258 

The Royal Society was further indebted to Wren 
for drawing up the preamble to the charter of In- 
corporation in which Charles II. states his determina- 
tion “to grant our Royal favour, patronage and all 
due encouragement to this illustrious assembly and 
so beneficial and laudable an enterprize.” The charter 
was first read on August 13, 1662, and two years later 
Wren gave an address on the objects to which the 
Society should devote its energies. He exhorts the 
members “not to flag in the design since, in a few 
years, at the beginning, it will hardly come to any 
visible maturity. . . . The Royal Society should plant 
crabstocks for posterity to graft on.” Lord Brouncker 
became the first president of the Society after its 
incorporation, Sir Joseph Williamson succeeded him 
in 1677, and Wren, who had been knighted in 1673, 
was elected president in 1680. Boyle had previously 
declined the honour through “a great tenderness in 
point of oaths.”. Wren held office till St. Andrew’s 
Day, 1682. 
So far, attention has been directed only to Wren’s 
scientific activities. Soon after his return to Oxford, in 
1661, he was invited by Charles IT. to act as surveyor- 
general of His Majesty’s works,and from this time 
dates his career as an architect, which ultimately 
raised him to the head of the profession. The first 
building designed by him was the chapel of Pembroke 
College, Cambridge, erected by his bishop-uncle as a 
thank-offering for his liberation from the Tower. His 
next building was the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. 
In 1665 he spent six months in Paris studying the 
Louvre and other buildings, returning home, as he 
said, ‘ with nearly all France upon paper.” In 1666 
came the great fire of London, and with it Wren’s 
opportunity. From September 2 to September 8 the 
flames swept across the city, and four days later Wren 
laid a plan for its rebuilding before the King. Im- 
mediately afterwards he was appointed ‘“ surveyor- 
general and principal architect for rebuilding the 
whole city ; the cathedral Church of St. Paul ; all the 
parochial churches . . . with other public structures.” 
Wren was then but thirty-four, and in the remaining 
fifty-seven years of his life he not only designed and 
erected many important private and public buildings, 
but some fifty London churches, and also his great 
masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral. Several years were 
occupied in demolishing the ruins of old St. Paul’s, 
and it was not until 1675, the year Wren built Green- 
wich Observatory, that the foundation stone of the 
new cathedral was laid. Thirty-five years later 
Wren’s son put the topmost stone of the lantern into 
position. 
Of the city of London as Wren knew it in his Gresham 
days but little remains. Wren, if he had had his own 
way, would have changed its very plan. It was his 
intention to cut two great arteries from east to west 
and another from north to south. At the intersections 
of these thoroughfares would have stood the new 
St. Paul’s and the great public offices. He further 
designed that a noble quay should flank the Thames 
from the Tower to the Temple. For better or for 
worse his plans proved unacceptable, and so to-day 
it is yet possible to follow some of the footsteps of 
the old philosophers and to visit their memorials. 
Though it escaped the fire, all trace of Gresham’s 
NO. 2782, VOL. I11| 
NATURE 
[FEBRUARY 24, 1923 

mansion has long since disappeared. St. Helen’s 
Church—sometimes called the Westminster Abbey of 
the City—where the inmates of Gresham College 
worshipped, still stands, and within its walls lie the 
remains of Hooke, Goddard and Gresham. Three 
of Wren’s predecessors in the chair of astronomy, 
Gellibrand, Foster, and Gunter, were buried in St. 
Peter le Poer, which stood in Old Broad Street, while 
Rooke, ‘‘ the greatest man in England for solid learn- 
ing,” was buried in St. Martin Outwich, from which 
the monuments were some fifty years ago removed to 
St. Helen’s. Rooke died just before the Royal Society 
received its charter. Greaves, another Gresham and 
Savilian astronomer, was buried in St. Benets; John 
Collins, ‘‘ the attorney-general of the mathematics,” in 
St. James’ Church, near Southwark Bridge, while John 
Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society, and from 
1668 bishop of Chester, who died in 1672, was buried 
in St. Laurence Jewry. This was one of the churches 
rebuilt by Wren. Wilkins had been rector of the 
church, and on one occasion he invited Barrow to 
occupy the pulpit. Barrow preached so well that 
Richard Baxter declared he “ could willingly have been 
his auditor all day long.” 
Wren himself lies in the crypt under the south aisle 
of the choir of St. Paul’s. He died on February 25, 
1723, and was buried on March 5. The well-known ~ 
quotation from his epitaph: “Si monumentum 
requiris, circumspice,’’ now to be seen over the north 
door of the cathedral, was first carved on the choir 
screen by Robert Mylne, the builder of the first South- 
wark Bridge and surveyor of St. Paul’s, who hes close 
to Wren in the crypt. 

The grand committee formed by the Royal 
Institute of British Architects and other bodies 
interested, to celebrate the bicentenary of the death 
of Sir Christopher Wren, has arranged for a public 
commemoration service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, on 
Monday, February 26, at 2.30 P.M., in the course 
of which an address will be delivered by the Very 
Rev. W. R. Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s. The members 
of the grand committee, accompanied by the Lord 
Mayor and Sheriffs, will proceed afterwards to the 
crypt, where Mr. Paul Waterhouse, president of the 
Royal Institute of British Architects, and an attaché 
from the American Embassy in London, on behalf 
of the Architectural League of New York, will lay 
wreaths upon the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren. 
In the evening a Christopher Wren commemoration 
banquet will be given by the Royal Institute of 
British Architects at the Hotel Victoria, Northum- 
berland Avenue, and commemorative addresses, 
dealing with the life and work of Wren, will be 
delivered. 
In addition to these celebrations there will be 
exhibitions illustrating Wren’s work, at the Galleries 
of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 9 Conduit 
Street, W.1, on February 26-March 3, and at the 
Museum, Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, W.C.2, 
both of which will be open free of charge to the 
public. 
Another interesting proof from overseas of regard 
for the memory of the great London architect comes 
from the Architectural Institute of British Columbia, 
which has arranged to hold, in the largest Anglican 
church in Vancouver, a memorial service on exactly 
similar lines to the service which will be held in St. 
Paul’s Cathedral on February 26. 
be she coke! 
1 De 
