Sir Christopher Wren Part 10

The King appointed Wren as a.s.sistant to Sir John Denham, the Surveyor-General of Works. Sir John had been appointed by Charles I., in reversion during the lifetime of Inigo Jones, surveyor at that time, and had succeeded, at Inigo Jones's death, to what was then but a barren honour. Evelyn, who had a dispute with Sir John about the placing of Greenwich Palace in that very year, says: 'I knew him to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb[89] (Inigo Jones's man) to a.s.sist him.' Of this Charles II. was probably aware, and anxious to supply his deficiency. That his choice should have fallen upon Wren, unless Evelyn's friendship suggested it, is remarkable, as, until then, Wren seems to have made no special study of architecture. No doubt the practical experience learned in the details of the a.s.sistant-surveyor's work was afterwards very serviceable to him. He appears to have had a most retentive memory as well as a very quick eye and power of apprehension. In spite, however, of these calls on his time he was a.s.siduous at the Society's meetings.

The death of Laurence Rooke, his friend and fellow-labourer, threw more work on his hands. Rooke was succeeded in the Geometry Professorship by Isaac Barrow, afterwards a well-known divine who, in his first Latin oration, eulogised the Savilian Professor as 'formerly a prodigy of a boy, now a miracle of a man, and a genius among mortals. Lest I should appear to speak falsehood, it will be enough for me to name to you the most ingenious and excellent Christopher Wren.'[90] It was a high compliment, but Barrow knew that his audience would heartily re-echo it.

It is to be hoped that Barrow's lectures were somewhat shorter than his sermons, which, fine as they are, were not always listened to with patience.

[_A LONG SERMON._]

'On one occasion, when he was long preaching in the Abbey on a holiday, the servants of the Church, who on those days showed the tombs and effigies in wax of the Kings and Queens to the common people, fearing to spend that time in hearing which they might more profitably employ in receiving, caused the organs to blow until they had blowed him down.'[91]

On March 25, 1663, the Society was finally incorporated by a charter from the King, with a preamble written by Christopher Wren, explaining its objects. The style of the preamble is far more florid than is usual in Wren's writing: it has in it the exultation of one who is accomplishing a long-cherished scheme. One paragraph is evidently intended as a defence against certain attacks which were made upon the English philosophers as they had been in past times against Galileo:--

'Not that herein we would withdraw the least ray of our influence from the present established nurseries of good literature and education, founded by the piety of our royal ancestors and others, and whose laws which as we are obliged to defend, so the holy blood of our martyred Father hath especially endeared to us, but, that we purpose to make further provision for this branch of knowledge likewise, Natural Experimental Philosophy.'... 'Taking care as in the first place for Religion so next for the riches and ornaments of our kingdoms, as we wear an Imperial Crown in which flowers are alternately intermixed with the ensigns of Christianity.'

King Charles, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert, always a lover of experiments, were among the first members of the Society, and its beginning was prosperous enough; but Court favour has always created some envy. It happened that in the self-same year Butler,[92] then secretary to Jeremy Taylor's friend, Lord Carbery, published his famous 'Hudibras.' It created a great sensation; the Court read it, the town read it; Pepys, hearing 'the world cry it up so mightily, tried twice or three times reading to bring himself to think it witty.' It was in everyone's mouth, and Butler naturally thought himself sure of promotion. None, however, came to him, and he directed his bitter wit against those more fortunate than himself, the members of the new Royal Society, and Bishop Sprat in particular, in a poem called 'The Elephant in the Moon,' which opened as follows:--

['_THE ELEPHANT IN THE MOON._']

'A learn'd Society of late, The glory of a neighbouring state, Agreed upon a summer night To search the moon by her own light, To take an invent'ry of all Her real estate and personal.

To observe her country how 'twas planted, With what she abounded most or wanted, And make the proper'st observations For settling of new plantations, If the Society should incline T' attempt so glorious a design.'

