I had passed it almost daily for many years without think- ing much about it, and one day I began to reflect that it bad always been a pleasure to me to see it, and I looked at it Photo by Cyril Ellis Plate 18.— ALTAE-I^IECE, CHELSEA HOSPITAL CHAPEL To face p. 174 CHELSEA HOSPITAL 175 more attentively and saw that it was quiet and dignified and the work of a gentleman.''' It was not until eighteen years after his restoration that Charles II. commissioned his Surveyor to prepare plans for a monument to his martyi'ed father King Charles I. Few tasks could have been more congenial, and, of all Christopher Wren's professional disappointments, his expressed regret for this one alone has come down to us. At first all went well. Parliament voted the sura of ;^70,ooo for a solemn funeral of his late Majesty King Charles I., and towards the erection of a monument for the said prince of glorious memory. It was, moreover, decreed that the requisite sum should be raised by a two months' taxation. The next day, which was the very anniversary of the martyrdom. Wren's old friend, Dr. Sprat, preaching before the Commons in St. Margaret's, Westminster, congratu- lated them on the throwing off by yesterday's vote a reproach of long standing, and declared that " for the future an Englishman abroad will be able to mention the name of King Charles I. without blushing," proceeding to eulogise that unhappy monarch as in " all things most illustrious, in all things to be commended, in all things to be imitated, in some things scarce imitable and only to be admired." Not only did Wren furnish a carefully executed set of drawings for the mausoleum, with alternative designs foi" the statue which was to adorn it, but he submitted a detailed estimate of cost. Drawings and estimate are all that ever came of Charles II.'s scheme, and although the drawings themselves are carefully mounted, the superscrip- tion of the bundle that once contained them is itself pre- 176 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN served at All Souls'. It is in Wren's delicately flourished hand, and is inscribed : Mausoleum Divi Caroli Regii Martyris Excogitatum, Anno Salutis 1678 De Mandate Sereuissimi Regis Caroli Secundi Consentaneo eum votivis Inferioris Domiis Parliamentis SuflFragiis ut (eheu conditionem temporum !) nondum exstructum. Nor was this Wren's only disappointment at this period. We read in A Jmirney through England (1722), "King Charles II. taking a Liking to the Situation of Winches- ter, by reason of the deliciousness of the Country for all manner of Country Sports, set Sir Christopher Wren, that great Architect (who had the Honour of making the Plan of St. Paul's Church in London, laying the first Stone and living to see it finished) to make a Plan for a Royal Palace whei-e the old Castle stood ; and,King Charles was so fond of it and forwarded it with so much Diligence that the whole Core of the Palace was roof d and near finished when that Prince died. It will be the finest Palace in England when finished and inferior to few abroad. It fronts the City to the East by a noble Area between two Wings, the Marble Pillars sent by the Duke of Tuscany for supporting the Portico of the great Stair-case, lie half-buried in the ground. The staii'-case carries up to the great Guard-hall from whence you enter into sixteen spacious Rooms in each Wing, nine of which make a Suite to the End of each Wing. There are also two Entries under the Middle of each Wing to the South and North, above which are to be CHELSEA HOSPITAL 177 two Cupolas ; and the Front to the West extends 326 feet, in the Middle of which is another gate, with a Cupola to be also over it. Under the great Apartment, on each side from the ground, is a Chapel, on the Left for the King and another on the Right for the Queen ; and behind the Chapel are two Courts, finely piazza'd to give Light to the inward Rooms. There was to be a Terrass round it as at Windsor and the ground laid out for a Garden, very spacious with a Park marked out of eight Miles Circum- ference, and that Park to open into a Forest of twenty Miles Circumference, without either Hedge or Ditch. The King designed also a Street from the Area to the East, in a direct Line by an Easy Descent, to the great Door of the Cathedral." There is, among the manuscripts at Welbeck, a letter in the handwriting of the second Earl of Oxford, appa- rently addressed to his wife, which gives a graphic account of the ruin rapidly nearing completion of Wren's magnificent though unfinished work. Dated from Win- chester (about October 24, 1738), it runs : " From the Church we walked up the town and went to take a view of the King's house upon the hill. It stands very high in a very fine country and overlooks all Win- chester and Saint Cross. The house was prepared for a hunting seat for the King, being in a free sporting country and not far from the famous New Forest. The plan or design was made by Sir Christopher Wren, and I believe is better than ever he executed because in this he was left to himself by the King ; it was just covered in before the King died. There were five marble pillars with their 178 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN capitals all wrought and put up in cases which lay there till the late King's time, where the late Duke of Bolton begged them of the King, and they were granted to him and he carried away above three himdred waggon loads of marble to his house at Hackwood, and there they remain still boxed up, never put up or even seen by mortal eye. The front of the house is to the east and the middle part of the house fronts directly upon the west end of the Cathedral : the project was to have a street of two hundred feet in breadth, and to have been noblemen's and gentle- men's houses of each side ; this would have been fine. The front in the middle was composed of four Corinthian pillars and two pilasters, the middle part without the two wings was two hundred feet, the whole front with the wings was three hundred and thirty ; the wings were joined to the body of the house by a fine colonnade. There was designed three cupolas, one upon each wing, and that in the middle the third to be so high that from thence you might see the men of war riding at Spithead. " This was to please the King, who loveth the fleet of England. . . . There was to be two chapels, one for the King and one for the Queen ; these were to go up two stories. " The middle storey the rooms were to be fourteen feet high, the lower storey and the upper storey were to be fourteen feet. Her M. Queen Anne and Prince George went over the house . . . but the Queen liked Windsor much better. . . ." What fragments remained were utilised for barracks in the nineteenth century, and no trace of Wren's building is now discernible save in the four pillars and flanking pilasters of a portico. CHELSEA HOSPITAL 179 The Chapel of Trinity College, Oxford, is, as we have seen, not unanimously attributed to Wren's designing, but, since among the drawings at All Souls, there is a side elevation closely resembling it, and since there is written evidence that Dr. Bathurst consulted him about its building, as he had about the quadrangle ten years before, it is difficult to see any reason against the current theory except a phrase in his reply to Dr. Bathurst's letter on the subject. Dr. Bathurst writes : " October, 1692. " Worthy Sie, — " When I sent Mr. Phips to wait on you with a scheme of our new building, he told me how kindly you was pleased to express your remembrance of me, and that you would send me your thoughts concerning our design ; and particularly of the pinnacles, which as they were superadded to our first draught, so I must confess, I would be well content, to have omitted with your approbation. The season for our falling to work again will now speedily come on ; which makes me the more hasten to entreat from you the trouble of two or three lines in relation to the promise whereby you will further oblige, " Sir, your old friend and " ever faithful servant, " B. Bathukst." Wren's reply is as follows : "Scotland Yard, March 2, 1693. « Sir,— " I am extremely glad to hear of your good health i8o SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN and what is more that you are vigorous and active and employed in building. I considered the design you sent me of your chapel which in the main is very well and I believe your work is too far advanced to admit of any advice ; however I have sent my thoughts which will be of use to the mason to form his mouldings. " He will find two sorts of cornice ; he may use either. I did not well comprehend how the tower would have good bearing upon that side where the stairs rise. I have ventured upon a change of the stair, to leave the wall next the porch of sufficient scantling to bear that part which rises above the roofs adjoining. There is no necessity for pinnacles ; and those expressed in the printed design are much too slender. I have given another way to the rail and baluster which will admit of a vase that will stand properly upon the pilaster. " Sir, I wish you success and healthand long life with all the affection that is due from your obliged, " Faithful friend, " and humble servant, "Cheistophee Ween." The phrase that might be interpreted as renouncing any claim on the erection of Trinity Chapel is that in which he speaks of the work as already too far advanced to admit of advice. But may it not be that the design fol- lowed in the building was of Wren's drawing, and that he regrets that they should have built so fast as to make it impossible for him to modify as his custom was P Externally and internally the Chapel is full of devices characteristic of Wren's work. The manner in which Photo by Valenii7ie Plate 19.— INTEEIOE OF TEINITY COLLEGE CHAPEL, OXFOED To /ace p. 180 CHELSEA HOSPITAL i8i the tall bases of the pilasters and the breaks in the crowning balustrade with vases above them continue the lines of the pilasters with but the depth of the entablature for interruption, the break which allows the eye to follow the line of the tower from the ground, the massive doorway and solid tympanum of the window above — these occur again and again in his work ; while within, the screen, the reredos, the housing of the mediaeval founder''s tomb in a Renaissance tribune beside the altar, and the disposal of ornament above the bold panelling of the chestnut wainscot and on the ceiling is too masterly to credit to any amateur. CHAPTER XIII DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND MINOR WORK IN BRICK Wren's type of domestic architecture, a type from whose external simplicity he never departed even when designing royal palaces, has hitherto enjoyed immunity from vul- garisation ; this is no doubt due to the fact that a dignity which dispenses with decoration does not easily lend itself to the demands of a commercialism which, fastening greedily upon French chateaux, has studded Europe with travesties of Vaux and Maisons — travesties which do not, alas! merely offend by their pretension, but sensibly mar our enjoyment of the originals. The French chateau is essentially a town house in rural surroundings, whereas Wren's chai-acter- istically English tendency (a tendency in some degree perceptible in Inigo Jones, as a comparison between Tredegar, Newport, and the prints of Bedford House, Bloomsbury (now destroyed) exemplifies) was rather to build town-houses after country models : long and low, their street doors opening into great halls and the house complete in ilsclf, girt about with garden. The St. Paul's Deanery is an admirable example of this, for it would stand quite appropriately among lawns and woods. In houses of this type — be they of stone, like Belton, or of 182 ■< H R o K O o a DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 183 brick, like the Deanery and the Bishop's Hostel at Cam- bridge — ^roof, chimneys, walls are left plain, save for stone quoins and courses in low relief under the windows, while ornament is often so severely centralised as to be confined to the porch, and, even in more elaborate buildings, rarely extends beyond a sculptured pediment above the cornice and a turret of timber and lead on the ridge of the roof. It is obvious that a town house, hemmed in by its fellows, must depend much upon ornament for distinction to be conspicuous, and, in agreement therefore with the town models of their preference, the builders of French chateoMX, not content as were their English rivals with the dignity afforded by site and terraces, decked the walls with profuse ornament and raised them to a height altogether unnecessary for buildings standing alone. Life as led there could have had nothing of that close intimacy with the life of the fields which to the Englishman is the joy of his country home. It is as though the Frenchman, afret for Paris, had insisted that his house should remind him as little as possible of the surrounding solitudes. The same tendency towards upward expansion which, in Gothic, produced the giddy vaults of Amiens and Beauvais found later expression in the pyramidal steeps which roof the chateaux of the French Renaissance. The side pavilions, which have their counterpart in the simple projecting wings of English houses, are in France no less sharply differentiated from the facade above than below. The slope of tile or slate which, of uniform height, crowns the simple wooden cornice of the typical English house is in striking contrast to the variety of the French attic story, 1 84 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN named indeed after the elder Mansard, but actually occurring in the work of De Lonne, some hundred years earlier, and popular to this day. Rising to a height almost overpowering to the substructure, the French roof offers amazing variety of form : one portion is precipitous, another bulbous, but each complete in itself and sharply divided, so that the resulting sky line stands in relation to the English one as mountain peaks to the monotony of the South Downs. But if Wren's houses cannot rival the French chateaux in external splendour, their interiors are, in a way utterly different, no less sumptuous. Here again it is necessary to bear in mind the contrasting ideals : the French house is built for summer sojourn (of winter discomfort even at Versailles there is ample record) ; Parisians masked the miseries of country life by masquerading in pastoral attire, a motley which tended to maintain that mood of idyllic idleness which sunshine induces when tempered by trees and the trickle of fountains. The Englishman's country pursuits of hunting and shooting are, on the other hand, most absorbing in winter, and his house, with its thick walls and double doors, dark-panelled rooms and wide hearths, suggests a comfort and shelter incomparably more agreeable after a cold day than the white and gold and looking-glass upon which the French scheme of decoration is built up. Christopher Wren carried his lack of self-assertiveness to the point of constantly leaving no record of concern with his work, so that, unless we except Arbury, of which only the stables remain as he left them, it is impossible to substantiate by document any attribution to him of the DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 185 many country houses with which tradition associates his name. Among those most obviously his, Belton, near Grantham, is the finest and, save for two rooms decorated by Adam, stands now exactly as it did when completed in 1689. Built of that yellow Ancaster stone to which time lends a glow of varied intensity, the house is of letter H ground- plan ; the projecting wings affording a sun-trap on the south, while those on the opposite side protect against the east wind which so disagreeably intensifies the chill of a northern aspect. The low slate roof, of which the flat upper portion is edged by a balustrade, the sash-windows, the pediment which surmounts the recessed portion of the facade and which encloses a cartouche, its outline softened by wreaths, the octagonal turret which crowns the whole — combine to give an impression of external austerity which further enhances by contrast the sumptuousness of the interior. As one approaches the house by the elm avenue a mile in length which crosses the park. Wren's instinct for proportion and spacing by which a building can achieve majesty without trappings is what chiefly strikes one. The interior of Belton exemplifies all the finest cha- racteristics of its period : deeply moulded wainscot and recessed doorways like those of Hampton Court, cornices of bold projection, ceilings divided into panels by gar- lands moulded in plaster in high relief, and rooms which follow the plan — a favourite one with Wren — in which the hearth is set across the corner ; this gives a touch of haphazard upon which the great architect loved to stamp intention by designing the decoration 1 86 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN of wall and ceilings in such a manner that they should converge towards what would otherwise appear an accidental inregularity of ground-plan. Almost all Wren's other work of domestic building is in brick ; it will therefore be best considered here together with certain lesser public buildings for which he used the same homely material. Such critics as delight in nomenclature and classification have qualified Wren's work in brick as " Batavian," pro- ceeding further to trace his partiality for its use to fashions brought oversea by the House of Orange. But, however conspicuous the traces of William III.'s economy may be in such buildings as Wren erected by his command, the fact that there was a long tradition of brick building in England before Wren's time, and that Wren himself constantly made use of the material in the works of his Caroline period, justifies a denial of this debt to Dutch influence. Among Wren's very earliest works, indeed, was the Store- house in the Tower, which Pepys^ mentions as having seen completed in 1664, and which happily survived the fire of 1 84 1 in which its contemporary and far finer Armoury was burnt down. The Tower Storehouse, as its name implies, is a building of the merest utility, and the landing-stages which occupy the centre of its three storeys made any centralisation of ornament impossible. I "JVbr. 8th, 1664. To dinner all of us to the Lieutenants of the Tower : where a good dinner, but disturbed in the middle of it by the King's coming into the Tower : and so we broke up and to him, and went up and down the Storehouses and magazines : which are, with the addition of the new great storehouse, a noble sight." S5 O Q o Hi o K o O W « o DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 187 It is, however, a striking example of the dignity which proportion and perfiect adaptation to purpose can bestow. It has projecting wings, the window openings are of gauged brick, while the long tiled roof and side gables are alike hipped, and the whole composition bound together by a coved wooden cornice. The Bishop's Hostel^ at Cambridge, built 1669-70, five years later than the Tower Store, is also of brick. Here too there are projecting wings, and the dignity of the recessed portion has been further enhanced by a hooded doorway flanked by pilasters in low relief ; the alternative use of brick and stone iu the facade and the slope of the tiled roof is entirely satisfactory, but, neither here nor in the Storehouse, had the architect opportunity for the display of fancy. It was at one time the current opinion that Wren's work after the Fire included, in addition to the rebuilding of Cathedral and parish churches, all the City Companies' halls. But recent comparing of records and accounts has resulted iu the discovery that Jarman was responsible for the planning and building of most of these. Wren did indeed superintend the re-erection of Guildhall, adding some features of his own design. These features, to 1 There is no documentary evidence that the Hostel is of Wren's designing, and the recorded description of the builder is Eobert Minchin, of Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire, carpenter. Since, however, this same person had " assisted " Wren in his work at Trinity, Oxford, in 1665, it seems likely, in the face of the fact that the Hostel at Cambridge has all the characteristics of Wren's work, that Minchin here too contributed "assistance." Sincehecamefrom Bletchingdon, the home of Mr. Holder, Wren probably took the more interest in his advancement for his sister's sake. 1 88 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN judge from old engi'avings, were especially conspicuous in the upper part of the porch, in which the volute-shaped buttresses and segmental pediment of the superstructure contrasted oddly enough with the recessed Early English arch below. But all these anomalies were swept away and replaced by George Dance's Gothic in 1789. The front of Mercers' Hall in Cheapside, too, was Wren's ; it has been demolished, and the centre portion re-erected at Swanage as an entrance to the Town Hall. Of Pewterers' Hall, which was also Wren's, the great wainscotted dining-hall bearing his name and the date 1668 on its panels, and a little octagonal room with a cupola for ceiling, now a counting-house, form part of the premises of Messrs. Townend, hatters, of Lime Street ; while the short list of City Halls still attributed to Wren closes with that of the Brewers' Company in Addle Street. Here there is no inscription nor contemporary record, but the work has every characteristic we are accustomed to find in Wren's buildings. The elevation of the courtyard is of brick with stone dressings : on the ground floor an arcade, the solid tym- pana, like those Wren built four or five years later at Trinity, Cambridge, deriving from a need for giving greater height to the first floor. Above the first floor is a series of oval windows set lengthways. Very charming is the turn of the stair which allows access to the first floor from the yard. The interior is one of the finest and best preserved works of the period: the windows are framed in panels and crowned with broken segmental arches and escutcheons, while the oval windows above fill the upper p6U*t of the DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 189 room with a pleasant subdued light. The cai-ved festoons of the fireplace on the opposite wall are fine in themselves, and specially interesting as bearing a date, 1670, prior to that at which Wren first met Grinling Gibbons, to whose single chisel topographers have been prone to attribute all the carving in the City of London. One of the most charming of Wren's sterner brick elevations, and one which has only been destroyed within living memory, was the long range which he built in 1672 for Christ's Hospital. It faced south towards Newgate Street, and was of red brick with tiled roof and wooden cornice, the length of its eleven bays relieved by a seg- mental pediment of plain brick over the three centre bays and the crowning with gables of those at either end. Some pilasters on tall bases, between which were the windows of the basement, divided the wall space, while the design was closed by the doubling of the pilasters which flanked the end bays. The gateway in the easternmost which formed the entrance to the school-yard, which is adorned with the statue of the royal founder in a niche, and above again by an oval window in rubbed brick, was carefully taken down and re-erected among the new school buildings at Horsham in 1894. Wren's use of rubbed brick — brick, that is, of a kind which can be rubbed or filed into a wedge shape, like the stones of an arch, or to an external curve for the construction of pillars — ^is nowhere better exemplified than in the work which a fire in the Temple brought him about 1678. He built the cloister at the end of Hare Court, and probably approved at least the broken pediments with balls which sur- mount the doorways here and in Old Square, Lincoln's Inn. 190 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN But the brickwork most deserving of study is that of the doorways in King's Bench Walk, especially that of No. 5, a design of great perfection, the pilasters, moulding, and pediment of rubbed brick, and the Corinthian capitals of the former delicately wrought in stone. The distinction which a grieat man can impress upon his lesser works is nowhere better exemplified than in the schoolroom which Wren built for Winchester College. In its perfect symmetry, its rich colour, its restrained orna- ment, the study of it should surely counteract the, tendency of to-day towards over-decoration on one hand, on the other to clumsiness. Recoiling from the spindle legs and blue china fragility of twenty years ago, some architects and designers of furniture aifect a rudeness recalling the simplicity less of the cottage than of the cave. We are too civilised to abjure decoration other than self-consciously. There is a grace of ornament sis surely as there is a comeliness of struc- ture, and Wren's work at Winchester displays as sure a handling of the one as of the other. Nothing could exceed the simplicity of the ground-plan. It would be that of a box did the facade not break slightly with the pediment, which device allows of height being ac- centuated by the two lines of stone coigns on either side the hooded doorway. Ornament is severely concentrated, and only discernible on this side and on that in the stone festoons above the windows. The brick church of St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, recalls the Winchester School, but here the windows, no doubt for the sake of economy, are ai'ched with rubbed brick in place of stone. Photo by A. n. Aspinall PtATE 24.