631 



WREN, SIB CHRISTOPHER. 



WREN, MATTHEW. 



633 



parta oddly put together, and uot particularly elegant in themselves. 

 The interior of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, has also, to our thinking, been 

 greatly overrated. 



Without therefore specifying, one by one, Wren's other per- 

 formances, almost all of which serve rather to encumber than to add 

 anything to the glory derived from St. Paul's, we annex a chronological 

 list of them to this article as more convenient for reference, and 

 resume our biographical notice of the architect himself. 



One work which would probably have not a little augmented his 

 fame was a design for a magnificent mausoleum to the memory of 

 CbarleB I. ; yet though parliament voted 70,0(W. for the purpose in 

 1678, the design was abandoned, and the money applied more con- 

 formably with the personal tastes of Charles II. Wren had been 

 thwarted in his ideas for another monument, namely, the column 

 BO called, which he had conceived very differently and very charac- 

 teristically, the shaft being adorned with gilt flames issuing from the 

 loop-holes ; but no such pattern was to be found in the ' five orders,' 

 therefore us " the impotence of indecision ever resorts to precedent, 

 and ignorance takes refuge in common-place," that design was set 

 aside for the common-place affair which we now see. 



Wren had resigned the office of Savilian Professor in 1673 ; he 

 accepted that of President of the Royal Society in 1680, and he also 

 sat several times in parliament, but his numerous and important pro- 

 fessional engagements left him little leisure for other pursuits or 

 duties. Eujoying the favour of successive princes, he was employed 

 by Queen Mary to complete the buildings at Greenwich, to be appro- 

 priated as a Royal Naval Hospital ; and Wren's additions to that noble 

 pile are well worthy of the architect of St. Paul's, although, by some 

 strange caprice, less quoted as proofs of his genius than several of his 

 inferior performances. In his additions to Hampton Court for 

 William III. he was less fortunate perhaps unfortunate in being 

 controlled by the taste of the king. If it is not actually a blot upon 

 his fame, as was his work at Windsor Castle, Hampton Court adds 

 nothing to it, whereas he might perhaps have produced a piece of 

 palatial architecture at Windsor had his plan for erecting a distinct 

 pile of building on the south side of the Upper Ward been adopted. 

 Still palaces do not appear to have been exactly Wren's forte, at least 

 not if we judge by such specimens as he has given us in Maryborough 

 House and some portions of St. James's. 



After the death of Anne, the last of his royal patrons, Wren was 

 dispossessed of his office of surveyor-general (which he had held for 

 forty-niue years), very little to the credit of George L, and to the dis- 

 grace of " one Benson," the man who, by succeeding him in that capa- 

 city, has preserved a name from oblivion by perpetuating it for lasting 

 shame and contempt. To Wren himself however this discharge from 

 office must have been rather a welcome release than otherwise ; for, 

 verging towards ninety, he could then have little further worldly 

 ambition, even had he not already amply gratified it. The close of 

 his life was not so much to be pitied as to be envied, for if he passed 

 the last five years of his existence in retirement and in comparative 

 obscurity, he passed them in serenity of mind and placid content. 

 The struggles of dissolution were spared him, for without any pre- 

 vious symptoms of approaching death he was found dead, reposing in 

 his chair after dinner, February 25th, 1723, in the ninety-first year of 

 his age. 



He received the tardy honour of a splendid funeral in St. Paul's, 

 where his remains were deposited in the crypt, with no other adorn- 

 ment to his tomb than the inscription on it, with the sublimely 

 eloquent legend, " Si Monumentum quseris, circumspice." 



Christopher, the architect's son by his first marriage, and who sat 

 in parliament for Windsor about 1718, was author of a work entitled 

 ' Numismatum Antiquorum Sylloge,' 4to, 1708 ; and he composed the 

 chief part of the ' Pareutalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens,' 

 but left it unfinished at his death (1747) ; it was completed by Stephen 

 Wren, Sir Christopher's grandson, and published in 1750. This work 

 must be considered rather as a mere register of dates and facts than a 

 biography; for as to the last, it is dry and tedious, yet valuable as an 

 authentic record, and as such it has always been referred to. All 

 Souls' Library at Oxford contains other more interesting records of 

 the great architect's professional studies, in a collection of original 

 drawings by him ; and it excites not only regret, but some astonish- 

 ment also, that these, or at least a selection of the most interesting of 

 them, should never have been published. In fact comparatively few 

 of Wren's buildings have been fully described or described at all by 

 authentic architectural delineations, or otherwise than by mere views. 

 In 1842 however was published a very large and highly-finished 

 engraving exhibiting all the structures erected by him brought 

 together into one extensive group. This kind of graphic synopsis 

 was from a composition by Mr. C. R. Cockerell, and is appropriately 

 entitled a ' Tribute to the Memory of Sir Christopher Wren.' 



Chronological List. 



1663. Pembroke College Chapel, Cambridge. 

 1664-69. Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. 



1664. Buildings at Trinity College, Cambridge. 



1666. Library ditto ditto. 



1667. Royal Exchange, London. 



1668-77. Emmanuel College Chapel, Cambridge. 