With sharp touches indicating the various Members of the Society the satire continues, telling how they see in the moon, through the telescope, marvellous things, and an appearance of an immense elephant; they agree that a record must be made, and during the discussion who is to write it, one of the servants peeping through the telescope discovers that a _mouse_ has got in between the two gla.s.ses! It, and a swarm of small flies, are the causes of the mysterious phenomena, the vast beast, the marching and countermarching armies which have been so learnedly explained![93]

The Society does not seem to have paid much attention to the poet, and the experiments went on as usual. A different task was presently offered to Wren by the King. When he married Catharine of Portugal, he received Tangiers, Tripoli, and Bombay as part of her dowry. Tangiers was reckoned as a very important place to the English, whose sailors were still constantly hara.s.sed by the Moorish pirates, and the fortifications of the town were a pressing care. King Charles offered, through Matthew Wren, then Lord Clarendon's secretary, a commission to Christopher Wren, as one of the best geometricians in Europe, to survey and direct the works at the mole, harbour, and fortifications of Tangiers, offering him an ample salary, leave of absence from his Professorship, and a reversionary grant of Sir John Denham's office. Flattering though the offer was, Christopher declined it on the ground of his health, and begged the King to command his duty in England.

[_A WARM FRIEND._]

He no doubt judged wisely, and the refusal gave no offence at Court.

Perhaps the leave of absence might not have been easily obtained, for the following letter from Dr. Sprat shows that Wren was already embarra.s.sed by the difficulty of being in two places at once:--

'My dear Sir,--I must confess I have some little Peek against you--therefore am not much displeased, that I have this occasion of telling you some ill news. The Vice-Chancellor did yesterday send for me to inquire where the _Astronomy Professor_ was, and the reason of his absence so long after the beginning of the _term_. I used all the arguments I could for your Defence. I told him that _Charles the Second_ was King of _England_, _Scotland_, _France_ and _Ireland_; and that he was by the late _Act of Parliament_ declared absolute Monarch in these his dominions: and that it was this mighty Prince who had confined you to _London_. I endeavour'd to persuade him that the drawing of lines in _Sir Harry Savill's_ school was not altogether of so great a concernment for the benefit of Christendom as the rebuilding of _St. Paul's_ or the fortifying of _Tangier_; (for I understood those were the great works in which that extraordinary Genius of yours was judg'd necessary to be employ'd). All this I urged, but after some Discourse, he told me, that he was not now to consider you as _Dr. Bayly_[94](for so he ow'd you all Kindness) but as _Vice Chancellor_, and under that Capacity he most terribly told me that he took it very ill you had not all this while given him any Account of what hinder'd you in the Discharge of your Office. This he bid me tell you, and I do it not very unwillingly because I see that our Friendships are so closely ty'd together that the same Thing which was so great a Prejudice to me (my losing your Company all this while here) does also something redound to your Disadvantage. And so, my dear Sir, now my Spite and Spleen is satisfied, I must needs return to my old Temper again, and faithfully a.s.sure you that I am with the most violent Zeal and Pa.s.sion, your most affectionate and devoted Servant,

'THO. SPRAT.'

Wren had also employment at Cambridge, of a kind he would have been loth to put in other hands. His uncle, the Bishop of Ely, had instantly on his release determined to give a chapel to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he had been a scholar under Launcelot Andrewes,[95] and he employed his nephew as his architect. Upon this work and its endowment the Bishop expended 5,000_l._, the first money he received after his release. His personal habits were austerely simple; for the last twenty years of his life he drank no wine, and only ate off a wooden trencher, practising fasting and abstinence with great strictness. He had never spent any of the revenues of his see upon his children, and now he made the chapel his heir, bestowing upon it an estate at Hardwick in Cambridgeshire.

The chapel, which has a peculiar interest as Wren's first architectural work, is built in the cla.s.sical style he was to make famous in England, and bears his mark in its beautiful proportions, the richness of its stucco ceiling and the pannelled wood-work. The plain glazing of the windows and a something of bareness about the whole, are probably to be accounted for by the necessity of limiting the expense to a fixed sum.

Its first stone was laid May 13, 1663, by the Master, Dr. Frank, acting for Bishop Wren, who was not present.[96]

[_A SAD RETURN._]

It was probably at the same time that Wren executed some repairs in Ely Cathedral which had suffered, like every other grand church, from the fury of the Puritans. Bitter indeed must have been the regret with which the surviving clergy returned to find the fabrics of their churches plundered and laid waste, and their flocks scattered or corrupted.

FOOTNOTES:

[69] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 201.