— DOORWAY IN RUBBED BRICK, 5 KING'S BENCH WALK To face p. 190 CS Hi o pa o a o " o w o [£ M I DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 191 It is no doubt owing to its situation in a crowded and narrow street that Wren's Middle Temple gateway is so little famous. It is none the less admirable as an example of unassuming dignity, and interesting, moreover, as one of the very few elevations which Wren designed to stand flush with other buildings in a street. This base- ment storey is of rusticated stone, its upper storey and pediment of brick divided into three bays and flanked by Ionic pilasters of Portland stone. Their bases are on a level with the window-sill of the middle window, while the side windows are cut down and provided with balconies supported on brackets. The fenestration is perfectly simple, with none of the exaggeration of scale which some- times disfigured Wren's later work, and the pediment has a wheel window and a fine cornice. Stone quoins bind the whole together, while a plain stone course carried half- way between the windows of the first and second floor records that the gateway was rebuilt after a fire, at the expense of the Benchers in 1684. At the time that Wren was building the Middle Temple gateway and the schoolroom at Winchester he was repair- ing the Cathedral spire at Chichester, and no doubt the' two red brick houses attributed to him in the streets of that town are of this period. The one in West Street, with its cone-surmounted panelled gate-posts, its large windows, wooden cornice, tiled roof, and the recessed panels of its tall chimney-stacks, is even more rural than the Dodo House with its flight of steps leading straight from the pavement to the front door. There is a course of rubbed brick here too, below the first floor windows, a course of the kind very common about Lincoln's Inn and the Temple, 192 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN agreeing well with the urban type of porch here illus- trated. Although there is no garden before the Dodo House, a certain privacy is assured by the dwarf wall surmounted by a railing which is interposed between house and pavement, and the house takes its name from a curious pair of stone birds which replace urns or cones upon the gate-posts. The Town Hall of Windsor, which Wren built in 1688, is a pleasant, compact little building, which an anecdote has made more famous than its merits deserve. To the first Parliament of William and_^Mary, Wren (who in the preceding Parliament had represented Plympton St. Maurice in Devonshire) was called as member for the borough of New Windsor, and no doubt the building of the Town Hall was a way of making himself popular with his new constituents. It was of one storey, the ground floor being an open arcade for the transaction of business with a trabeated ceiling. The Mayor and Corporation came to make a state inspection when the building was declared finished, and objected that the supports of the floor of the room above the open basement were insufficient. Wren explained the reason of his conviction of its security, but finally consented to add two columns besides those of his plan. These supplementary columns he made of set purpose so short that a space intervened between their capitals and the ceiling. Seen from below, however, all seemed reassuring, and the civic deputation expressed themselves satisfied. The columns stand as they did then, and the space has not lessened between them and the ceiling. Legend associates Wren's name with Upper School at \ W P3 o o p ■< I Ph ■B h to 3 «, s Q w o 5 M !?5 O EH Plate 29.— MOEDEN COLLEGE, BLACKHEATH Photo by Cyril Ellis Tofacep. 192 H (« H w o O M iJ ►-; |2i ST. PAUL'S 207 Above the cornice, behind the gallery, rises a plain panelled storey or " attic," which, with the lesser cornice which surmounts it, also " breaks " above each pilaster. From the break of this upper cornice great arches span the nave, arches whose sources of support the eye can follow from the very ground which imparts to the nave that loftiness which is achieved by the unbroken perpen- dicular mouldings of French Gothic. The space between the transverse arches above each bay is roofed by saucer- domes suspended, so to speak, upon pinion-like pendentives. The richly moulded stone wreaths which mark the section or edge of these domes reach to the keystones of the trans- verse arches, but the wall above the attic being pierced with windows, and three of the four spaces to roof over being oblong, a hood-shaped elliptic arch is in the case of these thrown out to meet the wreath from above the windows north and south. This curious construction of a cylinder cutting an elliptic, technically called Welsh-vault- ing, may have been noticed by Wren at the Soi'bonne, just as his saucer-domes may derive from the aisle-roofs of the Val-de-GrSce. The feelings of those hyper-classical critics who objected to the coupled columns of Wren's fa9ade were even more outraged by so glaring a departure from the Greek tradi- tion as the omission above his nave arches of two members of the entablature:^ of the architrave, namely, and the frieze, an omission which he seemed determined further to accen- tuate by giving to the stilt above the capitals a form sug- 1 " Entablature : the horizontal mass supported by the columns in Greek architecture, divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice." — Freeman. 2o8 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN gestive of fragments of those very features so flagrantly interrupted.-' Wren, satisfied that in this departure from commonly approved models he had imparted lightness without sacrifice of stability to his arcade, pointed to the Temple of Peace as illustrated in Serlio, which shows that the Romans, those acknowledged masters of building, had not hesitated to dispense with the whole entablature ; and he moreover declared, upon the analogy of the same temple, that the two-fold blocks above his capitals were not frag- ments of a fractured entablature, but signified the ends of beams which, in the wooden structure whence the three- aisled vault lineally derived, would lie across the aisles,and of which therefore the ends only would peneti'ate to the nave. Nor was the incomplete entablature the only oflFence in Wren's nave against accepted architectural convention. The same tradition which, according to the purists, con- victed him of heresy in raising his arches through the space which should have been allotted to architrave and frieze forbade his tiurning the arch of his roof from an attic storey. If Wren made any reply to this objection, it has not come down us. Probably he felt, as later critics have done, that his audacity was justified by the beauty of the resultant effect. He treated the attic storey, indeed, which carried his upper windows, as though it had been the clerestory of a Gothic church. It is impossible to notice one by one the profusion of carefully disposed details which blend together in happy ' A correctly tripartite entablature on a small Bcale surmounts the lesser order of pilasters under arches opening from the nave into the aisles. The great entablature is complete in the transepts, but cannot be seen from the nave. «, Hi n oa g M S o S -^ Hi EH .2 a o ST. PAUL'S 209 subordination to produce so magnificent an effect as the interior of St. Paul's, but, before leaving the nave, the roof of the western vestibule should be compared with those of the three next bays, whose ciirious roof-construction has been shown to have been necessitated by their oblong ground- plan. The westernmost bay, that of the vestibule, is square, and the pendentives, or triangular spaces of its roof, are consequently equilateral. This symmetry has allowed of a further adornment of the roof in the shape of circular wreaths in the pendentives, wreaths of the kind with which Wren loved to be prodigal, but with which he never obscured his lines of construction after the later manner of Rococo artists. In passing along the nave to the dome-space, it is im- portant to observe how, in preparation for the increased strain, the light saucer-domes give place to a waggon-vault, that waggon-vault of deep coflering which has suggested to some impatient critics the hurling at St. Paul's nave the epithet "tunnel-like." Its purpose undei'stood, it is seen to be structurally rather of the dome than of the nave, and as we pass below it, its crown soars more conspicuously than its sides converge. The same great Corinthian pilasters which bear up the roof of the nave carry the dome also, but whereas there they stand singly between the arches, here they are coupled, and this in such a manner as not to encroach upon the floor space spanned by the four great arches leading to nave, choir, and transepts, but to further reduce the span afforded those slanting sides of the octagon, which are already considerably shorter than their fellows. For the eight " legs " of the dome are not, any more 2IO SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN than their prototypes at Ely, equidistant. They stand forty feet apart at the four points of the compass, only twenty feet apart at the angles. Choir and transept con- nect with the dome by the same deep waggon-vault as the nave, and the problem for Wren to solve was this : to bring the crown of the arch spanning the narrow space to the same height as that of the wide. To the Gothic architect of Ely this presented little difficulty, for a Gothic arch is readily compressible, and he had but to make the arch of the shorter side more acutely pointed than that of the long, but Wren, committed to round arches, had no such resource. Before, however, proceeding to Wren's solution of this problem, it is irapoi"tant to recall the outward configuration of the Cathedral, in order to realise that those great bastions which fill up the angles of choir, nave, and tran- sept are immediately behind these shorter sides of the octagon, and that it was of the utmost importance to provide for the passing of the thrust from these short sides to the bastion behind them. This is accomplished by the throwing of a barrel-vault from the great pier across the aisle to the wall behind, actually that of the bastion. Above the chamfered angle of the bastion, above the opening of the ban'el-vaults right and left, is a quarter dome whose section is the plain archivolt of a segmental arch whose cornice, mitred to the interrupted cornice of the great order, recalls the composition so popular for wooden doorways in the eighteenth century. This is the first tie between the great piers at the angle. Above the attic storey forms the parapet of a loggia over the quarter dome, and, from above the angular return of this attic and of the outside pilaster ■< PS o w 6-1 ■< V <) P4 o W >? H o n Photo by Cyril Ellis Plate 39.— TJPPEE PORTION OF INNER SIDE OP BASTION, ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL Tofacep. 210 ST. PAUL'S 211 which properly belongs to the great arch, Wren throws an arch rising to an equal height with those on either side. The elevation, however, exhibiting non-concentric arches on the same plan, and further embroiled by the straight line of the attic, cannot be accounted among the happiest of Wren's ingenuities. It is indeed the greatest fault of what is altogether the least faulty of late Renais- sance interiors. It is a relief to have done with criticism and be free to give rein to admiration. Nothing surely could be at once more soaring or more majestic than the rise of St. Paul's dome from the cantilever cornice above the key- stones of the arches to the zenith of the lantern ! The choir of St. Paul's was appropriately opened for worship^ upon that great day of national thanksgiving which was held to celebrate the Peace of Ryswick on December 2, 1697. "This," writes Dean Milman in his Annals of St. PauVs, " was an event not only of importance to England, but to Europe, to Christendom. The Peace of Ryswick ratified the enforced recognition of the title of William III. to the throne of England by his haughty now humbled foe, the magnificent Louis XIV. It admitted in the face of the world . . . the right of England to determine her own religion and the absolute independence of the Church of England of all foreign authority." But the choir to which King and court thronged then, as did Queen Anne and the Hanoverian Kings on later 1 Evelyn notes in his Diary, on October 5, 1694 : " I went to St, Paul's to see the choir, now finish'd as to the stQne work," 212 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN occasions of similar solemnity, wore, for the space of that century and a half, a very different aspect from that which it presents to-day, its later form being probably in many respects closer to the architect's ideal. From certain buttressings in the crypt it seems indubitable that Wren intended that the organ should be set up alongside the choir in the position which it occupies to-day, but, at the time of the building, the Dean and Chapter clung to the old monastic tradition of an enclosed choir for the recital of the Daily Offices, and, in deference to their wishes, the great architect divided the eastern arm of his Cathedral from the rest by the screen organ gallery familiar to most of us from eighteenth-century engravings. It is stated in Dr. Rimbault's History of the Organ, that "in consequence of the reputation which Father Smith had acquired, he was made choice of to build an organ for St. Paul's Cathedral then in the coiirse of erec- tion. A place was accordingly fitted up for him in the Cathedral to do the work in, but it was a long time before he could proceed with it, owing to a contention between Sir Christopher Wren and the Dean and Chapter. Sir Christopher Wren wished the organ to be placed on one side of the choir as it was in the old Cathedral, that the whole extent and beauty of the building might be had at one view. The Dean, on the contrary, wished to have it at the west end of the choir, and Sir Christopher, after using every effort and argument to gain his point, was at last obliged to yield. Smith, according to his instructions, began the organ, and when the pipes were finished foimd that the case was not spacious enough to contain them all ; and Sir Christopher, tender of his architectural propor- ST. PAUL'S 213 tions, would not consent to let the case bp enlarged to receive them, declaring the beauty of the building to be spoilt by the box of whistles." This screen stood, not as the low iron screen ^ and gates do to-day at the entrance west end of the choir, but east- ward of those great piers, against the faces of which there are now ranged the stalls of Dean and other dignitaries with the organ above them. The end-stalls were in those days returned (i.e., those of the Dean, of the Archdeacons of London and Essex, and of the Precentor faced eastward), which made it necessary that the two sides of the screen as they jutted out from within the first bay of the choir should be solid, while in the middle, in the opening which measured about one third of the total width of the screen, a double colon- nade of slender Corinthian columns supported the organ. These columns, their flutings reeded likp those of the great pilaster order of the interior, and the solid sides of the screen facing the dome space, were of marble, while all the fittings of the choir eastward were of wood. ^ The erection of such a screen as this, which made the High Altar invisible from any part of the Cathedral save from a narrow strip of the nave and dome^space, was the less generally deplored that, from the time of the building of St. Paul's to the middle of the nineteenth century, the tradition of worship so languished that, even on Sundays and Holy Days, such worshippers as met together were easily accommodated within the space enclosed by the 1 This has been formed of the originiJ altar-rails of Tijou's forging set upon a marble plinth. 214 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN 'screen, while at other times fees were charged for admission to the Cathedral, and the vergers hired out the prebendaries' stalls at high annual rents. Dome and nave and transept were indeed never used except on state occasions and on the day when the annual charity children's service was thought to justify the erection of tiered tribunes under the dome. The screen was removed in 1859 and the organ placed in the middle choir-arch in i860. Ten years later, in 1870, it was divided and set up in the position it occupies now. The marble columns of the screen and part of its gallery have been re-erected inside the entrance of the north transept, while the marble panel which crowns the design has been appropriately inscribed with the Latin epitaph written by Christopher Wren the younger, and hitherto figuring but upon the plain slab which marks his father's grave in the ciypt of the Cathedral. To return to the choir, the changes wrought there are not confined to the clearing away of the screen, for the floor, originally of one level from the west door to the steps of the sanctuary, has been raised so that the whole choir stands now the height of four steps above the floor of dome and ambulatory. The High Altar, or, as the eighteenth century termed it, the " Grand Altar," originally stood in the apse, but, at the recent adorning of the sanctuary, the new reredos was set between the easternmost piers of the choir and the apsidal space behind fitted with an altar of its own and named the Jesus Chapel, that having been the dedication of a chapel at the extreme east end of old St. Paul's crypt. Photo by Cyril Ellis Plate 40.— ROOF OP LORD MAYOR'S VESTRY, ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL To face p. 214 ST. PAUL'S 215 The fame of Grinling Gibbons, whose delicate carvings decorate not St. Paul's alone, but many of the great houses of England, has tended to rob Wren of the credit due to him for designing what are certainly the finest late Renaissance choir stalls, not only in England, but in Europe. There is a drawing extant by Wren's own hand which proves the general arrangement to be as exclusively his as the details are Grinling Gibbons's. The amazing delicacy of Grinling Gibbons's lime-wood carving has left the masterly spacing and designing of the oaken stalls which they adorn generally disregarded, and indeed the architect, by suggesting such prodigal decora- tion, wiUingly subordinated his own share in the scheme. In the panels and columns, however, of the back elevation, those that abut upon the ambulatory. Wren is supreme, blending panels and mouldings in masterly fashion with grilles of Tijou's ironwork. But his care was not all spent upon such parts of the Cathedral as met the public eye. At the core of those bastions which play so great a part in the stability of St. Paul's is an empty space of about twenty feet across. That on the north-west contains the staircase leading to the dome and the gallery above the aisles, the other three contain vaulted chambers appropriated to use as vestries for Deans, Minor Canons, and Lord Mayor respectively. The latter far surpasses the rest in beauty. Its tall wainscot is hung with carved festoons which have suppUed the model for those which adorn St. Paul's at Christmas-time, while the radiating panels of the domed ceiling give place here and there to the cherub-heads in which Wren took pleasure. 2i6 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN One of the most beautiful of the lesser features of St. Paul's exterior is the Dean's door, in the south wall of the southern campanile, and just within it, in the basement of the clock tower at the bottom of the stair, known from its curious construction as the Geometrical Staircase, is a niche richly framed in carving and sur- mounted by a magnificent iron screen which here interrupts the equally beautiful hand-rail of the stair and marks the landing, which is on the level of the Cathedral floor. The base of the clock tower is square externally, but its core is cylindrical, and round it winds the ingenious stone stair which gives access, on the one side, to the libi-ary and, on the other, to the western galleries of the Cathedral. We have seen how the upper half of the external wall of St. Paul's has for the most part a vacuum behind it, but, in the case of the chapels at the west, those chapels which interrupt the perpendicular lines of the campanile on their north and south sides, this space is occupied by rectangular apartments of identical size, both of which Wren is thought to have intended for libraries. Only «>ne, however, has been thus furnished. / The apsidal east end of the Cathedral interior was in Wren's lifetime finished in a manner expressly regarded by lim as temporary, according to Parentalia, "intended," writes Stephen Wren, " only to serve till such Time and Materials could have been procured for a magnificent De- sign of an Altar consisting of four Pillars wreathed, of the richest Greek Marbles supporting a Canopy hemispherical, vith proper decorations of Architecture and Sculpture pr which the respective Drawings and a Model were prepared." ij R W Pi O O P ■" M C5 « o I GREENWICH HOSPITAL 273 Queen Mary's gallery are original, but have elsewhere been replaced by large panes and thin sashes, which are least of all desirable where the windows are already so large. The doorways and cornices of Kensington Palace are in their perfect proportion comparable with the sumptuous ones of Hampton Court. The King's grand staircase, for all Kent's tampering, is for the most part of Wren's construction. The iron banister with oaken hand-rail, the low black marble treads of the stair, the black and white paving of the hall and landings^n all these we discern Wren's taste. But more striking than any part of the actual Palace is the Banqueting Hall or Orangery which Wren built in the garden for Queen Anne in 1704 at the cost of £2^gg. Narrowly escaping destruction in the early nineteenth century, the garden below its terraCe until recently a mere confusion of potting sheds and rubbish heaps, it now meets the appreciation it deserves as one of Wren's very finest works. Externally of red and yellow brick, it is the internal spacing, the delicate mouldings of the alcoves at either end of the great hall, the reserved ornament which admits but of festoons above the end arches, that constitute its beauty. While building the Observatory upon the Castle Hill at Greenwich, in 1675, Wren must often have looked re- gretfully down upon the magnificent river^site upon which the old palace, the birthplace of Queen Elizabeth, had once stoadi. and upon which Inigo Jones had been com- missioned by Charles I. to erect a royal residence. Owing to the outbreak pf civil war, no part of the great archj' 274 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN tect's scheme had been completed save the Queen's House, built at some distance inland expressly for Henrietta Maria, and the fragment of a palace by the shore which John Webb had built, under the surveyorship of Sir John Denham, in 1 66 1-6, from extant designs of Inigo Jones. That this portion was, in some sort, complete in itself, although occupying but a small portion of the land over which it had originally been intended to build, is evident, since it is recorded that there, for a short while, Charles II. held his court. Very soon after her accession, Queen Mary II. seems to have formed a scheme, fostered no doubt by John Evelyn and the ever-benevolent Sir Stephen Fox, of rivalling her father's beneficence and founding a hospital for dis- abled seamen on the same lines as that for invalid soldiers at Chelsea. With the buildings at Hampton Court and Kensington to superintend, the King and Queen had no mind to erect another palace upon the royal property of Greenwich, while its position at the entrance of the Port of London made it peculiarly appropriate to a patriotic purpose. Hawksmoor, in a repoii; written by order of Parliament in 1778, wrote: " Her Majesty Queen Mary, the foundress of the Marine Hospital, enjoined Sir Christopher Wren to build the Fabrick with great magnificence . . . and being ever solicitous for the prosecution of the design had several times honoured Greenwich with her personal views of the building erected by King Charles II. as part of his palace, and likewise of that built by Mr. Inigo Jones, called the GREENWICH HOSPITAL 275 Queen's house. . . . She was unwilling to demolish either, as was proposed by some.