1668. Custom House, London. 



1670. Temple Bar. 



1670-74. St. Sepulchre's, Newgate. 



1671-77. The Monument, London (202 feet high). 



1671-78. Spire and Church of St. Mary-le-Bow. 



1671-86. St. Lawrence, Jewry. 



1672-79. St. Stephen's, Walbrook. 



1672. St. Michael's, Cornhill. 



1672. St. Mary-at-Hill. 



1673. St. Bennet Fink, Threadneedle Street, dome now taken down. 

 1674-98. College of Physicians, Warwick Lane (now converted into 



a market). 



1675. ST. PAUL'S begun. 



1675. Royal Observatory, Greenwich. 



1680. St. Bride's, Fleet Street. 



1680. St. Swithin's. 



1681-82. Gateway Tower, Christchurch, Oxford. 



1682-90. Chelsea Hospital. 



1682. St. Antholine's, Watling Street. 



1683. The Palace at Winchester, which was left unfinished, and is 

 now a barracks. 



1683. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 

 1683. Queen's College Chapel, Oxford. 



1683. St. James's, Westminster. 

 1683-86. St. Clement's, Kastcheap. 



1684. St. Martin's, Ludgate. 



1684. Made comptroller of works at Windsor Castle. 



1686. St. Andrew's, Holborn. 



1687-1704. Christ Church, Newgate. 



1690. Hampton Court. 



1692. Morden College, Blackheath. 



1696. Greenwich Hospital. 



1698. St. Dunstan's in the East (tower and spire). 



1703. Buckingham House, London (now taken down). 



1709. Maryborough House, London. 



1713. Westminster Abbey (towers of west front). 



WREN, MATTHEW, Bishop of Ely, was the eldest son of Francis 

 Wren, a mercer in London, where he was bom in the parish of St. 

 Peter's Cheap, on the 3rd of December 1585. He was admitted of 

 Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, on the 23rd of June 1601, was elected 

 Fellow on the 9th of March 1605, and took his degree of M.A. on the 

 2nd of July 1608. He entered into holy orders in 1610. In 1614 he 

 was presented with the rectory of Teversham in Cambridgeshire. In 

 1621 he was appointed chaplain to Prince Charles. He attended the 

 prince in his strange journey into Spain in 1623, and having thus had 

 opportunities possessed by scarcely any other churchman of ascertain- 

 ing the opinions and feelings of him who was afterwards to be king, he 

 acquired an influence with the clergy which made him one of the main 

 causes of the calamities which soon afterwards overtook them. In 1625 

 he was made dean of Windsor and Wolverhampton, and in 1629 one 

 of the judges of the Star-Chamber. He attended Charles I. on his 

 visit to Scotland in 1633, but be failed to sound the religious feelings 

 of the people of that country so accurately as he had done those of his 

 royal master. In the following year he was made Bishop of Hereford, 

 and translated on the 5th of December 1635 to Norwich, and on the 

 5th of May 1638 to Ely. He was employed in the construction of the 

 Scottish Service-Book, or Liturgy, the reading of which in Edinburgh 

 in 1 637 occasioned those riots which were followed by the subscrip- 

 tion of the Covenant, and finally led to the great civil war. On the 

 19th of December 1640, Hampden was sent by the Commons on a 

 message to the Lords to acquaint them that there were " certain infor- 

 mations of a high nature " against Wren, " concerning the setting up 

 of idolatry and superstition in divers places, and exercising some acts 

 of it in his own person, with divers other matters of great importance ; 

 and that they have information likewise that he endeavours an escape." 

 An answer was returned, that he had been ordered to find bail in 

 10,000?. to attend the judgment of parliament. According to a paper 

 preserved in the ' Parentalia ' of his nephew, the articles of impeach- 

 ment intended to be presented against him related to such charges as 

 the railing in of the altar, kneeling at the sacrament, and other matters 

 of ceremonial, which afterwards became part of the uniform observance 

 of the Church of England. There is no doubt however that the real 

 ground of the charge against him was the despotic enforcement of his 

 own views in clerical matters ; for Clarendon, who praises his learning, 

 says he was a man " of severe sour nature," and charges him with 

 having so vexatiously enforced the discipline of the Church of England 

 against the Flemish refugees and other dissenters, as to drive many of 

 them from his diocese. The articles of impeachment were not pursued, 

 but he remained a prisoner in the Tower till the Restoration of 1660, 

 when he was replaced in hia see. He framed the form of prayer used 

 on the 29th of May in commemoration of the Restoration. He died 

 on the 24th of April 1667. He built the chapel at Pembroke Hall, 

 Cambridge, of which his nephew Sir Christopher Wren was the archi- 

 tect. Of a few doctrinal and controversial pamphlets which he left 

 behind him, the titles will be found at length in the ' Biographia 

 Britannica.' 



WREN, MATTHEW, eldest son of Bishop Wren, was born at Cam- 

 bridge in 1629. He was for some time a member of parliament. He 