[70] Afterwards Lord Clarendon.

[71] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 424.

[72] Probably Bishop Juxon, more than once alluded to under this name in these letters.

[73] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 437.

[74] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 449.

[75] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 496.

[76] _Diary_, May 29, 1660.

[77] _Diary_, vol. i. p. 112, ed. 1828.

[78] Ib., p. 114.

[79] _Diary._

[80] _Repertorium_, vol. ii. p. 273. Newcourt.

[81] In that year the last Lord Hatton died; the bishops resigned Ely House to the Crown, and received No. 37 Dover Street in exchange. The chapel, after years of neglect, has also been suffered to pa.s.s out of the hands of the Church into those of the Romanists. See _Walks in London_ by A. C. Hare, vol. ii.

pp. 196-201.

[82] _Fragmentary Ill.u.s.trations of the History of the Book of Common Prayer_, edited by the Bishop of Chester, p. 47, _et seq._

[83] Bishop Kennet says, 'One particular will appear' (from Bishop Wren's _Register_), 'that there were but few of the parochial clergy deprived in this diocese (Ely) in 1662, for not submitting to the Act of Uniformity, though more of the old legal inc.u.mbents had been sequestered about 1644 than in proportion within any other diocese.'--Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol. iv. p. 328. From the same authority it appears that most of the clerks deprived in 1662 had other callings, _e.g._ cobbling, gloving, skinning, bookselling, husbandry, and to these they generally returned.

Some of his clergy had come to him in the Tower for inst.i.tution, in the early part of his imprisonment, and that many were faithful to him is evident from the fact they were expelled their livings for 'following Bishop Wren's fancies,' no other crimes being pretended against them.--_Annals of England_, p.

392.

[84] See an interesting article, _The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century_, in the _Church Quarterly Review_, July, 1877, p. 321, _et seq._ It is not however quite accurate to say '_none_ were ordained,' for Bishop Duppa held secretly 'frequent ordinations of young loyal church scholars,' among whom was Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.--_History of the Book of Common Prayer_, Lathbury, p. 296.

[85] Dr. Bruno Ryves, Dean of Chichester in 1642, was in the city during Sir William Waller's siege, and left a description of the sack of the cathedral and robbery of its plate by the commander and his troops. Dean Ryves was fined 120_l._ and deprived.--_Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 286.

[86] Abraham Cowley, born 1618; educated at Westminster; was the intimate friend of Lord Falkland and of the poet Crashaw.

Cowley followed Henrietta Maria to Paris, remaining steadily loyal. He died 1667.

[87] _History of the Royal Society_ (by C. R. Weld), p. 96. Galileo is said to have first discovered the use of the pendulum as a measure of time, while watching the oscillations of the bronze lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. A pendulum clock was long reckoned a 'rarity.' Bishop Seth Ward presented one, made by Fromantel, to the Society in 1662, in memory of his friend Mr.

Laurence Rooke, late Astronomy Professor at Gresham College.

[88] Founded 1619 by Sir Henry Savile. He required that the Professor should explain the Ptolemaic and Copernican and other modern astronomical systems, should teach and read on Optics, Dialling, Geography and Navigation. He was to be of any nation in Christendom, provided he was of good reputation, had a fair knowledge of Greek, and was twenty-six years of age. If an Englishman he must have taken his M.A. degree. The choice of a professor was to lie with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the University, the Bishop of London, the princ.i.p.al Secretary of State, Chief Justices, the Lord Chief Baron, and Dean of Arches. _Oxford_, vol. ii. p. 188. Ayliffe.

[89] He married Inigo Jones's daughter.

[90] _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, Ward, p. 97.

[91] Isaac Barrow, born 1630. He was so little studious as a boy, and so fond of fighting, that his father used often solemnly to wish that if it should please G.o.d to take one of his children it might be his son Isaac. When, however, in 1677, he did really die, the Lord Keeper (Lord Nottingham) sent his father a message of condolence, importing that 'he had but too great reason to grieve, since never father lost so good a son.' Dr. Isaac Barrow, Bishop of Man, 1663, and S. Asaph, 1669, was his uncle. _Life of Dr. Barrow_, vol. i. p. ix., ed.

1830. Among his poems is the following, which seems to be incomplete:--