^ This occasioned the keeping of an approach from the Thames quite up to the Queen's House that Her Majesty might have an access to that house by water as by land. ... " Her Majesty's absolute determination to preserve the wing built by her uncle King Charles II, the Queen's House and the approach of it . . . naturally drew on the disposition of the buildings, as they are now placed and situated." It is impossible not to regret that Queen Mary's senti- mental unwillingness to destroy the house built by her grandmother or even to allow the river-view to be blocked out from its windows should have compelled Wren so to subordinate his own work as to result in his building an approach of great magnificence to an edifice but little imposing. In justice to the Queen, it must be borne in mind that, according to Hawksmoor, she had intended to add pavilions to the Queen's House according to Inigo Jones's design, but that her untimely death frustrated any such plan ; and moreover, whatever of its general meanness may be laid to the charge of modern altera- tion, it is hard to see how the mere addition of pavilions, by which some kind of tower or turret must be intended, could so have magnified the scale of the Queen's House as to justify the splendour of Wren's colonnade. The portfolio of Wren's Greenwich designs in Sir John Soane's Museum contains another proof that he 1 This probably refers to Sir Christopher Wren's earlier designs, now in Sir John Soane's Museum, 2/6 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN had not intended that bis range of buildings should be brought to so poor a conclusion. The river-side elevation is in these designs retained and repeated on the other side of the quadrangle as it is to-day, but, behind it, a long range carried inland at right angles sweeps round finally to meet its fellow beneath a central cupola. In deference to the Queen's wishes, this plan was super- seded by one which shows the buildings almost exactly as ultimately completed. Taking the wide path which led to the Queen's House as a centre, and appreciating the beauty of the Jones- Webb elevations — both that of the river-front and that one of which probably but a fragment was standing, which ran inland at right angles— Wren built another range opposite to it of identical design at such a distance that the middle of the intervening space exactly tallied with the centre of the Queen's House. So far his share of the designing of Greenwich Hospital was but a skilful disposal of ground-plan and a generosity which allowed of his adopting another man's design without any attempt to add to it. The square space was now enclosed on three sides : by the river and by the east and west section of the blocks known respectively as King Charles's and Queen Anne's quarters, but, inland, some convergence was necessary, since the scheme must culminate on so small a frontage as that of the Queen's House. Wren accordingly drew the ground- plans of the two ranges of buildings inland known respec- tively as King William's and Queen Mary's quarters, closer together, and designed a colonnade of coupled Doric columns to line both sides of the way northward. These The River. Plate 63.— GROUND-PLAN OF GKEENWICH HOSPITAL A. Queen's House. B. Queen Mary's Quarter. C. Kiug- William's Quarter. Z>. Queen Anne's Quarter. E. King Charles II.'s Quarter JVote. — Owing to an OTersight, the distance between A and the roadway between £ and C has been represented as but hall what it actually is. — L. M. To face p. 272 Photo by Cyril Ellis PLATE 64.-GEBENWICH HOSPITAL, ANGLE OF QUKEN MAET'S QUAETEE To face p. m GREENWICH HOSPITAL 277 colonnades he returned at the angles, thus partly enclosing the great square on the land side, and above the projecting portion of his new building he set cupolas right and left, which, seen from the Thames, appear to form part of the great square from which a wide roadway actually divides them. The Queen's House stands on rising ground, and of this one advantage Wren availed himself in masterly fashion by setting the south returns of his colonnades Upon a tall stylobate, raising the level of the space between his new buildings and accentuating ascent by two short flights of steps of the width of the whole space. The twin domes of Greenwich are among the finest of Wren's works, admirable alike for beauty of curve and the proportion they bear to the colonnade below. Buttressed by clusters of colunms at four points, the drums rise from behind an entablature which breaks boldly at the corners. The Painted Hall in King William's quarter, which was intended to serve as pensioners' dining hall, is (save for certain portions of the Governor's private apartments in King Charles's quarter) the only unaltered Greenwich interior, for the Chapel which occupies the corresponding portion of Queen Mary's quarter was destroyed by fire in the early part of the nineteenth century, and, at the re- building, was decorated in the classical manner of the First Empire. The entrance to the Painted Hall under the colonnade admits to a vestibule crowned by the dome, which is internally upborne upon the crowns of four tall arches and pendentives. The arches open into recesses right and left, and into the hall, round the walls of which an 278 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN entablature is earned by engaged pilasters. This same entablature is carried in a curious fashion across the tall arches of the vestibule, which is below the level of the hall, and the height of the communicating stairs is cleverly adjusted to the tall base of the columns which flank the entrance. At the opposite end of the hall, a wide seg- mental arch opens into a smaller apartment, which, being raised seven steps above the floor of the hall, was no doubt intended to serve as a dais on great occasions. But Wren's work at Greenwich was not completed by the colonnades and domes. There is a model in the Naval Museum — such a wooden model as Wren's deft ingenuity loved to construct^which shows us (a fact which the Soane Museum drawings tend to confirm) that at first, side by side with the Jones-Webb river elevation and its replica of Wren's building on the opposite side of the square, were other buildings destitute of any architectural dignity, in- tended no doubt for the domestic offices of the Hospital, kitchen, wash-houses, &c. These were known as the " base buildings," and public opinion not unjustly denounced them as mean. So it came about that Wren was empowered to build there a frontage of equal dignity to that of their fellows, and his love of uniformity resulted in the river- front of Greenwich exhibiting Inigo Jones's design four times over. The unaltered portions of the Governor's apartments embrace a wainscotted dining-room with the boldprojecting cornice and coved ceiling (features which we find again in the Governor's state-room at Chelsea, and among the few remaining fragments of Wren's building at St. James's Palace), and an imposing staircase, with oak banisters and hand-rail, which is continued to the top storey of the house. CHAPTER XVlll DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH Despite poignant regret for the frustration of his plan for rebuilding London — a regret which his incessant labours in the City kept painfully alive — and further professional disappointments, of which the failure of Charles II. to pro- ceed with the Windsor Mausoleum or the Koyal Palace at Winchester were the keenest, Wren's career, until the time of his great work of construction and rearrangement at Greenwich, had been exceptionally free from the harassing persecution of rival contemporaries. His schoolfellows, his brother-undergraduates, his colleagues of the Royal Society, had ever rejoiced in the success of one so unassum- ing and genial, while his reputation for integrity and dis- interestedness gave little handle to malice. Had he not fixed his own salary as architect of St. Paul's at the low rate of ;^2oo a year, and been content with but an additional £ioo for the pains of rebuilding the City churches ? Had he not, in one year, contributed a fourth part of his poor wage to the building-fund of the Cathedral, and remitted the fee due to him from the parishioners of St. Clement Danes on hearing that they were near the end of their resources.? Had not his contribution to Greenwich Hospital 279 28o SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN been a generous refusal to accept any payment for his arduous share in promoting that scheme of national benevolence ? Talman's jealousy had indeed hampered him during the building of Hampton Court, but it had done him no serious mischief, and the Queen's favour had continued un- abated.-^ But this immunity from attack ended, and, in 1696, he received an unexpected blow at the hands of Parliament, a blow which initiated the persecution which embittered his last years. The ignorant malevolence of certain persons amoiig the St. Paul's Commissioners professed surprise at what seemed to them the slow progress of the work of rebuilding, and led to the insertion of a clause in the Act for completing St. Paul's which decreed " the suspension of a moiety of the Surveyor's salary until the said Church should be finished ; thereby the better to encourage him to finish the same work with the utmost diligence and expedi- tion." • The use of the word "encourage" in the sense of " incite," now obsolete, adds a touch of satire which was not intended by the dull-witted framers of the clause, but their action amounted to a public charge of dilatoriness which his detractors did not hesitate to attribute to a desire, by the prolonging of his tenure of office, to enjoy the longer its emoluments. Wren bore the implied insult in silence, and uttered no public protest against the unjust withholding of half his 1 A fine cabinet, the property of his descendant, Mrs. Pigott, presented to Sir Christopher by Queen Anne, is evidence of this. DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 281 salary until the year 17 lo, which saw his work at Green- wich complete and the topmost stone laid by the archi- tect's son Christopher, attended by Mr. Strong, the master- mason, upon the lantern of St. Paul's dome. On February 13, 1710, Sir Christopher presented the following " humble petition to the Queen's most excellent Majesty " : " The most humble petition of Sir Christopher Wren Sheweth ; " That there being a Clause in an Act of Parliament which suspends a moiety of your petitioner's salary at St. Paul's till the building be finished, and being obstructed in his measures for completing the same by the arbitrary proceedings of some of the Commissioners for that fabric ; " Your petitioner most humbly beseeches your Majesty to interpose your Royal Authority so as that he may be suffered to finish the said building in such manner and offer such designs as shall be approved by your Majesty, or such persons as your Majesty shall think fit to appoint for that purpose. " And your petitioner will ever pray etc. "Christopher Wren. "February 13, 1710." The petition was laid before the Commissioners on the following 30th of April, and they issued a report full alike of innuendoes against Wren and of disquisitions upon their own virtue. They denied ever having considered Wren's satoy too great, or that they had ever done anything to obstruct 282 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN his receiving it in full ; for the withholding of the moiety they declared Parliament alone responsible, and protested that it had been their constant endeavour " to hasten the finishing of the work." Stopping short of directly accusing Wren of embezzlement, they hinted at the great corruption of his subordinates. They expressed much surprise that Wren, himself a Commissioner, should accuse his colleagues of "arbitrary proceedings," and declared that their only desire had been how best to meet the Queen's wishes. After admitting that they had occasionally differed in opinion from Wren, they asserted that this was specially the case over an iron fence which he desired to have made of wrought iron while his brother Commissioners had voted for cast iron as being " ten times as durable as the other." Unwitting, it seems, that by this rash statement they had displayed a crass ignorance, they went on to say that, since a good part of the fence was already set up, it could not be difficult to recognise their judgment as having proved superior to Wren's in this matter. Furthermore they complained that the architect had put obstacles in the way of the persons employed in the fixing of this fence, and had, without so much as consulting them, set up "a poor mean rail disliked by everybody on each side of the great ascent of the west end." Jennings, the master carpenter, one of the architect's favourite workmen, had made away with, to sell for his own profit, much material charged upon St. Paul's accounts, by which means he was making fifteen hundred a year. They desired that Mr. Jennings be prosecuted for these DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 283 "frauds and abuses," in order that, upon public trial, their good faith might be vindicated at the expense of Wren's. Finally they observed that, in making his appeal, Wren had reflected upon a Commission composed of " two arch- bishops, several bishops, the Lord Mayor, etc. etc., persons whose known honour, justice and integrity should have kept Sir Christopher fi-om making any reflection upon them." Wren next appealed : " To His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of London. " May it please your Lordships, " That I humbly lay before you the state of the suspen- sion of a moiety of my salary (as surveyor of S. Paul's Cathedral) by a Clause in an act of parliament, which is thus : — " The design of the Parliament in granting the coal duty for the said cathedral at that time being to have the building completed with all possible speed, they did, to encourage and oblige the Surveyor's diligence in carrying on the work, suspend half of his allowance, till all should be done. Whereby I humbly conceive it may justly from thence be implied that they thought the building, and everything belonging to it, was wholly under my manage- ment and direction, and that it was in my power to hasten or protract it. How far it has been so your Lordships know : as also how far I have been limited and restrained. However it has pleased God so to bless my sincere endea- vours, as that I have brought the building to a conclusion, 284 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN so far as is in my power, and I think nothing can be said now to remain unperfected, but the iron fence roimd the Church, and painting the cupola, the directing of which is taken out of my hands, and therefore I hope that I am neither answetable for them, nor that the said suspending clause can, ot ought to, affect me any further on that account. As for painting the cupola, your Lordships know it has been long under consideration : that I have no power left me concerning it, and that it is not resolved in what manner to do it, or whether at all. And as for the iron fence it is so remarkable and fresh in my memory, by whose influence and importunity it was wrested from me, and the doing it carried in a way that I may ventiure to say will ever be condemned. 1 have just this to observe further, that your lordships had no hand in it : and consequently OUght not to share in the blame that may attend it. " This, then, being the case, and nothing left that I think can keep the said clause of suspension any longer in force against me, " I most humbly pray your lordships to grant your warrant for paying me what is due to me on that article, which was £i2,oa last Michaelmas. And if for the future my advice and assistance be required in anything about the said cathedral, I will be ready to give the same, and to leave the consideration of it to your lordships : being, with all subfnissibn, " My Lofds, " Your lordships most obedient, " and taOist faithful humble servant, " CHJiiSTOPHEit Wren." DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH %$$ The matter was laid before the Attorney-General, J^ord Northey, who, in January 171 1, gave it as his opinion that Sir Christopher's case was very hard, but that, as Parlia' ment had enacted that half bis salary be held back until St. Paul's was completed, it was not in the Commissioners power to order the moiety be paid back until the condition of payment was fulfilled--'i.e., until St. Paul's was pro- nounced finished. The actual structure was, however, complete, and Wren made a third appeal, this time " to the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled." " The humble petition of Sir Christopher Wren, " Sheweth, " That in the act of Parliament of 8 and 9 of the late King William for completing the building and adorning the cathedral-church of St. Paul's, London, there being a clause for suspending a moiety of the surveyor's salary till the said church should be finished, thereby the better to encourage him to finish the same with the utmost diligence and expedition, your petitioner humbly coneeives, that the parliament, by putting the surveyor under such obligation, did apprehend that the building and every thing belong- ing to it, was wholly under his management and direction, and that it was in his power to hasten or protract it. " That your petitioner having been surveyor of the said cathedral church from the beginning of its rebuilding and the same (as may be seen) being now completed, excepting the iron fence, some ornaments undetermined, and some other matters which some of the commissioners for the fabric have so interposed in, as that his measures for com- 286 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN pleting the same are wholly overruled and frustrated : and thereby he is under this hardship as neither to be paid the salary that is due to him, nor suffered to perfect the work that is made the condition of it. "Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays your honours to grant him such relief in the premises as to your great wisdom and justice shall seem meet. " And your petitioner will ever pray, etc. " Christopher Ween." " Whereupon," writes Sir Christopher himself in a tract published in his own defence two years later, "that Honourable and August Assembly so considered his case and were so well satisfied with the Justice and Reasonable- ness of it as to declare the Church to be finished as far as was required to be done and performed by him as Surveyor General. And it was accordingly enacted that the sus- pended salary should be paid him on or before the 25 of December, 171 1." Among other results of the scattering of the citizens that ensued upon the Fire of London was a considerable extension of the residential radius of the metropolis, and, in 17 1 2, a Bill was passed " for building and endowing fifty new churches in London and Westminster."^ It is con- 1 According to Maitland's History of London (1756), only ten of the fifty were built. [St. Mary-le-Strand (Gibbs) ; St. Anne's, Lime- house (Hawksmoor) ; Christ Church, Spitalfields (Hawksmoor) ; St. George's-in-the-Eaflt (Hawksmoor) ; St. George's, Bloomsbury (Hawks- moor) ; St. George's, Queen Square ; St. Leonard's, Shoreditch (Dance) ; St. John's, Westminster (Archer, pupil of Vanbrugh) ; St. Luke's, Old Street ; St. John's, Horsleydown,] DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 287 elusive proof that Wren still stood high in royal favour that he was appointed upon the Commission, and he addressed a letter to one of his brother commissioners in which he stated his general views on church building, and also related the method by which sufficient land had been acquired round St. Paul's to ensure it the isolation which so seriously diminishes the risk of fire. This letter is printed complete in the Appendix. None of the churches in which this Act resulted were designed by Wren himself. In 17 1 2 the rumours hinted at by the Commissioners in their reply to the Queen's inquiry took more definite shape in a violent diatribe of pamphlet form, bearing for its title an adaptation of a phrase from the report above quoted, " Frauds and Abuses at S. Pauls." Private spite loves to parade as public spirit, and this tract professed to be inspired by a desire to forward the interests of the parishioners of St. Mary Woolnoth, who had vainly asked that the expenses incurred by a rebuilding of their church should be defrayed out of the surplus of the moneys pro- vided for the rebuilding of St. Paul's. It was obvious that, although the actual fabric of the Cathedral was complete, funds were still urgently necessary for internal fittings, but the writer of the " Letter to a Member of Parliament," as the sub-title ran, ignored this, and asserted that if the Cathedral were not complete, it was " the Fault of Persons belonging to it." Further on he accuses Sir Christopher Wren by name of doctoring his estimates to his own advantage and that of his friends, and airs the grievances of the dwellers round the Cathedral precincts, who complained of hoardings and 288 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN scftffoJdings not yet cleared away, of the iron fenc^ not being y^t placed in position, and, further, that the walls were still uncrowned by the stone rail or balustrade decreed by the Commissioners. Finally, a circumstantial indictment was drawn up against Jennings, the carpenter, who was further stated to have been dismissed from his post by a court of inquiry, and retained in it in a high-handed manner by Sir Christopher Wren. It was probably this libellous attack on his faithful workman that exasperated Wren to the point of publish- ing in 1713 a reply to all the charges contained in this scurrilous tract, and appending to his pamphlet of justifi- cation a detailed statement of the revenues and expenditure of St. Paul's Building Fund. But even before this vindi^ cation appeared, there was published an enthusiastic eulogy of Wren and a stern denunciation of his enemies in an anonymous tract called " Facts against Scandal." In answer to this, and also to Wren's own defence, there appeared, under the title of " A Continuation of Frauds and Abuses at St. Paul's," a pamphlet which contained, among other attacks on Wren, one contained in a letter from a workman formerly employed at St. Paul's and sub- sequently dismissed. Wren's anonymous defender was not slow to renew the fray, and at once wrot^ a second part of " Facts against Scandal," giving ample reason for the discontented labourer's dismissal, witnessed by Wren's own hand. This seems to have been an unanswerable vindication, and no more tracts appeared. That already the treatment he was receiving had roused DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 289 some to indignation is evident from an essay on " Modesty," which appeared in the Toiler on August 9, 1709, in which Steele — or, as some say, Addison — relates how he " had the honour to visit some ladies where the subject of the conversation was ' modesty,' which they commended as a quality quite as becoming in men as in women. I," says the writer, " took the liberty to say it might be as beautiful in our behaviour as in theirs, yet it could not be said it was as successful in life, for . . . it was the greatest obstacle to us both in love and business. Modesty in men is com- posed of a right judgment of what is proper for them to attempt. From hence it is that a discreet man is always a modest one. . . . "... A French author says very justly that modesty is to the other virtues in a man what shade in a picture is to the parts of the thing represented. This shade must be very justly applied, for, if there be too much, it hides our good qualities, instead of showing them to advantage. " Nestor in Athens was an unhappy instance of this truth, for he was not only in his profession the greatest man of that age, but had given more proofs of it than any other man ever did ; yet for want of that natural freedom and audacity which is necessary in commerce with men, his personal modesty overthrew all his public actions. Nestor was in those days a skilful architect, and in a manner the inventor of the use of mechanic power, which he brought to so great perfection that he knew to an atom what foimdation would bear such a superstructure ; and they record of him that he was so prodigiously exact that, for the experiment's sake, he built an edifice of great beauty and seeming strength, but contrived so as to bear only its T 290 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN own weight, and not to admit the addition of the least particle. This building was beheld with much admiration by all the Virtttosi of that time, but fell down with no other pressure but the settling of a Wren upon the top of it. Yet Nestor's modesty was such that his art and skill were soon disregarded, for want of that manner with which men of the world support and assert the merit of their own performances. Soon after this instance of his art Athens was, by the treachery of its enemies, burned to the ground. This gave Nestor the greatest occasion that ever builder had to render his name immortal and his person remarkable, for all the new city rose according to his disposition, and all the monuments of the glories and distresses of that people were erected by that sole artist ; nay, all their temples as well as houses were the effect of his study and labour, inasmuch that it was sfiid by an old sage, ' Sure Nestor will now be famous, for the habitations of gods as well as men are built by his contrivances.' But this bashful quality still put a damp upon his great knowledge, which has as fatal an effect upon men's reputations as poverty ; for, as it was said, ' the poor man saved the city, and the poor man's labour was forgot,' so here we find 'the modest man built the city, and the modest man's skill was unknown.' " The death of Queen Anne in 17 14 was another blow to Wren's failing fortunes, for George I. arrived with a crowd of needy Germans in his train, to secure appointments for whom and for such Englishmen as lent themselves to these transactions, he seems to have countenanced intrigues and bribes of every kind. DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 291 Unfortunately, the end of the term appointed by the Commissioners for St. Paul's coincided very closely with the new reign, and although the members of that Commis- sion had not stood as loyally by Wren as had their pre- decessors in the office, he fared still worse at the hands of the new Commission, among the members of which court influence was strong. Wren, now in the eighty-fifth year of his age and forty- eighth of his office of Royal Surveyor, seemed a suitable butt for the newcomers, and persecution began by a letter addressed to him from the Commissioners, insisting that, without the crowning balustrade of stone, his great Cathe- dral could not be reckoned complete. Wren's reply to this communication, in which he quotes its phra:Ses, furnishes the best comment. A Letter from Sir C. When to the Commissioners con- cerning THE Crowning of the External Walls of St. Paul's with a Balustrade " I have considered the resolution of the honourable the Commissioners for adorning St. Paul's Cathedral, dated Oct 15, 1717, and brought to me on the 21st, importing ' that a balustrade of stone be set up on the top of the Church unless Sir Christopher Wren do, in writing under his hand set forth, that it is contrary to the principles of architecture and give his opinion in a fortnight's time : and if he doth not, then the resolution of a balustrade is to be proceeded with.' " In observance of this resolution, I take leave first to declare I never designed a balustrade. Persons of little 292 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN skill in architecture did expect, I believe, to see something they had been used to in Gothic structure : and ladies think nothing Well without an edging. I should gladly have complied with the vulgar taste, but I suspended for the reasons following : " A balustrade is supposed a sort of plinth over the upper colonnade which may be divided into balusters over open parts or voids, but kept solid over solid parts, such as pilasters : for a continued range of baluster cannot be proposed to stand alone against high winds : they would be liable to be tipped down in a row if there were not solid parts at due distances intermixt which solid parts are in the form of pedestals and may be in length as long as the frieze below, where pilasters are double as in our case : for double pilasters may have one united pedestal as they have one entablature and one frieze extended over both. But now in the inward angles where the pilasters cannot be doubled, or before they were, the two voids or more open parts would meet in the angle with one small pilaster between and create a very disagreeable mixture. I am further to observe, that there is over the entablature a proper plinth, which regularly terminates the building: and as no provision was originally made in my plan for a balustrade, the setting up one in such a confused manner over the plinth must apparently break into the harmony of the whole machine, and, in this particular case, be contrary to the principles of architecture. " The like objections arise as to some other ornaments : suppose of vases, for they will be double upon the solids ; but in the inward angles there will be scarce room for one, though each of lihem be about two feet nine inches at the DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 293 bottom and nine feet high: yet these will appear con- temptible below, and bigger we cannot make them unless we fall into the crime of false bearing, which artizans of the lowest rank will have sense enough to condemn. " My opinion therefore is to have statues erected on the four pediments only which will be most proper, noble and sufficient ornament to the whole fabric, and was never omitted in the best ancient Greek and Roman architec- ture : the principles of which throughout all my schemes of this colossal structure, I have religiously endeavoured to follow : and if I glory it is in the singular mercy of God, who has enabled ftie to begin and finish a great work so conformable to the ancient mod@l. " The pedestal for the statues I have already laid in the building, which now stand naked for want of their acroteria. "Chbistophee WaEN. "Oct. 28th, 1717." In 171 8 one Benson, whose cringing incompetence marked him out for court favours, was appointed in Wren's room. The entry in the manuscript chronology compiled during his father's lifetime by the younger Christopher Wren and collated by the great architect himself is very touching. "April 26, 1715. — Superseded: in the 86th year of his age and 49th of his surveyorship." " And there arose a King who knew not Joseph [Acts vii.]. And Gallio cared for none of these things." " It is very well known," writes Ker of Kersland in his Memoirs (published 1728), " that Mr. B. was a favourite 294 SIRi CHRISTOPHER WREN of the Germans. So great that Sir Christopher Wren the famous Architect who contrived the stately Edifice of St. Paul's Church and finished it in his own time was turned Out of his employment of being Master of the King's Work, which he had possessed with great Reputation ever since the Restoration, to make way for this Favourite of Foreigners. " Some time afterwards Mr. B. fell under the displeasure of the House of Lords who, therefore, in the year 17 19, addressed His Majesty to remove and prosecute him and upon His Majesty's gracious answer to this Complaint he not only ordered the said Mr. B. to be removed from his employment but prosecuted according to law. Whereupon none doubted but this Gentleman was to be brought to justice accordingly. But though he was removed instead of being prosecuted he was presented with the Wharf of White Hall worth yearly above ;£i5oo for thirty Years." The only feature at St. Paul's actually attributed to Benson's short tenure of office was the unworthy flight of steps which, until 1873, disfigured the great western facade. Happily, among the original Wren designs in St. Paul's Library, there was found one of the steps as he intended them, and, after a lapse of over a century and a half, this plan was carried out and the last trace of Benson swept away, unless we attribute to him the heavy fence which, against Wren's expressed desire, was now erected, and which even enclosed the western approach to the Cathedral until 1873. The balustrade, too, above the plinth was now put up, whereas a drawing of Wren's in the Gardner Collection proves that, if any ornament at all were considered neces- DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 295 sary for the plinth which we know he himself deemed sufficient, Wren would have preferred vases such as those which he suggested for Trinity Chapel, Oxford, and which may be seen there to this day. The dignity which comes of wisdom has seldom been more conspicuously exhibited in human history than it was by Christopher Wren when, as an old man, court favour failed him and left him a prey to malicious foes. John Evelyn, who had done so much to win for Wren the due reward of his merits, had died in 1706, and no power- ful champion appears to have arisen in Wren's defence. '• He," writes his grandson in ParentaUa, " betook him- self to a Country Retirement, saying only with the Stoick : ' Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius philosophari.' In which Recess, free from worldly AiFairs, he passed the greatest Part of the five last following Years of his Life in Contemplation and Studies and principally in the Con- solation of the holy Scriptures : cheerful in Solitude and as well pleased to die in the Shade as in the Light." It was to the house ^ on Hampton Court Green, granted to him in lieu of a pension, that he retired to busy himself with books and mathematics. He still retained his house in St. James's Street, for, in his post as Director of the Works at Westminster Abbey, he had not been superseded, so that he was often called on business to London. He seems to have retained his faculties for the mos* part unimpaired, but there is surely an implied weariness in the fact that he suffered his pupil Gibbs to design the 1 This is still standing and known as Old Court House. It was formerly called the Paper House. 296 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN spire of St. Clement Danes, the church which he had built in 1682. Gibbs performed his task so well that his spire seems as though it had been a part of the original plan. In 1720, a rumour was put abroad that the timber roof of the Sheldonian Theatre, over the construction of which the great architect had spent such pains and ingenuity, was in danger of falling. A committee of experts was promptly summoned to inspect and report on its condition, and, to the annoyance of Wren's jealous enemies, declared it to be "in perfect repair and good order. We do certify," wrote the committee, " that the the whole Fabrick of the said Theatre is, in our Opinion, like to remain and continue in such good Repair and Condition for one hundred or two hundred Years yet to come. In Testimony whereof, we have hereunto put our Hands the eighth Day of March, Anno Dom. 1720." Sir Christopher's son and namesake had lost his wife, and, marrying again in 1715, had settled down as a War- wickshire squire at Wroxhall Abbey, where the curved garden wall is considered to be of his father's building. This son succeeded Sir Christopher as M.P. for Windsor. As an instance of the untiring interest that Wren still took in scientific progress, it is related in Sir David Brew- ster's ij^ of Isaac Newton that, in his enforced retirement, he devoted himself afresh to the old problem of devising a manner by which the longitude might be discovered at sea. This was the very problem, it wiU be remembered, concern with which had led to the founding, by Charles II., of the Greenwich Observatory. Wren's renewal of interest in the matter was no doubt owing to the fact that, in 17 14, a petition was presented DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 297 to Parliament by the merchants and skippers of trading vessels that a substantial reward be publicly offered to any one who should solve this problem, since the solution was of incalculable importance to mariners. Wren would seem to have thought lightly of the result of his labours, since he expressed his solution in crypto- graphic form, but a copy of the cipher was forwarded to the Royal Society by his son. Once a year it was Wren's custom to drive to St. Paul's and spend some time sitting under the dome he had built, and on one of those occasions he caught cold. Having re- turned to his house at Hampton Court, he had been dining in the bow-windowed room of the ground-floor when his servant, wondering at his lingering so long, found him dead in his chair, his features in no way disturbed, having apparently passed away in his sleep. So, on February 25, 1723, died Christopher Wren, and was laid to rest, a few days later, by the side of his daughter in the crypt of St. Paul's. For nearly a century and a half there was no memorial to Sir Christopher Wren in the great Cathedral of his building, and the famous epitaph : "SUBTUS CONDITUR HUJUS ECCLESIAE ET URBIS CONDITOR CHRISTOPHORUS WREN QUI VIXrT ANNOS ULTRA NONAGINTA, NON SIBI, SED BONO PUBLICO. LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE," the composition of his son, which bids the passer-by " look around " for the architect's best monument, was but inscribed upon the plain tablet which marks his burial- place in the ci-ypt. Now, at last, it has a worthy place above the door of the north transept. 298 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Few careers have been as little complicated as that of Christopher Wren, and equally simple was his personality. He had, it would seem, a double portion of that objective temperament which distinguished the men of his day, a temperament which left no leisure for introspection, so in- satiably ciu:ious did it make them of the world without, so unflagging was their interest in all branches of knowledge other than psychological. This curiosity, this interest, stood Christopher Wren in good stead when, as an old man, he fell on evil days. The malice of his enemies failed in a great measure of its eflect because he retained the power of concentrating his mind upon the solution of questions such as those with which he had been wont to wrestle as a boy, and, in pursuit of learning, of projecting himself into regions which the fiery darts of the wicked were powerless to penetrate. " As to his bodily Constitution " [writes Stephen Wren], " it was naturally rather delicate than strong, especially in his Youth, which seem'd consumptive ; and yet by a judicious Regularity and Temperance (having acquired good knowledge in Physick), he continued healthy, with little Intermission, even to this extreme old Age. Further 'tis observable, that he was happily endued with such an Evenness of Temper, a steady Tranquillity of Mind and christian Fortitude, that no injurious Incidents, or In- quietudes of humam Life could ever ruffle or discompose." It is by the unremitting study of work like Wren's that our young architects can best hope to check the tendency towards eclecticism which makes them fearful of monotony. Photography and travelling facilities have fostered this eclecticism by bringing the best work of all ages and DECLINING YEARS AND DEATH 299 countries within reach, and the consequent ferment has more deplorable effects upon the art of building per- haps than on any other. Concentration and repose are greater qualities (if, like Christopher Wren, men would build for eternity) than versatility or invention. It is the lack of the former qualities that makes the exterior of Bentley's Roman Catholic Cathedral so little satisfactory, just as it is the blending of them that makes the interior the noblest of nineteenth-century building. No more fitting close to this biography suggests itself than a Latin epitaph preserved in the pages of Parentalia, which state it to be the composition of a St. Paul's scholar, March 7, 1723 : SUSPICE ET MIRARE Christophorus Wren Eques Auratus Totius hujus Fabricae Magnus Architectus Moli huic Immensae, Sacrae, Eximiae, Quam Animo Conceperat Quam Inchoaverat, Quam Perfecerat, Unius Horainis Opus, Haud Mortah datum. Bis Factus Immortalis De Coelo Invigilat Mente Permeat, Corpore Sustentat Quantilli Corporis Quantus Animus Qualis Mens, 300 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Depositum servet Ecclesia Memor Sui ! Subtus jacet Fundator, Curator. Quam grande Opus ! Quam Perenne Monumentum APPENDICES I— I p 5Z1 o o en t— < Q P^ O o H H >H O o 25 O Pi O g H O - o cl 3 I- f — ^ « o S £'2 li 3 " S «5 o -a hi =51^ br°te I— Oh a« M O ON Mi ^ -"3 S^- o g* « a © C^ 03 O .'-^ O m „ O 302 - -^ !^ , § u »5 '3 'O «w ^ H GQ ^ M -as J OS &: vo 3 .. W)\o in O CO t^ l-l l-l Jog . a W o O w o a O QQ DQ 1^ s o M M H ■s ^" b'o'a' a £< S ki o — r-rl M W W EH O ;^ O EH 12! 02 a 303 ^ 43 S o p^ ,4 J3 o in APPENDIX B CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE WORKS OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN There is no documentary authority for the attribution to Wren o£ the workB starred. Ely . . Doorway in north transept, lobby of south transept of Cathedral 1663 Some work in Bishop's Palace Cambridge Chapel of Pembroke College and part of cloister (additions to the Chapel by Sir Gilbert Scott) 1663-6 London . Storehouse in the Tower 1664 Oxford . Second Quadrangle at Trinity College 1667-82 London . Guildhall repairs, work destroyed by Dance 1669-71 Pewterers Hall 1668 Royal Exchange (burned down 1838) 1668-9 Custom House (burned down 17 18) 1668 Salisbury Repairs to Cathedral spire 1668 Oxford . Sheldonian Theatre 1669 Cambridge Chapel of Emmanuel College 1669-77 *Bishop's Hostel 1670 London . Temple Bar (removed to Theobalds Park 1878) 1670-72 304 APPENDIX B 305 Mercers' Hall, Cheapside (destroyed and re-erected at Swanage, 1882) 1670 ♦Brewers' Hall 1670 The Monument 1671-77 St. Christopher-le-Stocks repaired ; rebuilt 1696. Destroyed 1781 to provide space for enlargement of Bank of England 1671 St. Mary-le-Bow (steeple, 1680) 1671-3 St. Mary-at-Hill 1672-77 St. Michael, Comhill (tower, 1721) 1672 Tower of London, Armoury. Destroyed by fire 1841. About 1672 St. Stephen, Walbrook (tower, 1681) 1672-79 St. Benet Fink (destroyed 1843 when ■Royal Exchange was rebuilt) 1673-76 Cambridge Trinity College Library 1673-79 London St. Olave Jewry (destroyed 1887 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1673-6 St. Dionis Backchurch (destroyed 1876 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1674 St. George, Botolph Lane (destroyed 1905 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1674-77 Drury Lane Theatre (taken down in 1791) 1674 Ahbury . House (stables only now standing) 1674 Greenwich Observatory 1675 London . St. Paul's Cathedral (first stone laid June 21, 1675 ; choir opened for service December 2, 1697 ; dome completed 1710) 1675-1710 St. Michael, Wood Street (destroyed under Union of City Benefices Act) 1675 3o6 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN St. Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge (steeple, 1705) 1676 Ingestre . *Parish Church 1676 London . St. Mildred's, Poultry (destroyed 1872 under Uniqn of City Benefices Act) 1676-77 St. Stephen, Coleman Street 1676 St. Laurence Jewry 1676 London . St. James, Garlickhithe 1677-83 St. Nicholas Cole Abbey 1677 St. Michael, Queenhithe (destroyed 1876 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1677 St. Mary, Aldemtianbury 1677 St. Swithin, Cannon Street 1678-9 St. Michael Bassishaw, Basinghall Street (destroyed under Union of City Bene- fices Act) 1678-9 Pedestal of Charles I. Monument, Charing Cro£s 1678 King's Bench Walk, Temple 1678 St. Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange (de- stroyed 1 84 1 to form site for Sun Fire Office) 1679 SS. Anne and Agnes, Aldersgate 1679-80 Dublin . Royal Hospital, Kilmainham 1680-86 London . St. Mary-le-Bow (steeple) 1680 St. Clement Danes, Strand (steeple by Gibbs, 1 719) 1680 St. Stephen, Walbrook (steeple) 1681 Oxford . *Ashmolean Museum Tom Tower, Christ Church 1681-3 i68i-a APPENDIX B 307 London . All Hallows, Bread Street 168 1-4 St. Peter, Comhill 168 1-2 St. Antholin, Watling' Street (destroyed 1875 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1682 Latin School, Christ's Hospital (de- stroyed about 1825) 1682 St. Mary Aldermary (tower rebuilt 1711) 1682 Chelsea Hospital 1682-92 Winchester . Palace (never completed ; a portion of it now barracks) 1683-5 London . St. James, Piccadilly (tower not Wren's) 1683 St. Mildred, Bread Street 1683 SS. Augustine and Faith, Watling Street (spire 1695) 1683 St. Clement, Eastcheap 1683-6 All Hallows the Great, Upper Thames Street (destroyed 1896 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1683 St. Benet, Paul's Wharf 1683-4 Middle Temple Gateway 1684-8 Winchester. Great Schoolroom of College 1684 Chichester . Repairs to Cathedral spire and two private houses 1684 Oxfordshire Fawley Court 1684 Lincolnshire *Belton Hall, Grantham 1685-9 London . St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill 1684-5 St. Alban, Wood Street 1685 St. Mary Magdalen, Knightrider Street (injured by fire 1886 and pulled down) 1685 3o8 SIR CHRISTOPHER^ WREN St. Benet, Gracechurch Street (de- stroyed 1867 under Union of City Benefices Act) 1685 St. Matthew, Friday Street (destroyed 1886 under Union of City Benefices Act) 168s St. Mary Abchurch 1686 Christ Church, Newgate Street (steeple 1704) 1687 St. Margaret Pattens, Rood Lane 1687 St. Andrew's, Holbom 1687 Rochester . *Guildhall 1687 London . St. Michael, Crooked Lane (destroyed 1 83 1 for approach to new London Bridge) 1688 Windsor . Town Hall 1688 London . Library for Archbishop Tennison (de- stroyed for building of National Gallery) 1688 College of Physicians, Warwick Lane (destroyed 1866) 1688 St. Edmund King and Martyr, Lombard Street 1689-90 Hampton Fountain Court, Garden Fronts, State Court Apartments 1689-94 London . St. Margaret, Lothbury 1690 Kensington Palace 1 690-1 706 The Mint in the Tower (destroyed) 1691 St. Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe 1692 Road from Hyde Park Corner to Kensington 1692 All Hallows, Lombard Street 1693 APPENDIX B 309 London Blackheath Warwick London Greenwich London Oxford . Chapel of Trinity College 1691-4 Appleby (Leicestershire) School 1693 St. Michael Royal, College Hill 1694 Morden College 1695 Tower of St. Mary's Church 1695 St. Vedast, Foster Lane 1695 St. Mary Somerset, Thames Street (de- stroyed 1872 ; tower left standing) 1695 Royal Naval Hospital 1 696-1 705 Marlborough House (disfigured by addi- tions) 1 698 Westminster Abbey : front of North Transept (work swept away by Gothic restorers) 1 698-1 722 St. Dunstan-in-the-East (spire only) 1698-9 St. Bride's Steeple 1700 IsLEwoRTH . All Saints (disfigured by restoration) 1 701-5 London . Orangery, Kensington 1704-6 From 1697 until bis death he was chief director of the works of restoration at Westminster Abbey. APPENDIX C Reverendo Patri Domino Christophoro Wren, S.T.D., et D. W. Christophorus Filius hoc suum Panorganum Astrono- micum D.D., xiii Calend. Novem. Anno 1645. • Si licet, et cessent rerum (Pater alme) tuarum Pondera, devotee respice prolis opus. Hie ego sidereos tentavi pingere motus, Coelicaque in modulos conciliare breves. Quo (prolapsa difi) renoventur tempora gyro, Seculaque, et menses, et imparilesque dies. Quomodo Sol abeat, redeatque et temperet annum, Et (raptum contr4) grande perennet iter ; Cur nascens gracili, pleno orbe refulget adulta Cur gerat extinctas menstrua luna faces. His ego numinibus dum cito, atqiie ardua mundi Scrutor, et arcanas conor inire vias. Adsis, O ! faveasque pater, succurre]|volanti Suspensum implumis dirige prolis iter. Ne male, praecipiti, nimium prae viribus audax (Sorte sub Icarea) lapsus ab axe ruam : Te duce, fert animus, studiis sublimibus hisce Pasci, dum superas detur adire domos. 310 APPENDIX D DR. SPRAT TO DR. WREN, 1663 I OWE yrtUj my dfear Frieiid, an ill Turn, your late Plot against me was most barbarous, your design was as bloody as Venher's: ' you endeavoured to raise a new Rebellion iii my Heart, just after a lobg civil "War : for this I have vow'd a severe Revenge, and have laid a thousand Policies to catch you : I have look'd over all my Treasures of Malice and have at last found a good old Engiiie, which never fail'd me in Time of Need and that is the writing of a long Letter. With this I have made many fatal Experiments, and have on all Occasions satisiy'd my Wrath on those that displeas'd me : so that for fear of it, some have wholly forsaken my Acquaintance and rejected my Passion : some have fled the Kingdom : and some (for what I know) have gone into another World. It is with this murd'rous Instrument that I come to assault you : and I trust its Operation will confirm the Opinion of your Philosophers that anything tho' never so innocent may be Poison, if taken in too great a Quantity. It shall, I promise you, be as long as the Papei: will give me Leave, and to the Length of it I will also add that it shall be written on a Subject on which I have heard you yourself speak many admirable things : that so yoii may undergo the Torment to read your own Thoughts disfigur'd by my Expression : which I hope will be as great a (^rief to you as it was to the King (whose name I have forgot) 1 Thomas Venner, a Fifth Monarchy preacher, executed for conspiracy in i66i, 3" 312 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN when the Scythians sent home his own Ambassadors to him with their Ears, and Noses, and Lips cut off. Now then, my dearest Friend, you may recollect we went Lately from Axeyard to walk in St. James Park, and tho' we met not the incom- parable Person ' whose Company we sought, yet he was enough present in our thoughts, to bring us to discourse of that in which he so much excels, the Wit of Conversation. Some Part of what you then said,, you shall now here over again : for tho' I have a most treacherous Memory in other Matters, yet my Love to Kit Wren makes it always faithful in pre- serving whatever he commits to it. The Wit therefore of Discourse is as different among the several Parts of Mankind as the temper of their Air and Constitution of their Bodies : and so it is to be divided into general and particular, the general is that which consists of Terms and Similitudes and which are received by many nations. This either prevails by Conquest and so the Roman Language and Wit have obtain'd over all the countries where they sow'd Civility by their Victories : or else by the situation, Authority and command- ing Genius of one People above another. Thus the Grecians became Teachers of the Arts of Talking to the Ancients : and the French of late to the Moderns: whose Tongue and Customs have gone farther in Europe, than their present King, how terrible soever he appears, is likely to carry their Armies. Of this general Wit there are manifest differences to be observ'd. That of the Chinese consists in the skill of writing several Characters, that of the Egyptians in giving Things themselves, instead of Words, for similitudes : In painting a Snake with its Tail in its mouth to signify the Year : a Lyon for Courage : the Sun Moon and Stars for a thousand Con- ceipts. A strange kind of laborous expression, this kind, I Thought by Elmes to refer to Sir William Petty, 1623-1687. APPENDIX D 313 which if the Orators of our Time should use in their luxuri- aney of Metaphors they would stand in need of the Ark to carry about with them every one of their Orations. The Eastern Wit in all Ages has been principally made up of lofty and swelling Comparisons as we may see at this Day in the Titles of the Sophy and Grand Seignor which no doubt are some of their noblest Fancies : and yet to our Under- standing, they require the Assistance of Mahomet's Dove to make Sense of them. That of the Moors was the same as the Spanish at this Time. The Italian, French, English, Dutch (if they have any) is something alike according to their Common Original, the Latin. Of the Muscovitish or Tartarian I can give but little account : But I assure you even the Irish had a Wit of their own, though you will hardly believe it, till some of our Friends went thither : nay, to say more to their Advantage they had this peculiar to themselves that almost all their whole Nation was at the same Time both Poets and Saints. The particular Wit, is that which arises from the frequent Meetings of private Assemblies : And this too is capable of infinite divisions : for there is hardly the least Company in the World which rendezvouses together but has its Common Sayings, Figures, Characters, and Observa- tions, which are great Raillery in their proper Compass, but tasteless to Strangers. This is evident in several Shires of England. When I was in the North there was a Buffoon that was a dreadful Droll among the Yorkshire Gentlemen and yet scarce spoke a Grain of Salt to our Southern Tastes. This likewise appears in several Professions of Men. The Lawyers will laugh at those jests in the Temple which it may be will not move us at Charing Cross. And it is likely that Tom Killigrew^ himself would not seem good Company 1 Thomas Kinigrew(i6i2-i683). His portrait, painted by Vandyck, -with Thomas Carew, is in Capitol Gallery, Rome, 314 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN at a Table of Benchers, The Wit beyond Fleet-Bridgfe has another Colour from that on this Side. The very Watermen on the Bank-side have their Quipps, and their Repartees/ which are not intelligible but upon the Thames. But to say no more : this is to be seen in every Private family. I had almost gone so far as to say that there is scarce a Husband and Wife in the World but have a particular way of Wit among themselves : but this I will not affirm because this Evil Age believes, that few married persons are wont to delight so much in one another's Company as to be merry and witty alone. Now then having discovered this mighty Proteus, which puts on so many various Shapes, in several Places, and occasions, let us try to define it. The Wit of Discourse is (to speak magnificently) the greatest Art about the smallest Things : For to confess a Secret, as Sir W. Davenant's Way differs very little from Frank Bowman's and yet the one is the gayest and the other the most insipid : so the true Pleasant talk and the vainest tattle are not very much distinguished : the Subjects of both of them are a thousand little Trifles and the Difference lies only in the Management. Nor does this meanness of Matter prejudice the Art for then, it would follow that your Divine Works in the King's Church are the worst, because they are the Description of a Louse, a Flea, and a Nit. The Wit there- fore is made up of many inexpressible excellences. It must have a general Evenness of Humour: It must perfectly observe all the Rules of Decency, to know when enough is said : to forbear biting Things not to be touched : to abstain from abusing honest and vertuous Matters. It must apply itself to the Condition and Inclination of the Company : It must rather follow than lead : it must not always strain to speak extraordinary Things : for that is a constant walking on the Ropes, in whibh though a Man does APPENDIX D 315 often well, yet he may have one Fall, that may chance to break his Neck : It must allow everyone their Term of speaking, for it is natural to all, better to love their Company who give them occasions of speaking well, than those that do it them- selves. It must always mingle Stories with Argument, pleasant Things with Solemn : It must vary the Subject often, not pump itself dry at once. This, if you will believe Mr. Cowley, is a Wise Quality : for in a Copy of Verses which you have not seen he says : So the Imperial Eagle does not stay Till the whole Carcase he devour That's fallen into his Power, As if his generous Hunger understood That it can never want Plenty of Food : He only sucks the tasteful Blood And to fresh Grame flies chearfuUy away, To Kites and meaner Birds he leaves the mangled prey. This generous Eagle-Wit therefore uses the best and easiest Words, is hot the first that takes up new ones, nor the last that lays down old ones. But above all, its chiefest Dominion is in forming new Significations and Images of Things and Persons. And this may be so suddenly practised that I have known in one afternoon, new Stamps and Pro- verbs and Fashions of Speech raised, which were never thought of before, and yet gave Occasion to most delightful imaginations. You see now, my dear Friend, of what Extent and difficulty this Art is. The Truth is it is seldom to be found among Men of large and full and high thoughts, because such Minds overlook the little Passages and fly presently to general Axioms which it may be are more useful, yet they do affect our Thoughts with such an Imme- diate and familiar delight. But to speak Truth the Perfection of this glorious Faculty, without which Life were no Life, belongs not so much to Men^ as to the softer Sex : for they 3i6 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN have usually their heads less disturbed with busy thoughts, their Minds are quicker and readier for new Impressions, they talk more of circumstantial things, they sit longer together, and (which you used to say is of great Concernment in our northern and Phlegmatick Climate) they keep their feet warmer and drier, and go less into the moist and open air. But that Women are the best Speakers, I could give you too Undeniable Instances in your Laura (as I think you call her) and she who was once my Clelia : the one speaks with a great Freedom and Spirit, and Abundance of excellent Words, the other talks less, but with as much Sweetness and Nature : from the one nothing can be taken away: to the other nothing ought to be added. But I dare not go farther in this Description on Remembrance of an old Story : that while a Painter was drawing a most beautiful Lady, he fell desper- ately in Love with her, and it had cost him his Life had not Alexander bestowed her on him ! The first Part of this Tale I am sure would be my Fortune, if I should longer employ my Thoughts on such a lovely Object : and I am certain that I should perish long enough before I should find an Alexander to pity me. To go on then in my first Purpose. Wit con- sists in a right ordering of Things and Words for Delight. But — stay — now I look about me what Need have I to go any farther ? You are without Question already sufficiently tired and so my End is obtained : and then it will be useless to speak more on this Subject, seeing the Age wherein we live runs already so mad after the Affairs of Wit. All the World are at present Poets ; the Poetical Bees are all at Work : Comedies, Tragedies, Verses, Sat3n's, Burlesques, Songs buzz everywhere about our Ears : and (to ease my Hand a little by changing my Pace) Wits we have now as many (if not more) As we had Sects, or Preachers, heretofore ; APPENDIX D 317 And Heaven in Mercy grant this crying Sin Don't the Game Judgements once more usher in. We have our Northern Wits, Wits of the East, Wits of the South, and Witlings of the West ; South and by West, South-East, East and by North, Prom ev'ry point like Winds they bluster forth. We have our Wits that write only to sway. At York or Hull, or ten Miles thence each Way. Each Corporation, Sea-port, Borough, Town, Has those that will this Glorious Title own. Like Egypt's frogs they swarm, and like them too Into the Chambers of our Kings they go. What is to be done with this furious Generation of Wits and Writers ? To advise them I leave off in vain. Too strong the Infection is To be destroyed by such quick Eemedies. No, no, it is a sweet and flatt'ring Kind Of Poison, and deceives the clearest Mind ; Cowley himself (Cowley whom I adore) Often resolv'd, nay, and I think he swore That he no more those barren Lands would plow. Where flow'ry Weeds instead of Corn do grow. Perchance (as Jesuit's Powder does) each Vow Kept the fit off from him three Weeks, or so But yet at last his Vows were all in vain. This Writing Ague stiU returns again. Well, then, if they are incurable, let them write on. But while others are exalting such dangerous Trophies of their Wit I will be content to give but one Instance of my own ; but it is such that no Critick can lay hold on ; and it is that I infinitely love one of Sir Harry Savil's Professors ; You may easily guess which I mean or whether it be to Dr. W. or yourself, that I am A most affectionate Servant, Tho. Sprat, APPENDIX E LETTER OF DR. WREN TO THE RIGHT HONOUR- ABLE LORD BROUNCKER, JULY 30, 1663. {Preparative to His MajeHi/'s Entertainment at the Royal Soeietif, Oxford.) My Lord, The Act and Noise at Oxford being over, I retir'^ to myself as speedily as I could to obey your Lordship and contribute something to the Collection of Experiments designed by the Society, for His Majesty's reception. I concluded on some- thing I thought most suitable for such an Occasion ; but the stupidity of our Artists here makes the apparatus so tedious, that I foresee I shall not be able to bring it to anything within the Time propos'd. What in the meanwhile to suggest to your Lordship I cannot guess : the Solemnity of the Occasion, and my Solicitude for the Honour of the Society makes me think nothing proper, nothing remarkable enough. 'Tis not every Year will produce such a Master experiment as the Torricellian, and so fruitfiil of new Experiments as that is, and therefore the Society have deservedly spent much Time upon that and its OflFspring. And if you have any notable Experiment that may appear to open new Light unto the Principles of Philosophy nothing would better beseem the Pretentions of the Society, though possibly such would be too jejune for the Purpose, in which there ought to be some- thing of Pomp. On the other Side to produce Knacks only, 318 APPENDIX E 319 and things to raise wonder, such as Kercher, Scottus and even Jugglers abound with, will scarce become the Gravity of the Occasion : it must therefore be something between both, luciferous in Philosophy and yet whose Use and Advantage is obvious, and without a Lecture : and besides may surprise with some unexpected Effect, and be commendable for Ingenuity of the Contrivance. Half a dozen Experiments thus qualified will be abundantly enough for an Hour's Entertainment ; and I cannot believe the Society can want them if they look back into their own Store ; for myself I must profess freely I have not anything by me suitable to the Idea I have of what ought to be performed before such an Assembly. Geometrical Problems and new Lines, new Bodies, new Methods, how useful soever will be but tasteless in a transient Show; New Theories or Observations or Astronomical Instruments either for Observation or facilitation of the Calculus are valuable to such Artists only who have particularly experi- mented the Defects that these Things pretend to supply. Sciogr^phical Knacks, of which yet a hundred varieties may be given are so easy in the Invention that now they are cheap. Scenographical, Catoptrical and Dioptrical Tricks, require excellent Painting as well as Geometrical Truth in the Profile or else they deceive not. Designs of engines for ease of labour or promoting anything Agriculture or the Trades, I have occasionally thought upon divers, but they are not intel- ligible without letters and references, and often not without something of Demonstration. Designs in Architecture etc. the few chymical Experiments I have been acquainted with, will, I fear, be too tedious for an Entertainment. Experiments in Anatomy, though of the most value for their Use are sordid and noisom to any of those whose Desire of Knowledge makes them digest it. Experiments for the Establishment of Natural Philosophy are seldome pompous ; 'tis upon Billiards and 320 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Tennis Balls ; upon the purling of Sticks and Tops ; upon a Vial of Water or Wedge of Glass that the great Descartes hath built the most refined and Accurate Theories that human Wit ever reached to and certainly Nature in the best of her Works is apparent enough in obvious Things, were they but curiously observ'd ; and the Key that opens treasures is often plain and rusty, but unless it be gilt 'twill make no Show at Court. If I have been Conversant in philosophical Things (as I know how idle I have been) it hath been principally in these Ways which I have recounted to your Lordship, by which your Lordship perceives how useless I am for this Service ; yet if your Lordship will still pursue, I know not what Shift to make, but to retire back to something I have formerly produc'd. I have pleased myself not a little with the Play of the Weather- Wheel (the only true Way to measure Expansions of the Air), and I imagine it must needs give other Satisfaction if it were once firmly made, which I suppose may be done if the circular Pipes (which cannot be truly blown in Glass) were made of Brass, by those who make Trumpets and Sackbutts (who wire draw their Pipes through a Hole to equal them and then filling them with melted Lead turn them round with what Flexures they please) ; the inside of the Pipe must be var- nished with China Varnish to preserve it from the Quick-silver and the Glasses fixed to it with Varnish, which I suppose will be the best Cement in the world ; for thus the Chinese fixed glass and Mother of Pearl in their Works. It would be no unpleasing Spectacle to see a Man live without new Air as long as you please. A Description of a Vessel for cooling and percolating the Air at once I formerly show'd the Society and left in Mr. Boyle's Hands ; I suppose it worth putting in Practice ; you will at least learn thus much from it that some- thing else in Air is requisite for Life, than that it be cool only. APPENDIX E 321 and free from the fuliginous Vapours and Moistures it was infected with in Expiration ; for all those will in Probability be deposited in its Circulation through the Instrument. If nitrous fumes be found requisite (as I suspect) Ways may possibly be found to supply that too, by placing some benign Chymical SpiritSj that by fuming may infect the Air within the Vessel. If an artificial Eye were truly and dioptrically made (which I would have at least as big as a Tennis Ball) it would repre- sent the Picture as Nature makes it. The Cornea and Chrystal- line must be Glass the other Humours, Water. I once surveyed a Horse's Eye as exactly as I could, measuring what the Spheres of the Chrystalline and the Cornea were ; and what the Proportions of the distances of the Centers of every Sphere were upon the Axis. The Ways by which I did it are too long to rehearse, but the Projection in triple the Magnitude, Sir Paul Neile may possibly find or if your Lordship think it worth while, I shall reiterate the Experiment. A Needle that would play in a Coach will be as well useful to know the Coast and Way join'd with the Way-wiser as a pleasant Diversion to the Traveller, and would be an accep- table Present to his Majesty who might thus as it were sail by Land. The Fabrick may be thus : in a Sphere of Glass of two Inches Diameter, half full of Water, cause a short, heavy broad needle, fixed to a chart to swim, being buoyed up by the Chart and both varnish'd ; instead of a Cap and Pin, let the perforated Needle play about a small Wire or Horsehair extended like a Perpendicular Axis in the Glass-Sphere, whose Nadir being made weighty with Lead, and an Horizon as it were cemented to it, let it play on Circles like the Com- pass ; then let a hemispherical Concave containing the Sphere in its Circles, be hung upon Springs in this Manner. Suppose a Basis upon which are erected perpendicularly 322 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN three stiff Brass Springs from the Ends of which Springs, are Strings strain'd, forming an equilateral Triangle the Middle of whose Sides passed through three small loops on the Brim of the Concave which therefore hanging on the strings represents a Circle inscribed in a triangle. From the Middle of the Basis arises a Worm-spring fastened by a String to the Nadir of the Concave, drawing it down a little and acting against the other three Springs. These Springs, I suppose, will take off at once much of both the downright and collateral Con- cussions ; the Circles will take off Oscillations, the Agitations remaining will be spent in the Water and still'd by the Chart, for thus we see a Trencher swimming in a Bucket keeps the Water from spilling in the Carriage and the Chinese have their Compass swimming in Water instead of Circles. Lastly, I would have all the Bottom of the Basis bristled round like a Brush somewhat inclin'd which is a cheap Addi- tion and will ease it like a hundred Springs ; it should be placed on the Middle of the Floor of the Coach where by opening a Window you might see likewise the Way-wiser on the Pearch. My Lord, if my Designs had been perfect, I had not troubled jour Lordship with so much Tattle, but with something perform'd and done. But I am fain, in this Letter, to do like some Chymist who when Projection (his fugitive darling) hath left him threadbare is forced to fall to vulgar Preparations to pay his Debts. My Lord, I am. Yours etc. APPENDIX F LETTER FROM SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN TO A CERTAIN FRIEND, PROBABLY DR. WILKINS.i Sib, The account you give me in your last Letter that a Double Writing Instrument hath of late been at London, pretended to by several as a Production of their own, and so divulged to divers, hath given me Occasion of putting into your Hands (what certainly I have more right to dispose of than any late Pretender) that Double Writing Instrument of the Effect of which, about three Years ago, your self Sir, as I remember, among other the Ingeniosi were Judges, at the same Time when accidentally it was commended to the View of the then great, now greatest person in the Nation. I confess my Thoughts were then to suffer it to be Publick and Friends spur'd me to it, apprehending it not as a meer Curiosity but of excellent and very general Use. Moreover to copy out in every Punctilio the exact resemblance or rather the very Identity of the two Copies, as if one should fancy such a piece of Magick as should make the same Thing really two ; or, with drunken Eyes, should see the same thing double, is what might be thought almost impossible for the Hand of Man. But Business drew me suddenly from London and from the Op- portunity of publishing it ; content that I had at least com- municated it to the ingenious Few, I willingly left it. And » Stephen Wrenquoting this letterinParem^oZia writes: "This Draught of a Letter hears no date, yet by the Contents the Time may be nearly computed . , . scil. 1650." 323 324 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN indeed the Thing always appearing to me but an obvious (though useful) Invention I was easily drawn off to neglect it all this while, by the intervening of Studies and Designs that I much more esteem'd ; amongst which this took up so little a Place that I am beholding to the Person who, by vindicating it to be his own, has put me again in Mind of it. I accuse none of Plagiary, because having shewn it to few I think it would be more Trouble to any knowing Person to enquire it out of others, than to invent it anew ; and therefore had it been thought on by any other, about that Time I showed it, I should have readily imagined (because of the Obviousness of the Experiment) that it might as easily have had a double Father, as have produced a twin Copy, but I am apt to believe from good Information, that those who now boast of it had it from one who, having fully seen the Author's and examin'd it carefully (as it is easy to carry away being of no complicate Composure) described it justly to his Friend and assisted him to make it ; and the very glorying in a Thing of so facile Com- posure sufficiently discovers a Narrowness of Spirit in Things of Invention, and is therefore almost Argument enough that he was not justly so much as a Second Inventor; nor hath the Author reason to take it far an Injury, that one reported a deserving Person in other Abilities would please to own a cast off Toy of his, but rather owes him a Civility out of Grati- tude for fathering it, and saving him that Labour of Education he intended which will now be needless, the dispersing of diver Instruments among the Merchants, with Directions for the Use. But it may be there are Divers who knowing such a Thing to have been talked of some years ago, as coming from another Hand will be easily ready to turn all this with Advantage upon myself ; Indeed though I care not for having a successor in Invention yet it behoves me to vindicate myself from the Aspersion of having a Predecessor. APPENDIX G LETTER TO SIR PAUL NEILE October i, 1661. Honored Sir, — You know of what prevalency your Commands alone are with me, although they had not been seconded by the Votes of the best Society of Europe, to disobey which would not be rudeness alone but Gothieism and enmity to the pro- gress of Learning ; yet if it were not my resolution, that I ought to suffer anything rather than be deficient to soe much duty ; you should not have obtained of me to empose my selfe soe many waies as I must of necessitie in this little Trifle, the Hypothesis of Saturne. For bad it been soe fortunate to have come into your hands, while it could have told you any newes, it might possibly have been as well received as the first Messenger of a Victory is wont to be though he bring but an imperfect story ; but when Hugenius hath outred me who stay'd to bring a fuller relation ; to give you now a stale account will noe doubt be a pleasant thing to you, as unseason- able well-meanings are wont to be, but canot give you any serious satisfaction. I must confess I have often had the pusillanimity rather to neglect that Right I might in future have vindicated, than by challenging it too late incurre the jealousy of being a Plagiary ; and since you it is will not suffer me to continue in this peaceable humour, I shall not need to fear that you will entertaine any such suspicion, especially since this kind of Saturn was long before hatched 325 326 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN by your Influence at White Waltham upon the observation of December, 1657 when first wee had an apprehension that the Armes of Saturn kept their leangth which produc'd this hypothesis, made first in two past-boards, not to say anything of our attempts in Wax in Jan. 1655. The hypothesis made more durable in metal was posed on the Top of that Obelliske which was erected at Gresham College in 1658 (if I mistake be pleas'd to rectify me) to raise the 25 foot telescope of your Donation ; at the same time I was put upon writing on this Subject for which I supposed I had tolerable Observations and materials at Hand ; but first I was enjoyned to give that short and generall account of it which about that time I drew up in this sheet ; but when in a short while after, the hypo- thesis of Hugenius was read over in writing, I confesse I was so fond of the neatnesse of it, and the naturall simplicity ot the contrivance agreeing soe well with the physicall cause of the heavenly bodies that I loved the Invention beyond my owne and though this be soe much an equifoUent with that of Hugenius, that I suppose future observations will never be able to determine which is the trewest, yet I would not proceed with my designe nor expose soe much as this sheet any farther than to the Eye of my bosome friend to whom even ray errors lay alwaies open neither had I now been per- swaded to it, but that I could not endure a Regresse in Reall Learning, having alwaies had a Zeale for the Progresse of it ; and to see ingenious men neglecting what was well deter- mined before, to doe worse on the same subject because they 'would do otherwise, was alwaies wont to make me passionate, and therefore I could not with Charity suffer a person (whose greate Wit unusefuUy applied, would be a losse to the world) to trouble himselfe with this lesse considerable hypothesis which if he had known not to be new, he had certainly despised. And yet it is very well advised of him that wee APPENDIX G 327 should not see build upon Hugenius' hypothesis as to neglect the observations about the full phasis which till they are obtained little more can be determined in this thing than ■what Hugenius hath done. And therefore though I might have taken occasion together with this old paper to have read some new thoughts, and to have suggested some new hypo- theses yet considering they would as yet be but meer con- jectures, I have let alone those thoughts. And if it be suspected that anything raz'd in this superficial! draught of "Saturn be of this sort that is contrived since the seeing of Hugenius ; I have a double Appeale to make, one to my honoured friend, Mr. Rooke, who at first saw the only copy and another to the Style, which speaks. I had not yet used the Industry to refine it above what might have proceeded from my childish pen, having not then been see sufficiently convinced of the necessity of words as well as thinges ; neither would I change it now that I might be conscious to my selfe of sincerity but where too much obscurity in the expression forced me in two or three places. For these reasons I earnestly beg this favour of you (as a friend I desire it) that you would keepe it in your hands and restore it again, which as the case stands will give me almost as much satisfaction as if I had found the confidence to have excused my selfe when it was enjoyned me at the Society ; which I might well have done considering that divers there had been at the trouble to heare the Astronomy Reader at Gresham give fuller discourses on the same subject which he thought then was publication enough and might have saved the Impertinances of these Apologies for that which he thinks deserves not now soe much of his care otherwise than as it is a Command from them. Your most obedient humble servant, Christopher Wren. APPENDIX H LETTER WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER WREN FROM PARIS Stephen Wren, in Parentalia, writes : In the year 1665, Mr. Wren took a journey to Paris, where, at that Time all Arts flourish'd in a higher Degree than had ever been known before in France ; and where there was a general Congress of the most celebrated Masters in every Pro- fession, encourag'd by Royal Munificence, and the influence of the great Cardinal Mazarine. How he spent his Time, in that Place, will in Part appear from a short Account he gave by letter to a particular Friend ; wherein he returns Thanks for his recommendation of him to the Earl of St. Albans who in the Journey, and ever since* had us'd him with all Kindness and Indulgence imaginable, and made good his Character of him, as one of the best men in the World. He then proceeds to the following Particulars; "I have/' says he, "busied myself in surveying the most esteem'd Fabricks of Paris, and the Country round ; the Louvre for a while was my daily Object, where no less than a thousand Hands are constantly employ'd in the Works ; some in laying mighty Foundations, some in raising the Stories, Columns, Entablements, &c., with vast Stones, by great and useful Engines ; others in Cai-ving, Inlaying of Marbles, Plaistering, Painting, Gilding, &c., Which altogether make a School of Architecture, the best probably, at this Day in Europe. The College of The Four Nations is usually admir'd, but the 328 APPENDIX H 329 Artist hath purposely set it ill-favouredly, that he might show his Wil in struggling with an inconvenient Situation. — An Academy of Painters, Sculptors, Architects, and the chief Artificers of the Louvre, meet every first and last Saturday of the Month. Mons. Colbert, Superintendant, comes to the Works of the Louvre, every Wednesday, and, if Business hinders not, Thursday. The Workmen are paid every Sunday duly. Mons. Abbe Charles introduc'd me to the Acquaintance of Bernini, who show'd me his Designs of the Louvre, and of the King's Statue. — Abbe Bruno keeps the curious Rarities of the Duke of Orleans's Library, well fill'd with excellent Intaglio's, Medals, Books of Plants, and Fowls in Miniature, Abbe Burdelo keeps an Academy at his House for Philosophy every Monday Afternoon. — But I must not think to describe Paris, and the numerous Observables there, in the Compass of a short Letter. — The King's Houses I could not miss ; Fontainbleau has a stately Wildness and Vastness suitable to the Desert it stands in. The antique Mass of the Castle of St. Germains, & the Hanging-gardens are delightfully sur- prising, (I mean to any man of Judgment) for the Pleasures below vanish away in the Breath that is spent in ascending. The Palace, or if you please, the Cabinet of Versailles call'd me twice to view it ; the Mixtures of Brick, Stone, blue Tile and Gold make it look like a rich Livery : Not an Inch within but is crouded with little Curiosities of ornaments: the Women, as they make here the Language and Fashions, and meddle with Politicks and Philosophy, so they sway also in Architecture ; Works of Filgrand, and little Knacks are in great Vogue ; but Building certainly ought to have the Attribute of eternal ; and therefore the only thing uncapable of new Fashions. The masculine Furniture of Palais Maza- rine pleas'd me much better, where is a great and noble Collection of antique Statues and Bustos, (many of Porphyry) 330 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN good Basso-relievos ; excellent Pictures of the Great Masters,, fine Arras, true Mosaicks, besides Pierres de Rapport in Com- partiments and Pavements; Vases on Porcelain painted by Raphael, and infinite other Rarities ; the best of which now furnish the glorious Appartment of the Queen Mother at the Louvre, which I saw many Times. — After the incomparable Villas of Vaux and Maisons, I shall but name Ruel, Courances, Chilly, Essoane, St. Maur, St. Mande, Issy, Meudon, Rincy, Chantilly, Verneul, Lioncour, all which, and I might add many others, I have survey'd ; and that I might not lose the Im- pressions of them, I shall bring you almost all France in paper, which I found by some or other ready design'd to my Hand, in which I have spent both Labour and some Money. Bernini's Design of the Louvre I would have given my skin for, but the old reserv'd Italian gave me but a few Minutes view ; it was five little Designs in Paper, for which he hath received as many thousand Pistoles ; I had only Time to copy it in my Fancy and Memory; I shall be able by Discourse, and a Crayon, to give you a tolerable Account of it. I have pur- chased a great deal of Taille-douce, that I might give our Country-men Examples of Ornaments and Grotesks, in which the Italians themselves confess the French to excel. 1 hope I shall give you a very good Account of all the best Artists of France ; my Business now is to pry into Trades and Arts, I put myself into all Shapes to humour them ; 'tis a Comedy to me, and tho' sometimes expenceful, I am loth yet to leave it. Of the most noted Artisans within my Knowledge or Acquaintance I send you only this general Detail, and shall inlarge on their respective Characters and Works at another Time." Architects. Sig. Cavalier Bernini, Mens. Mansart, Mens. Vaux, Mons. Gobert, Mons. Le Pautie. APPENDIX H 331 Messieurs Anguiere and Sarazin ; Sculptors and Statuaries, Mons. Perrot ; famous for Basso-relievos. Van Ostal, Mr. Amoldin ; Plaisterers, perform the Admiral Works at the Louvre. Mons. Orphelittj Mons. de Tour ; Gravers of Medals and Coins, Painters in History. Mons. Le Brun^ Bourdon, Poussin, Ruvine, Champeine, Vil- cein, Loyre, Coypej, Picard. Miniard, in History and Portraits. Mons. Beaubrun ; in Portraits for Women. Mess. Baptist, Robert, for Flowers. Mr. Matthews, an English Painter, at the Rue-Gobelins ; works for the Arras-weavers ; where Mons. Bruno is the De- signer, and an excellent artist. — There I saw Goldsmiths working in Plate admirably well. Abbe Burdelo works in Enamel. Mons. de la Quintinye, has most excellent Skill in Agricul- ture, Planting, and Gardening. My Lord Berkley returns to England at Christmass, when I propose to take the opportunity of his Company, and by that Time, to perfect what I have on the Anvil ; Observations on the present State of Architecture, Arts, and Manufactures in France. N.B. " Painting & Sculpture, (said the judicious Sieur de Cambray) are the politest and noblest of antient Arts, true- ingenuous, and claiming the Resemblance of Life, the Emula- tion of all Beauties, the fairest records of all Appearances whether celestial or sublunary, whether angelical, divine or humane. And what Art can be more helpful, or more pleasing to a philosophical Traveller, an Architect, & every ingenious Mechanician ? All which must be lame without it." APPENDIX I CHRISTOPHER WREN'S REPORT ON SALISBURY CATHEDRAL, 1669 The whole Pile is large and magnificent and may be justly accounted one of the best Patterns of Architecture in that Age wherein it was built. The Figure of it is a Cross, upon the Intersection of which, stands a Tower and Spire of Stone, as high from the Founda- tion^ as the whole Length of the Navis, or Body of the Church ; and it is founded only upon the four Pillars and Arches of the Intersection. Between the Steeple and the East-end is another crossing of the Navis, which on the West- side only wants its Ailes ; all other Sides of the main Body and the Crosses are supported on Pillars with Ailes annexed, and buttressed without the Ailes, from whence arise Bows or flying Buttresses to the Walls of the Navis which are con- cealed within the Timber Roof of the Ailes. The Roof is almost as sharp as an Equilateral Triangle, made of small Timber after the ancient Manner without principal Rafters ; but the Wall-plats are double, and tied together with Couples above forty Feet long. The whole Church is vaulted with chalk between Arches and Cross- springers only, after the ancienter Manner, without Orbs and Tracery, excepting under the Tower, where the Springers divide, and represent a wider sort of Tracery j and this appears to me to have been a later work, and to be done by some other Hand 332 APPENDIX I 333 than that of the first Architect, whose Judgment I must justly commend for many Things, beyond what I find in Divers Gothick Fabricks of later Date, which, tho' more elaborated with nice and small Works, yet want the natural Beauty which arises from the Proportion of the first Dimen- sions. For here the Breadth to the Height of the Navis, and both to the Shape of the Ailes bear a good Proportion. The Pillars and the Intercolumnations, (or spaces between Pillar and Pillar) are well suited to the Height of the Arches, the Mouldings are decently mixed with large Planes without an Affectation of filling every Corner with Ornaments, which, unless they are admirably good, glut the eye as much as in Musick, too much Division the Ears. The Windows are not made too great, nor yet the Light obstructed with many mullions and Transomes of Tracery-work ; which was the ill fashion of the next following Age : our Artist knew better, that nothing could add Beauty to Light, he trusted to a stately and rich plainness, that his Marble Shafts gave to his Work : I can- not call them Pillars, because they are so small and slender and generallybear nothing, but are only added for Ornament to the Outside of the great Pillars, and decently fastened with brass. Notwithstanding this Commendation of the Architect, there are some Original Errors, which I must lay to his Charge, the Discovery of which will give us Light to the Cause of the present Decays. First, I must accuse Him, that building on a low and marshy Soil, he did not take su£Scient care of the Foundation, especially under the Pillars. That Foundation which will bear a Wall, will not bear a Pillar, for Pillars thrust them- selves into the Earth, and force open the solid Ground, if the Foundation under them be not broad ; and if it be not Hard Stone, it will be ground and crushed as Things are bruised in a Mortar, if the Weight be great. 334 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN A second Fault, was the not raising the Floor of the Church above the Fear of Inundations ; many sufficient Foundations have failed after the Earth hath been too much drenched Avith unusual Floods ; besides, it is unhandsome to descend into a Place. The third Fault, is in the Poise of the Building : generally the Substructions are too slender for the Weights above. The Pillars appear Small enough, and yet they shew much greater than they are ; for the Shafts of Marble that encom- pass them, seem to fill out the Pillars to a Proportionable Bulk ; but indeed they bear little or no Weight, and some of those that are Pressed, break and Split ; if those Ornaments should be taken off, the Pillar would then appear too little for its Burthen ; but this no where so enormous as under the Steeple, which being four hundred Feet in Height, is borne by four Pillars, not much larger than the Pillars of the Ailes : and therefore out of Fear to over-burden them in the Inside of the Tower, for Forty Feet High above, the Navis is made with a slender hollow Work of Pillars and Arches ; nor hath it any Buttresses, and the Spire itself is but seven Inches thick, tho' the Height be above one hundred and fifty Feet. This Work of Pillars and Arches within the Tower, makes me believe that the Architect laid his first Floor of Timber forty Feet Higher than the Vault beneath, (which, as I said, was since added) and without doubt intended a Belfry above (as appears by places left in the Walls for Timber, and Fastening of the Frames for the Bells) and so would have concluded with the Tower only, without a Spire. And this addition of a Spire was a second Thought, the Artist is more excusable for having omitted Buttresses to the Tower ; and his ingenuity commendable for supplying this Defect, by bracing the Walls together with many large bands of iron within and without,, keyed together with much Industry and Exactness : and be- APPENDIX I 335 sides these that appear, I have Reason to believe, that there are Divers other Braces concealed within the thickness of the Walls ; and these are so essential to the Standing of the Work, that if they were dissolved, the Spire would spread open the Walls of the Tower, nor could it stand one Minute. But this Way of tying Walls together with Iron, instead of making them of that substance and Form, that they shall naturally poise themselves upon their Butment, is against the Rules of good Architecture ; not only because it is corruptible by Rust, but because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in the metal, some pieces in the same bar being three Times stronger than the other; and yet all sound to Appearance. I shall not impute to our Artist those Errors which were generally the mistakes of Builders in that Age ; yet it will not be amiss to insist a little upon those which seem to concern us, and to occasion some of the Infirmities in our Buildings, Almost all the Cathedrals of the Gothick Form are weak and defective in the Poise of the Vault of the Ailes ; as for the vault of the Navis, both sides are equally supported, and propped up from the spreading by the Bows or flying But- tresses, which rise from the outward Walls of the Ailes ; but for the Vaults of the Ailes, they are indeed supported on the Outside by the Buttresses, but inwardly they have no other Stay but the Pillars themselves, which (as they are usually proprtioned) if they stood alone without the Weight above, could not resist the spreading of the Ailes one minute. True indeed, the great Load above the Walls and Vaults of the Navis, should seem to confirm the Pillars in their perpendi- cular station, that there should be no need of the Butment inward ; but Experience hath shewn the contrary, and there is scarce any Gothick Cathedra], that I have seen, at home or abroad, wherein I have not observed the Pillars to yield and bend inwards from the Weight of the Vault of the Aile ; but 336 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN this defect is most conspicuous upon the Angular Pillars of the Cross, for there, not only the vault wants Butment, but also the angular Arches that rest upon that Pillar, and there- fore both conspire to thrust it inward towards the Center of the Cross : and this is very apparent in the Fabrick we treat of : for this Reason, this Form of Churches has been rejected by Modem Architects abroad, who use the better and Roman Art of Architecture. APPENDIX J At a CoHimittee of the Schooles in Christ's Hospitall, the 30th November, 169,2, Mr. John Smith, the Writing Master pre- sented to this Committee a specimen of divers of the Boyes drawing, which they have learnt in about three months time according to the directions of a Committee of the 30th of June, 1692. Mr. Treasurer acquainted the Committee that he had two Letters one from Sir Christo. Wren and the other from Esq. Pepys declaring their opinions concerning the intro- ducing the art of drawing amongst the Boyes. Wren's letter, which Mr. Treasurer Nathaniel Hawes read aloud to the Committee, is as follows : Nov. 2nth, 1692. Sir, I perceive your extraordinary diligence : and that the im- provement of your charge is always in your thoughts by your importuning me to recollect what passed in discourse some time since at your House. I intended to have waited on you severall times, but have been prevented sometimes by busi- ness, and at present by sickness w<'^ yet detains me. It was observed by somebody there present, that our English Artists are dull enough at Invention but when once a forreigne pat- teme is sett they imitate soe well that commonly they exceed the Originall, I confess the observation is generally true, but this showes that our natives want not a Genius but education in that w"'' is the foundation of all Mechanick Arts, a practice in designing or drawing, to w"'' everybody in Italy, Ffrance 337 Y 338 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN and the Low Countries pretends more or less. I cannot imagine that next to good writing anything could be more usefully taught your Children especially such as will naturally take to it, and many such you will find amongst your Numbers who will have a naturall Genius to it, which it is a pity should be stifled. It will prepare them for many Trades and they will be more usefuU and profitable to their Masters who shall take them the first Yeare, than a boy untaught will be in three or foure years, and consequently they will be desired and sooner taken from you and at cheaper rates. It is not Painters, Sculptors, Gravers, only that will find an advantage in such Boyes but many other Artificers too long to enumerate. Noe Art but will be mended and improved ; by which not only your Charity of the House will be enlarged but the Nation advantaged and this I am confident is obvious to any injenuous person who hath been abroad. I was surprised to see what Mr. Smith hath shown me performed by some of the Boyes already by wh* you will perceive how soon they will emulate and teach one another. This is what we were discoursing which 1 repeat in pursuance of your request, and remain, Your alFectionate friend and humble servant, Chr. Wren. [Copied from Christ's Hospital Committee Book.] APPENDIX K A LETTER TO A FRIEND FROM SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN IN 1708 CONCERNING THE ACT OF PARLIAMENT PASSED TO ERECT FIFTY NEW ADDITIONAL PARISH CHURCHES IN THE CITY OF LONDON AND WESTMINSTER. Since ProvidencCj in great Mercy, has protracted my Age, to the finishing the cathedral Church of St. Paul, and the parochial Churches of London, in lieu of those demolished by the Fire : (all of which were executed during the Fatigues of my Employment in the Service of the Crown, from that Time to the present happy Reign :) and being now constitued one of the Commissioners for Building, pursuant to the late Act, Fifty more Churches in London and Westminster: I shall presume to communicate briefly my Sentiments, after long Experience : and without further Ceremony exhibit to better Judgment, what at present occurs to me, in a transient View of this whole Affair : not doubting but that the Debates of the worthy Commissioners may hereafter give me occasion to change, or add to these Speculations. ] . First, I conceive the Churches should be built, not where vacant ground may be cheapest purchased in the Extremities of the Suburbs, but among the thicker Inhabitants, for Con- venience of the better sort, although the Site of them should cost more : the better Inhabitants contributing most to the 339 340 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN future Repairs, and the Ministers and Officers of the Church, and Charges of the Parish. 2. I could wish that all burials in Churches might be dis- allowed, which is not only unwholesom, but the Pavements can never be kept even, nor Pews upright : and if the Church- yard be close about the Church, this is also inconvenient, because the Ground being continually raised by the Graves, occasions, in Time, a Descent by Steps into the Church, which renders it damp, and the Walls green, as appears evidently in all old Churches. 3. It will be inquired, where then shall be the Burials ? I answer, in Cemeteries seated in the Outskirts of the Town ; and since it is become the Fashion of the Age to solemnize Funerals by a Train of Coaches, (even where the Deceased are of moderate Condition) though the Cemeteries should be half a Mile, or more, distant from the Church, the Charge need be little or no more than usual ; the Service may be first performed in the Church ; But for the Poor, & such as must be interred at the Parish Charge, a publick Hearse of two Wheels and one Horse may be kept at small Expence, the usual Bearers to lead the Horse, and take out the Corpse at the Grave. A Piece of Ground of two Acres in the Fields will be purchased for much less than two Roods among the Buildings : This being inclosed with a strong Brick Wall, and having a Walk round, and two cross Walks, decently planted with Yew-trees, the four Quarters may serve four Parishes, where the dead need not be disturbed at the pleasure of the Sexton, or piled four or five upon one another, or Bones thrown out to gain Room. In these places beautiful Monuments may be erected ; but yet the Dimensions should be regulated by an Architect, and not left to the Fancy of every Mason ; for thus the Rich, with large Marble Tombs, would shoulder out the Poor; when a Pyramid, a good Bust, or Statue on a APPENDIX K 341 proper Pedestal, will take up little Room in the Quarters, & be properer than Figures lying on Marble Beds : The walls will contain Escutchions and Memorials for the Dead, & the Area good Air and Walks for the Living. It may be considered further, that if the Cemeteries be thus thrown into the Fields, they will bound the excessive Growth of the City with a graceful Border, which is now encircled with Scavengers Dung-stalls. 4. As to the Situation of the Churches, I should propose they be brought as forward as possible into the larger and more open Streets, not in obscure Lanes, nor where Coaches will be much obstructed in the Passage. Nor are we, I think, too nicely to observe East or West, in the Position, unless it falls out properly : Such Fronts as shall happen to lie most open in View should be adom'd with Porticos, both for Beauty and Convenience ; which, together with the handsome Spires, or Lanterns, rising in good Proportion above the neighbouring Houses (of which I have given several Examples in the City of different Forms) may be of sufficient Ornament to the Town, without a great Ex- pence for enriching the outward Walls of the Churches, in which Plainness and Duration ought principally, if not wholly, to be studied. When a Parish is divided, I suppose it may be thought sufficient, if the Mother-church has a Tower large enough for a good Ring of Bells, & the other Churches smaller Towers for two or three Bells ; because great Towers, & lofty Steeples, are sometimes more than halt the Charge of the Church. 5. I shall mention something of the Materials for publick Fabricks. It is true, the mighty Demand for the hasty Works of thousands of Houses at once, after the Fire of London and the Frauds of those who built by the great, have so debased the Value of Materials, that good Bricks 342 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN are not to be now had, without greater Prices than for- merly, and indeed, if rightly made, will deserve them ; but Brick-makers spoil the Earth in the mixing and hasty burning, till the Bricks will hardly bear Weight ; though the Earth about London, rightly managed, will yield as good Brick as were the Roman Bricks, (which I have often found in the old Ruins of the City) and will endure, in our Air, beyond any Stone our Island affords ; which, unless the Quarries lie near the Sea, are too dear for general Use ; the best is Portland, or Roch-abbey Stone ; but these are not without their Faults. The next Material is the Lime ; Chalk-lime is the constant Practice, which, well mixed with good Sand, is not amiss, though much worse than hard Stone-lime. The Vaulting of St. Paul's is a rendering as hard as Stone ; it is composed of Cockle-shell-lime well beaten with Sand ; the more Labour in the beating, the better and stronger the Mortar. I shall say nothing of Marble, (though England, Scotland, and Ire- land, afford good, and of beautiful Colours) but this will prove too costly for our Purpose, unless for Altar-pieces. In Windows and Doors Portland-Stone may be used, with good Bricks, and Stone Quoyns. As to Roofs, good Oak is certainly the best ; because it will bear some Negligence : The Church- wardens Care may be defective in speedy mending Drips ; they usually white-wash the Church, and set up their Names, but neglect to preserve the Roof over their Heads : It must be allowed, that the Roof being more out of Sight, is still more unminded. Next to Oak is good yellow Deal, which is a Timber of Length, and Light, and makes excellent Work at first, but if neglected will speedily perish, especially if Gutters (which is a general Fault in Builders) be made to run upon the Principal Safters, the Ruin may be sudden. Our Sea-service for Oak, and the Wars in the Norlh-sea, make Timber at present of excessive Price. 1 suppose 'ere long we APPENDIX K 343 must have recourse to the West-Indies, where most excellent Timber may be had for cutting and fetching. Our Tiles are ill- made, and our Slate not good ; Lead is certainly the best and lightest Covering, and being of our own Growth and Manu- facture, and lasting, if properly laid, for many hundred Years, is without question, the most preferable ; though I will not deny but an excellent Tile may be made to be very durable ; our artisans are not yet instructed in it, and it is not soon done to inform them. 6. The Capacity and Dimensions of the new Churches may be determined by a Calculation. It is, as I take it, pretty certain, that the Number of Inhabitants, for whom these Churches are provided, are five times as many as those in the City, who were bu rned out, and probably more than 400,000 grown Persons that should come to Church, for whom these fifty Churches are to be provided, (besides some Chapels already built, though too small to be made parochial.) Now, if the Churches could hold each 2000, it would yet be very short of the necessary Supply. The Churches therefore must be large ; but still, in our reformed Religion, it should seem vain to make a Parish-church larger, than that all who are present can both hear and see. The Romanists, indeed, may build larger Churches, it is enough if they hear the Murmur of the Mass, and see the Elevation of the Host, but ours are to be fitted for Auditories. I can hardly think it practicable to make a single Room so capacious, with Pews and Galleries, as to hold 2000 Pei'sons, and all to hear the Service, and both to hear distinctly, and see the Preacher. I endeavour'd to effect this, in building the Parish Church of St. James's, Westminster, which, I presume is the most capacious, with these Qualifications, that hath yet been built ; and yet at a solemn Time, when the Church was much crowded, I could not discern from a Gallery that 2000 were present. In this 344 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Church I mention, though very broad, and the middle Nave arched up, yet are there no Walls of a second Order, nor Lan- terns, nor Buttresses, but the whole Roof rests upon the Pillars, as do also the Galleries ; I think it may be found beautiful and convenient, & as such, the cheapest of any Form I could invent. 7. Concerning the placing of the Pulpit, I shall observe ... A moderate Voice may be heard 50 Feet distant before the Preacher, 30 Feet on each Side, and 20 behind the Pulpit, and not this, unless the Pronunciation be distinct and equal, ■without losing the Voice at the last Word of the Sentence, which is commonly emphatical, and if obscur'd spoils the whole Sense. A French Man is heard further than an English Preacher, because he raises his Voice, and not sinks his last Words : I mention this as an insufferable Fault in the Pronunciation of some of our otherwise excellent Preachers ; which School-masters might correct in the young, as a vicious Pronunciation, and not as the Roman Orators spoke '• For the principal Verb is in Latin usually the last Word ; and if that be lost, what becomes of the Sentence } 8. By what I have said, it may be thought reasonable, that the new Church should be at least 60 Feet broad, and 90 Feet long, besides a Chancel at one End, and the Bellfrey and Portico at the other. These Proportions may be varied ; but to build more room, than that every Person may conveniently hear and see, is to create Noise and Confusion. A Church should not be so fiU'd with Pews, but that the Poor may have room enough to stand and sit in the Alleys, for to them equally is the Gospel preach'd. It were to be wish'd there were to be no Pews, but Benches ; but there is no stemming the Tide of Profit, & the advantage of Pew-keepers ; especially too since by Pews, in the Chapels of Ease, the Minister is chiefly supported. It is evident APPENDIX K 345 these fifty Churches are not enough for the present inhabi- tants, & the Town will continually grow; but it is to be hoped, that hereafter more may be added, as the Wisdom of the Government shall think fit ; and therefore the Parishes should be so divided, as to leave room for Sub-divisions, or at least for Chapels of Ease. I cannot pass over mentioning the Difficulties that may be found in obtaining the Ground proper for the Sites of the Churches among the Buildings, and the Cemeteries in the Borders without the Town ; and therefore I shall recite the Method that was taken for purchasing in Ground at the North-side of St. Paul's Cathedral, where in some Places the Houses were but eleven Feet distant from the Fabrick, exposing it to the continual Danger of Fires. The Houses were seventeen, and contiguous, all in Lease- hold of the Bishop, or Dean alone, or the Dean and Chapter, or the Petty-canons, with diver Undertenants. First we treated with the superior Landlords, who being perpetual Bodies were to be recompens'd in Kind, with Rents of the like Value for them and their successors ; but the Tenants in Possession for a valuable Consideration ; which to find what it amounted to, we leam'd by diligent Inquiry, what the Inheritance of Houses in that Quarter were usually held at : This we found was fifteen Years Purchase at the most, and proportionably to this the Value of each Lease was easily determin'd in a Scheme, referring to a Map. These Rates, which we resolv'd not to stir from, were offered to each ; and, to cut off much Debate, which may be imagin'd every one would abound in, they were assur'd that we went by one uniform Method, which could not be receded from. We found two or three reasonable Men, who agreed to these Terms: Immediately we paid them, and took down their Houses. Others who stood out at first, finding themselves in 346 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Dust and Rubbish, and that ready Money was better, as the Case stood, than to continue paying Rent, Repairs, and Parish Duties, easily came in. The whole Ground at last was clear'd. and all concern'd were satisfied, and their Writings given up. The greatest Debate was about their Charges for fitting-up their new Houses to their particular Trades : For this we allow'd one Year's Purchase, & gave leave to remove all their Wainscote, reserving the Materials of the Fabrick only. This was happily finish'd without a Judicatory or Jury ; altlio' in our present Case, we may find it perhaps sometimes necessary to have recourse to Parliament. APPENDIX L MEMORIAL FROM SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER CONCERNING THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. PETER AT WESTMINSTER, 1713. When I had the Honour to attend your Lordship to con- gratulate your Episcopal Dignity, and pay that Respect which particularly concerned myself as employed in the chief Direction of the Works and Repairs of the Collegiate-church of St. Peter in Westminster ; you was pleased to give me this seasonable Admonition, that I should consider my advanced Age ; and as I had already made fair Steps in the Reparation of that ancient and ruinous Structure, you thought it very requisite for the Publick Service, I should leave a Memorial of what I had done ; and what my Thoughts were for caiTying on the Works for the future. In order to describe what I have already done, I should first give a State of the Fabrick as I found it ; which being the Work of 500 Years, or more, through several Ages and Kings Reigns, it will come in my Way to consider the Modes of Building in those Times, and what Light Records may afford us ; such as at present I am able to collect, give me leave to discourse a little upon. That a Temple of Apollo was here in Thorny-island (the Place anciently so called, where the Church now stands) and ruined by an Earthquake in the Reign of the Emperor 347 348 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Antoninus Pius, I cannot readily agree. The Romans did not use, even in their Colonies, to build so lightly ; the Ruins of ancienter Times shew their Works to this Day ; the least Fragment of Cornice, or Capital, would demonstrate their Handy-work. Earthquakes break not Stones to Pieces, nor would the Picts be at that Pains : but I imagine the Monks finding the Londoners pretending to a Temple of Diana, where now St. Paul stands; (Horns of Stags, Tusks of Boars, etc., having been dug up there in former Times, and it is said also, in later Years) would not be behind Hand in Antiquity : but I must assert, that having changed all the Foundations of Old Paul's, and upon that Occasion rummaged all the Ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find some Footsteps of such a Temple, I could not discover any, and therefore can give no more Credit to Diana than to Apollo. To pass over the fabulous Account, that King Lucius first founded a little Church here, a.d. 170, out of the Ruins of the Temple of Apollo, destroyed by an Earthquake a little before : but it is recorded with better Authority, that Sebert, King of the East-Saxons, built a Monastery and Church here in 605, which being destroyed by the Danes, was about 360 Years after repaired by the pious King Edgar, This, it is probable, was a strong good Building, after the Mode of that Age, not much altered from the Roman. We have some Examples of this ancient Saxon Manner, which was with Peers or round Pillars, much stronger than Tuscan, round headed Arches, and Windows ; such was Winchester Cathedral of old ; and such at this Day the Royal Chapel in the White-tower of London ; the Chapel of St. Crosse ; the Chapel of Christ- church in Oxford, formerly an old Monastery; & divers others I need not name, built before the Conquest ; & such was the Old Part of St. Paul's built in King Rufus's Time. King Edward the Confessor repaired, if not wholly rebuilt APPENDIX L 349 this Abbey church of King Edgar ; of which a Description was published by Mr. Camden in 1606, from an ancient Manuscript in these words : " Principalis area domus, altissi- mis erecta fornicibus quadrato opere, parique commissura circumvolvitur ; ambitus autem ipsius aedis duplici lapidura arcu ex utroque latere hinc inde fortiter solidata operis compage clauditur. Porro crux templi quae medium canen- tium domino chorum ambiret, & sui gemina hinc inde susten- tatione mediae turris celsum apicem fulciret, humili primura & robusto fornice simpliciter surgit; deinde cochleis multi- pliciter ex arte ascendentibus plurimis intumescit j deinceps vero simplic muro usque ad tectum ligneum plumbo diligenter vestitum pervenit." The Sense of which I translate into Language proper to Builders, as I can understand it. " The principal Aile or Nave of the Church being raised high, & vaulted with square and uniform Ribs, is turned circular to the East. This on all Sides is strongly fortified with double Vaulting of the Ailes in two Stories, with their Pillars and Arches. The Cross-building fitted to contain the Quire in the Middle, and the better to support the lofty Tower, rose with a plainer and lower Vaulting ; which Tower then spreading with artificial Winding-stairs, was continued with plain Walls to its Timber Roof, which was well covered with Lead." These ancient Buildings were without Buttresses, only with thicker Walls : the Windows were very narrow, and latticed, for King Alfred is praised for After-invention of Lanterns to keep in the Lamps in Churches. In the Time of King Henry the Third, the Mode began, to build Chapels behind the Altar to the Blessed Virgin : what this Chapel here was, is not now to be discovered, I suppose the Foundations of it, are under the Steps of King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and this Work 350 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN probably semicircular (as afterwards four more were added without the Ailes) was also intended for his own Sepulture ; some of his own Relations lying now, just below those Steps, and may be supposed to have been within his Chapel : of this he laid the first Stone, Anno 1220, and took down the greatest Part of St. Edward's Church to rebuild it according to the Mode which came into Fashion after the Holy War. This we now call the Gothick Manner of Architecture (so the Italians called what was not after the Roman Style) tho' the Goths were rather Destroyers than Builders; I think it should with more Reason be called the Saracen Style ; for those People wanted neither Arts nor Learning; and after we in the West had lost both, we borrowed again from them, out of their Arabick Books, what they with great Diligence had translated from the Greeks. They were Zealots in their Religion, and where-ever they conquered, (which was with amazing Rapidity) erected Mosques and Caravansara's in Haste ; which obliged them to fall into another Way of Building ; for they built their Mosques round, disliking the Christian Form of a Cross, the old Quarries whence the ancients took their Blocks of Marble for whole Columns and Architraves, were neglected, and they thought both impertinent. Their Carriage was by Camels, therefore their Buildings were fitted for small Stones, and Columns of their own Fancy, consisting of many Pieces ; and their Arches were pointed without Key-stones, which they thought too heavy. The Reasons were the same in our Northern Climates, abounding in Free-stone, but wanting Marble. The Crusado gave us an Idea of this Form ; after which King Henry built his Church, but not by a Model well digested at first; for, I think, the Chapels without the Ailes were an APPENDIX L 35 1 afber-thought, the Buttresses between the Chapels remaining being useless, if they had been raised together with them ; & the King having opened the East-end for St. Mary's Chapel, he thought to make more Chapels for Sepulture ; which was very acceptable to the Monks, after Licence obtained from Borne to bury in Churches, a Custom not used before. The King's intention was certainly to make up only the Cross to the Westward, for thus far it is of a different Manner from the rest more Westward built after his Time, as the Pillars and Spandrils of the Arches shew. I am apt to think the King did not live to compleat his Intention nor to reach four Inter-columns West of the Tower ; the Walls of this Part might probably be carried up in his Time, but the Vaulting now covering the Quire, tho' it be more adorned and gilded, is without due Care in the Masonry, and is the worst performed of all done before. This Stone Vault was finished 23 Years after his Decease, in the Reign of King Edward the First, so that the old Verse is not punctually right, " Tertius Henricus est templi conditor hujus." But alas! it was now like to have been all spoiled; the Abbots would have a Cloyster, but scrupled, I suppose, at moving some venerable Corpses laid between the Outside Buttresses ; then comes a bold, but ignorant Architect, who undertakes to build the Cloyster, so that the Buttresses should be without the Cloyster spanning over it as may be seen in the Section. This was a dangerous Attempt. It is by due Consideration of the Statick Principles, and the right Poising of the Weights of the Butments to the Arches, that good Architecture de- pends; and the Butments ought to have equal Gravity on both Sides. Altho' this was done to flatter the Humour of the 352 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Monks, yet the Architect should have considered that new- Works carried very high, and that upon a newer Foundation, would shrink : from hence the Walls above the Windows are forced out ten Inches, and the Ribs broken. I could not discern this Failure to be so bad, till the Scaffold over the Quire was raised to give a close View of it ; and then I was amazed to find it had not quite fallen. This is now amended with all Care, and I dare promise it shall be much stronger, and securer than ever the first Builders left it. After what had been done by King Henry the Third and his Successor, it is said, the Work was carried further by the Abbots and Monks towards the West, and I perceive also the contiguous Cloyster after the Manner it was begun by King Henry the Third with Butments spanning over the Cloyster, which they were necessitated to proceed upon, according as it had been begun, tho' by Error, not to be amended till it was carried beyond the Cloyster ; but then they proceeded with regular Butments answerable to the North-side, till they came to the West-front. This West-vault was proceeded on with much better Care and Skill, and was a Work of many Years, during the Reigns of the three succeeding Edwards, and King Richard the Second. I suppose there was a great Intermission or Slackness of Work, till the Lancastrian Line came in ; for then, in the very first Bay of this Work, I find in the Vaulting, and the Key-stones, the Rose of Lancaster. In the tumultuous and bloody Wars between the two Houses of York & Lancaster, little was done to the Abbey, but by the Zeal of the Abbots, who drove the Work on as well as they were able, tho' slowly, to the West-end, which was never compleatly finished. When King Henry the Eight dissolved the Monastery, the Cloyster was finished, and other Things for the Convenience of the Abbey. APPENDIX L 353 The Consistory (no contemptible Fabrick) was, I think, done in the Time of King Edward the First, and in order to join it to the Church, the East-side of the Cloyster was taken out of the West-side of the Cross Part of the Church (by ill Advice) for it might have otherwise been done by a more decent Contrivance, but it maybe the King was to be obeyed, who founded this octagonal Fabrick : the Abbot lent it to the King for the Use of the House of Commons, upon Condition the Crown should repair it, which, tho' it be now used for Records, hath lately been done. The Saracen Mode of Building, seen in the East, soon spread over Europe, and particularly in France; the Fashions of which Nation we affected to imitate in all Ages, even when we were at Enmity with it. Nothing was thought magnificent that was not high beyond Measure, with the Flutter of Archbnttresses, so we call the sloping Arches that poise the higher Vaultings of the Nave. The Romans always concealed their Butments, whereas the Normans thought them ornamental. These I have observ'd are the first Things that occasion the Ruin of Cathedrals, being so much exposed to the Air and Weather ; the Coping, which cannot defend them, first failing, & if they give way, the Vault must spread. Pinnacles are of no Use, and as little Ornament. The Pride of a very high Roof raised above reasonable Pitch is not for Duration, for the Lead is apt to slip ; but we are tied to this indiscreet Form, & must be con- tented with original Faults in the first Design. But that which is most to be lamented, is the unhappy Choice of the Materials, the Stone is decayed four Inches deep, and falls oflf perpetually in great Scales. I find, after the Conquest, all our Artists were fetched from Normandy j they loved to work in their own Caen-stone, which is more beautiful than durable. This was found expensive to bring hither, so they thought 354 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Rygate-stone in Surrey, the nearest like their own, being a Stone that would saw and work like Wood, but not durable, as is manifest ; and they used this for the Ashlar of the whole Fabriek, which is now disfigur'd in the highest Degree : this Stone takes in Water, which, being frozen, scales off, whereas good Stone gathers a Crust, and defends itself, as many of our English Free-stones do. And though we have also the best Oak Timber in the World, yet these senseless Artificers in Westminster hall, & other Places, would work their Chestnuts from Normandy ; that Timber is not natural to England, it works finely, but sooner decays than Oak. The Roof in the Abbey is Oak, but mixed with Chestnut, and wrought after a bad Norman Manner, that does not secure it from stretching, & damaging the Walls, and the Water of the Gutters is ill carried off. All this is said, the better, in the next Place, to represent to your Lordship what has been done, and is wanting still to be carried on, as Time and Money is allowed to make a substantial and durable Repair. First, in Repair of the Stone-work, what is done shews itself: beginning from the East-window, we have cut out all the ragged Ashlar, & invested it with a better Stone, out of Oxfordshire, down the River, from the Quarries about Burford. We have amended and secured the Butresses in the Cloyster- garden, as to the greatest Part ; and we proceed to finish that Side ; the Chapels on the South-side are done, and most of the Archbuttresses all along as we proceeded. We have not done much on the North-side, for these Reasons : the Houses on the North-side are so close, that there is not Room left for the raising of Scaffolds and Ladders, nor for Passage for bringing Materials : besides, the Tenants taking every Inch to the very Walls of the Church to be in their Leases, this Ground already too narrow, is divided as the Backsides to Houses, with Wash-houses, Chimnies, Privies, Cellars, the APPENDIX L 355 Vaults of which, if indiscreetly dug against the Foot of a Buttress, may inevitably ruin the Vaults of the Chapels (and indeed I perceive such Mischief is already done, by the Opening of the Vaults of the octagonal Chapel on that side) and unless effectual Means be taken to prevent all Nusances of this Sort, the Works cannot proceed, and if finished, may soon be destroyed. I need say no more, nor will I presume to dictate, not doubting but proper Means will be taken to preserve this noble Structure from such Nusances, as directly tend to the Demolition of it. And now, in further Pursuance of your Lordship's Direc- tions, I shall distinctly set down, what yet remains to finish the necessary Repairs for Ages to come. And then, in the second Place, (since the first Intentions of the Founders were never brought to a Conclusion) I shall present my Thoughts and Designs, in order to a proper compleating of what is left imperfect, hopeing we may obtain for this, the Continuance of the Parliamentary Assistance. I have yet said nothing of King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, a nice embroidered Work, and performed with tender Caen-stone, & tho' lately built, in Comparison, is so eaten up by our Weather, that it begs for some Compassion, which, I hope, the Sovereign Power will take, as it is the regal Sepul- ture. 1 begin, as I said, to set down what is necessary for com- pleating the Repairs, tho' Part thereof at present I can only guess at, because I cannot as yet come at the North-side to make a full Discovery of the Defects there, but I hope to find it rather better than the South-side ; for it is the Vicissitudes of Heat and Cold, Drought and Moisture, that rot all Materials more than the Extremities that are constant, of any of these Accidents: this is manifest in Timber, which, if always under Ground & wet, never decays, otherwise Venice 356 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN and Amsterdam would fall : it is the same in Lead-work, for the North-side of a steep Roof is usually much less decayed than the South ; and the same is commonly seen in Stone Work ; besides, the Buttresses here are more substantial than those of the South-side which I complained before were in- discreetly altered for the sake of the Cloyster ; and I find some Emendations have been made about eighty Years since, but not well. Upon the whole Matter I may say, that of the necessary Repairs of the Outward Stone Work, one third Part is already compleated. The most dangerous Part of the Vaulting over the Quire now in Hand will be finished in a few Months, but the Roof over it cannot be opened till Summer. The Repairs of the Stone Work, with all the Chapels, Arch- buttresses, Windows, and Mouldings of the North-side are yet to be done, excepting Part of the North-cross Aile : a great Part of the Expence will be in the North-front, and the great Rose Window there, which being very ruinous, was patched up for the present to prevent further Ruin, some Years since, before I was concerned, but must now be new done : I have prepared a proper Design for it. The Timber of the Roof of the Nave, and the Cross, is amended and secured with the Lead; and also the Chapels: but the whole Roof, & Ailes from the Tower Westward, with Lead & Pipes to be new-cast, remains yet, with all the Timber Work, to be mended, as hath been done Eastward of the Tower already. The Chapels on the North-side must have their Roofs amended, when we can see how to come at them, after the Removal of one little House. And now having given a summary Account of what will perfect the meer Repairs, let me add what I wish might be done to render those Parts with proper Aspect, which were left abruptly imperfect by the last Builders, when the Monastery was dissolved by King Henry the Eighth. APPENDIX L 357 The West-front is very requisite to be finished, because the two Towers are not of equal Height, and too low for the Bells, which hang so much lower than the Roof, that they are not heard so far as they should be: the great West- window is also too feeble, & the Gabel-end of the Roof over it, is but Weather-boards painted. The original Intention was plainly to have had a Steeple, the Beginnings of which appear on the Corners of the Cross, but left oiF before it rose so high as the Ridge of the Roof; & the Vault of the Quire under it, is only Lath and Plaister, now rotten, and must be taken care of. Lest it should be doubted, whether the four Pillars below, be able to bear a Steeple, because they seem a little swayed inward, I have considered how they may be unquestionably secured, so as to support the greatest Weight that need be laid upon them; & this after a Manner that will add to their Shape and Beauty. It is manifest to the Eye, that the four innermost Pillars of the Cross are bended inward considerably, and seem to tend to Ruin, and the Arches of the second Order above are cracked also ; how this has happened, and how it is to be secured, I shall demonstrate. I conceive the Architect knew very well, that the four Pillars above the Intersection of the Cross-nave would not prove a sufficient Butment to stand against the Pressure of so many Arches, unless they were very much bigger than the other Piers; but that could not be without cumbering up the principal Part of the Church : but tho' these angular Pillars could not be made bigger, yet they could be made heavier to stand against the Pressure of the several Rows of Arches, which might prove an Equivalent, as may appear thus: 358 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN Let A B C be an Arch resting at C, against an immoveable Wall K M, but at A upon a Pillar A D, so small as to be unable to be a sufficient Butment to the Pressure of the Arch A B : what is then to be done ? I cannot add F G to it to make it a Butment, but I build up E so high, as by Addition of Weight, to establish it so firm, as if I had annexed F G to it to make it a Butment : it need not be enquired how much £ must be, since it cannot exceed provided A D be sufficient to bear the Weight imposed on it : and this is the Reason why in all Gothick Fabricks of this Form, the Architects were wont to build Towers or Steeples in the Middle, not APPENDIX L 359 only for Ornament, but to confirm the middle Pillars against the Thrust of the several Rows of Arches, which force against them every Way. The Architect understood this well enough, but knowing that it might require Time to give such a But- ment as the Tower to his Arches, which was to be last done ; and lest there should be a FaiUng in the mean Time, he wisely considered, that if he tied these Arches every Way with Iron, which were next to the Middle of the Cross : this might serve the Turn, till he build the Tower to make all secure, which is not done to this Day. These Irons which were hooked on from Pillar to PUlar have been stolen away ; and this is the Reason of the four Pillars being bent inward, and the Walls above cracked ; but nothing can be amended, till first the Pillars are restored, which I have considered how to perform, and represented in a Model. This must be first done, otherwise the Addition of Weight upon that which is already crooked and infirm, will make it more so : but the Pillars being once well secured from further Distortion, it will be necessary to confirm all by adding more Weight upon them, that is, by building a Tower according to the original Intention of the Architect, and which was begun, as appears by the Work, but left off before it rose to the Ridge of the Roof. In my Opinion the Tower should be continued to at least as much in Height above the Roof, as it is in Breadth ; and if a Spire be added to it, it will give a proper Grace to the whole Fabrick, and the West-end of the City, which seems to want it. I have made a Design, which will not be very expensive but light, and still in the Gothick Form, and of a Style with the rest of the Structure, which I would strictly adhere to, throughout the whole Intention : to deviate from the whole Form, would be to run into a disagreeable Mixture, which no Person of a good Taste could relish. 36o SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN I have varied a little from the usual Form, in giving twelve Sides to the Spire instead of eight, for Reasons to be dis- cerned upon the Model. The Angles of Pyramids in the Gothic Architecture, were usually inriched with the Flower the Botanists call Calceohis, which is a proper Form to help workmen to ascend on the Outside to amend any Defects, without raising large Scaffolds upon every slight Occasion ; I have done the same, being of so good Use, as well as agreeable Ornament. The next Thing to be considered is, to finish what was left undone at the West-front. It is evident, as is observed before, the two West-towers were left imperfect, and have continued so since the Dissolu- tion of the Monastery, one much higher than the other, though still too low for Bells, which are stifled by the Height of the Roof above them ; they ought certainly to be carried to an equal Height, one Story above the Ridge of the Roof, still continuing the Gothick Manner, in the Stone-work, and Tracery. Something must be done to strengthen the West-windoWj which is crazy; the Pediment is only boarded, but ought undoubtedly to be of Stone. I have given such a Design, as I conceive may be suitable for this Part: the Jerusalem- Chamber is built against it, and the Access from Tothill-street not very graceful. The principal Entrance is from King-street, and I believe always will continue so, but at present, there is little Encour- agement to begin to make this North-front magnificent in the Manner I have designed, whilst it is so much incumbered with private Tenements, which obscure and smoke the Fabrick, not without danger of fireing it. The great North-window had been formerly in danger of Ruin, but was upheld, and stopt up, for the present, with APPENDIX L 361 Plaister. It will be most necessary to rebuild this with Portland-stone, to answer the South-rose-window, which was well rebuilt about forty years since ; the Stair-cases at the Comers must now be new Ashlar' d, and Pyramids set upon them conformable to the old-Style, to make the Whole of a Piece. I have therefore made a Design ■" in order to restore it to its proper shape first intended, but which was indis- creetly tamper'd with some years since, by patching on a little Dorick Passage before the great Window, & cropping off the Pyramids, and covering the Stair-cases with very improper Roofs of Timber and Lead, which can never agree with any other part of the Design. For all these new Additions I have prepared perfect Draughts & Models, such as I conceive may agree with the original Scheme of the old Architect, without any modem Mixtures to shew my own Inventions ; in like manner as I have among the Parochial Churches of London given some few Examples (where I was oblig'd to deviate from a better Style) which appear not ungraceful, but ornamental, to the East part of the City ; and it is to be hoped, by the publick Care, to the West part also, in good Time, will be as well adorned ; and surely by nothing more properly than a lofty Spire, and Western-towers to Westminster- Abbey. 1 This front, commonly called Solomon's Porch, the Surveyor lived to finish in the year 1722. [Marginal note from Parentalia.] LIST OF AUTHORITIES CHIEFLY CONSULTED Dictionary of National Biography. Parentalia. Stephen Wren. 1750. Life of Sir Christopher Wren. James Elmes. 1823. Sir Christopher Wren and his Times. James Elmes. 1852. Sir Christopher Wren and his Times. Lucy Phillimore. 1881. Brief Lives. Aubrey. New Edition. 1898. Miscellaneous Writings. John Evelyn. 1825. Evelyn's Diary. Works of Sir Christopher Wren. Clayton. 1848. Lives of Gresham Professors. John Ward. 1740. Three Cathedrals of St. Paul in London. Longman. 1873. Inigo Jones and Wren. Rev. W. J. Loftie. 1893. Life of Sir Christopher Wren, Stratton. Privately Printed. 1897. Life and Times of Anthony A Wood. Renaissance Architecture in England. Papworth. 1883. Renaissance Architecture in England. Reginald Blomfield. 1897. Later Renaissance Art in England. Belcher and Macartney. 1901. Annals of St, Paul's. Dean Milman. 1868. Royal Letters. Sir G, Bromley. 1787. Dictionnaire des ArchUectes. Bauchol. 1887. Glands Architectes Frangais. Korsak. 1884. Parallele de l' Architecture, Freard de Chambray. 1650. 363 364 AUTHORITIES History of Royal Society. Weld. History of Royal Society. Thomas Sprat. 1734. History of Royal Society. Thos. Birch, 1756. History of London. W. Maitland. 1739. London Churches. Geo. Birch. 1890. Netv Vietv of London. Hatton. 1708. New History of London. Harrison. 1775. Architectural History of Cambridge. Clark and Willis. 1886. English Architecture. 1756. Foundation of Royal Hospital, Dublin. Wilson. 1682. Relation d'un Voyage en Angleterre. Sorbi^re. 1664. Observations on Sorbidre. Thos, Sprat. 1665. History of Chelsea. Faulkner. 1805. History of Kensington. Faulkner. Calendar of State Papers. Historical MSS, Commission : Welheck. Synopsis cedificioruvi publicorum. Dam C. Wren. 1749. Elements of Architecture. Sir Heniy Wotton. 1723. Churches of London. Geo. Godwin. 1839. History of Hampton Court Palace. Ernest Law. Greenwich Past and Present. Howarth. 1885. Greenwich Palace and Hospital. L'Estrange. 1885. Character of Renaissance Architecture. Charles H. Moore. 1905. Craftsmen of Westminster Abbey. Lethaby. 1906. Original Letters at Royal Society. Drawings, in Naval Museum at Greenwich, Sir John Soane's Museum, Library of St. Paul's Cathedral, and All Souls' College Library, Oxford. INDEX Ai.libond'8 ballad, 27 Anne, Queen, 273, 280, 290 Babbow, Dr. Isaac, 60, 140-42 BathOTSt, Dr., 69, 131, 132, 179 Beltou House, Grantham, 185 Benson, 293, 291 Bernini, 79, 83 Boyle, Hon.Bobert, 23, 36, 38, 169 Bramante, 201 Breton, Dr., 107 Brouncker, Lord, 53, S9, 318 Busby, Dr., 10, 121 Cambbidge, Bishop's Hostel, 183, 187 Emmanuel, 106-10 Pembroke, 43, 66, 68 Tribunal, 149 Trinity, 140-49 Cbarles II., 44-48, 61, 63, 96, 140 Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, 8, 22, 23, 36 Chelsea Hospital, 169-74 Chichester, 191 Churches (those italicised not ol Wren's building) : All Hallows, Barking, 138,13 9, 223 All Hallows, Lombard Street, 220 Bow Church — see St. Mary-le-Bow Christ ChurchgNewgate Street, 244, 248 Ingestre Church, 261 St. Alban'B, Wood Street, 268 St. Andrew's, Holbom, 244 St. Andrew's by the Wardrobe, 244 6S. Anne and Agnes, 243 SS. Augustine and Faith, 221, 260 St. Bartholomew's, Smithfleld, 223 St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, 245 Churches — continued St. Bride's, Fleet Street, 241, 248 St. Clement Danes, 248, 295 St. Bunstan's in the East," 268 St. EtheVmrga'a, Bishopagate, 224 St. George's, Bloomsbury, 197 St. George's, Botolph Lane, 222 St, Helen's, Bishopsgate, 224 St. James's, Garlickhithe, 226 St. James's, Piccadilly, 243 St. Laurence Jewry, 236-38 St. Margaret Pattens, 226, 246, 249 St. Margaret's, Lothbury, 226,246 St. Margaret's, Westminster, 239 St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 197 St. Martin's, Ludgate, 221, 226-27, 246, 260 St. Mary Abchurch, 235 St. Mary, Aldermary, 268 St. Mary.at-Hill, 232 St. Mary-le-Bow, 247 St, Mary's, Aldermanbury, 231 St. Michael's, Gomfaill, 247 St. Mildred's, Bread Street, 233-36 St. Peter's, Cornhill, 226, 246 St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, 223 St. Stephen's, Walbrook, 227-31 St. Swithin's, Cannon Street, 231 St.Veda8t's, Foster Lane, 221,260 Claypole, Master of Horse, 37 Mrs., 37 Colbert, 78 Cromwell, 37 Denham, Sir John, 63, 96 East Knoyle, 6, 16-18, 30 Ely, 14, 66, 206 Epitaphs, 297, 299 The spire only is of Wren's building. 36s 366 INDEX Eton, Upper School, 192 Evelyn, John, 30, 31, 42-41, 63, S4, 66, 92, 93, 95, 135-39, 295, 297, 299 Falconbbidge, Lady, 37 Fell, Dr., 267 Fifty Churches Act, 286, 339 Fire of London, 93-9S Flamsteed, 156 Fouequet, 72, 82 Fox, Sir Stephen, 170-72 " Frauds and Abuses," 287 Fronde, 70-73 Genealogies, 302 George I,, 290 Gibbons, Grinling, 135-39, 148, 215 Gilbert, 35 Goddard, Dr., 29, 40 Greenwich Hospital, 273-78 Observatory, 156-60 Gresham College, 32-49 Hack, Theodore, 29 Hampton Court, 260-70 Henry, Philip, 10 Holder, Dr. William, 12 Honywood, Dean, 149 Hooke, 47, 104, 167, 169 Howard, Henry, 104, 169 INGESTHE Church, 251 " Invisible College," 23 Jennings, 282, 288 Jones, Inigo, 3, 57, 111, 182 Kensington Orangery, 273 Palace, 271-73 Kilmainham Hospital, 161-66 Laud, Archbishop, 3, 10, 13 Leibnitz, 167 Lepautre, 83 Lethaby, Hr., (lUOted, 2S9, 259 Levau, 78, 82 Lincoln, Honywood Library, 160-62 London, Brewers' Hall, 188 Christ's Hospital, 189, 337 Churches {see under that Jieading), 219-51 Guildhall, 188 King's Bench Walk, 190 Mercers' Hall, 188 London, Middle Temple Gateway, 191 Monument, 134 Pewterers' Hall, 188 Plans for rebuilding city, 95 St. Paul's, 114-25, 195-218 Temple Bar, 132-34 Tower of London, 157, 160, 186 Westminster Abbey, 254, 259, 347 Longman, Mr., quoted, 119 Maisons, 82 Mallebrancbe, 38 Mansard, 70, 81, 82 Mezzotint, 67-68 Michel Angelo, 201, 202 Milman, Dean, quoted, 211 Moore, Sir Jonas, 157 Moray, Sir Eobert, 46, 60 Morden College, 193 Morley, Colonel, 42-44 Nasebt, battle of, 15 Neile, Sir Paul, 46, 50, 62 letter to, 326 Old St. Paul's, 66 Oughtred, William, 18-22, 24 Oxford, 27-31, 49-62 Ashmolean, 263 Sheldonian, 126-30, 296 Tom Tower, 257 Trinity, 132, 179- Fantheon, Paris, 202 Borne, 201 Parentalia, 6 Paris, 69-84, 328 Pascal, 38 Fatmoi-e, Coventry, quoted, 271 Pepys, 135, 186 Perrault, 79, 198 " Philosophical Society," 29, 32, 44 Princes in the Tower, 160 BOOKE, Laurence, 32, 50 Boyal Society, 24, 60, 69, 65, 69, 104, 167, 171, 319 Warrants, &o., 61, 103, 114, 115, 122, 168,161 Eupert, Prince, 67, 68 Buskin, John, 196 St. Albans, Jermyn, Earl of, 69, 75, 243 INDEX 367 St. Peter's, Borne, 801, 202, 204 Bancroft, Dean, 106, 110-13 Scarborongh, Sir Charles, 18-24 Serllo, Sebaatlano, 67, 127, 198, 201 Sheldon, Archbishop, 56, 69 Siegen, Lndwlg von, 68 Soafflot, 202 South, Bobert, 10, 14 Spinoza, 38 Sprat, Dr. Thomas, 29, 49, 69, 62-6S, 311-17 Swearing, prohibition, 123 Talman, William, 269, 280 Tangier, 68, 167 Taswell, quoted, 93-95 Tatler on "Modesty," 289 Xorrioelli, 38 Vadx-le-Vicomte, 82, 130 Tersailles, 81 Voltaire, qiioted, 71 Wakd, Seth,2S, 46 Wilkins, Dr. John, 22-24, 28, 31, 36, 46, 47, 236 William and Mary, 260-63, 266, 268, 271, 274-76 Willis, Dr. Thomas, 29, 68 Winchester Palace, 176-78 School, 190 Windsor Mausoleum, 179 Town-Hall, 192 Wren, Sir Christopher, birth, C School, 9 Oxford, 27 Gresham Professor of Astro- nomy, 32 Savillian, 49 D.I/. degree, 63 Assistant Surveyor- General, 53 Surveyor-Gteneral, 96 Domestic life, 182-95 Knighthood, 164 President Boyal Society, 1 69 M.P., 192, 261 Superseded, 293 Death, 297 Wren, Christopher (son of Sir Christo- pher), 6, 164, 296 Christopher, Dean of Windsor, 6-8,11,18-19,36, 66,133 Jane, 162-94 Lady (nee CoghlU), 154 Lady (nee Hon. J. Fitz Williams), 164 Mil tthew,Bishop of Ely, 8, 9, 1 3, 37, 43, 66, 66, 68, 69 Matthew (son of Bishop), 30, 41, S3 Stephen (grandson of Sir Christo- pher), 6, 164 Susan (Mrs. Holder), 7, 12, 18 Printed by Ballantvne dr" Co. Limited Tavistock Street, Covent Gardes, London