_From the original picture by Sir G. Kneller, in the possession of the
Royal Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
In 1646 he was sent to Oxford, and entered as a gentleman commoner at
Wadham College. Of his academical life we can say little more than that
it confirmed the promise of his early proficiency. He was especially
distinguished by his mathematical acquirements, and gained the notice
and acquaintance of many of the most learned and influential persons
belonging to the university. Several short treatises and mechanical
inventions are assigned to this period of his life: but as these have
long ceased to interest any but curious inquirers into the history of
literature or science, we can only indicate their existence, and refer
to other and more comprehensive works. In 1650 Wren graduated as
Bachelor of Arts. He was elected Fellow of All Souls on the 2d of
November, 1653, and took the degree of Master of Arts on the 12th of
December in the same year. Of the subjects which engaged his active and
versatile mind at this time, one of the chief was the science of
Anatomy; and he is, on apparently good grounds, thought to have first
suggested and tried the interesting experiment of injecting liquids of
various kinds into the veins of living animals,—a process of surgery,
which, applied to the transfusion of healthy blood into a morbid or
deficient circulation, has been revived, not without some promise of
important results, in our own day. Another subject which attracted much
of his attention was the Barometer; but he has no claim whatever, either
to the invention of that instrument, or to the detection of the great
principle of physics, of which it is an exemplification. The notion
which has been taken up of his right to supplant the illustrious
Torricelli here, has arisen merely from mistaking the question with
regard to the causes of the fluctuations in the height of the
barometrical column, while the instrument continues in the same place,
for the entirely different question as to the cause why the fluid
remains suspended at all; about which, since the celebrated experiments
of Pascal, published in 1647, there never has been any controversy. It
was the former phenomenon only which was attributed by some to the
influence of the moon, and which Wren and many of his contemporaries
exercised their ingenuity, as many of their successors have done, in
endeavouring to explain.
In carrying on these investigations and experiments, Wren’s diligence
was stimulated and assisted by his having been admitted a member, about
this period, of that celebrated association of philosophical inquirers,
out of whose meetings, begun some years before, eventually arose the
Royal Society. But, like several others of the more eminent members, he
was soon removed from the comparative retirement of Oxford. On the 7th
of August, 1657, being then only in his twenty-fifth year, he was chosen
to the Professorship of Astronomy in Gresham College. This chair he held
till the 8th of March, 1661, when he resigned it in consequence of
having, on the 31st of January preceding, received the appointment of
Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. On the 12th of September,
1661, he took his degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and was soon
after admitted _ad eundem_ by the sister university. During all this
time he had continued to cultivate assiduously the various branches of
mathematical and physical science, and to extend his reputation both by
his lectures and by his communications to the “Philosophical Club,” as
it was called, which, in 1658, had been transferred to London, and
usually met on the Wednesday of every week at Gresham College, in Wren’s
class-room, and, on the Thursday, in that of his associate Rooke, the
Professor of Geometry. The longitude, the calculation of solar eclipses,
and the examination and delineation of insects and animalcula by means
of the microscope, may be enumerated among the subjects to which he is
known to have devoted his attention. On the 15th of July, 1662[3], he
and his associates were incorporated under the title of the Royal
Society; and Wren, who drew out the preamble of the charter, bore a
chief part in the effecting of this arrangement.
Footnote 3:
In the Life of Boyle this event is stated to have occurred in 1663. A
_second_ charter was granted to the Society, in that year, on the 22d
of April.
The future architect of St. Paul’s had already been called upon to
devote a portion of his time to the professional exercise of that art
from which he was destined to derive his greatest and most lasting
distinction. Sir John Denham, the poet, had on the Restoration been
rewarded for his services by the place of Surveyor of the Royal Works;
but although, in his own words, he then gave over poetical lines, and
made it his business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to
his Majesty, and he hoped more lasting, it soon became apparent that his
genius was much better suited to “build the lofty rhyme” than to
construct more substantial edifices. In these circumstances Wren, who
was known among his other accomplishments to be well acquainted with the
principles of architecture, was sent for, and engaged to do the duties
of the office in the capacity of Denham’s assistant or deputy. This was
in the year 1661. It does not appear that for some time he was employed
in any work of consequence in his new character; and in 1663 it was
proposed to send him out to Africa, to superintend the construction of a
new harbour and fortifications at the town of Tangier, which had been
recently made over by Portugal to the English Crown, on the marriage of
Charles with the Infanta Catherine. This employment he wisely declined,
alleging the injury he apprehended to his health from a residence in
Africa. Meanwhile, the situation which he held, and his scientific
reputation, began to bring him something to do at home. Sheldon,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who was Chancellor of the University of
Oxford, had resolved to erect at his own expense a new theatre, or hall,
for the public meetings of the University; and this building Wren was
commissioned to design. The Sheldonian Theatre, celebrated for its
unrivalled roof of eighty feet in length by seventy in breadth,
supported without either arch or pillar, was Wren’s first public work,
having been begun this year, although it was not finished till 1668.
About the same time he was employed to erect a new chapel for Pembroke
College, in the University of Cambridge, to be built at the charge of
his uncle, the Bishop of Ely.
But, while he was about to commence these buildings, he was appointed to
take a leading part in another work, which ultimately became the
principal occupation of the best years of his life, and enabled him to
afford to his contemporaries and to posterity by far the most
magnificent display of his architectural skill and genius. Ever since
the Restoration, the repair of the Metropolitan Cathedral of St. Paul’s,
which during the time of the Commonwealth had been surrendered to the
most deplorable desecration and outrage, had been anxiously
contemplated; and on the 18th of April, 1663, letters patent were at
length issued by the King, appointing a number of Commissioners, among
whom Wren was one, to superintend the undertaking. Under their direction
a survey of the state of the building was taken, and some progress was
made in the reparation of its most material injuries, when, after the
sum of between three and four thousand pounds had been expended, the
great fire, which broke out on the night of Sunday, the 2d of September,
1666, on the following day reduced the whole pile to a heap of ruins.
A considerable part of the year before this Wren had spent in Paris,
having proceeded thither, it would seem, about Midsummer, 1665, and
remained till the following spring. The object of his visit was to
improve himself in the profession in which he had embarked, by the
inspection and study of the various public buildings which adorned the
French capital, where the celebrated Bernini was at this time employed
on the Louvre, with a thousand workmen under him, occupied in all the
various departments of the art, and forming altogether, in Wren’s
opinion, probably the best school of architecture to be then found in
Europe. He appears accordingly to have employed his time, with his
characteristic activity, in examining everything deserving of attention
in the city and its neighbourhood; and lost no opportunity either of
making sketches of remarkable edifices himself, or of procuring them
from others, so that, as he writes to one of his correspondents, he
hoped to bring home with him almost all France on paper. The terrible
visitation, which a few months after his return laid half the metropolis
of his native country in ashes, opened to him a much wider field whereon
to exercise the talent which he had been thus eager to cultivate and
strengthen by enlarged knowledge, than he could, while so engaged, have
expected ever to possess. He was not slow to seize the opportunity; and
while the ashes of the city were yet alive, drew up a plan for its
restoration, the leading features of which were a broad street running
from Aldgate to Temple Bar, with a large square for the reception of the
new cathedral of St. Paul; and a range of handsome quays along the
river. The paramount necessity of speed in restoring the dwellings of a
houseless multitude, prevented the adoption of this project; and the new
streets were in general formed nearly on the line of the old ones. But
they were widened and straightened, and the houses were built of brick
instead of wood.
Soon after the fire, Wren was appointed Surveyor-General and principal
Architect for rebuilding the parish churches; and on the 28th of March,
1669, a few days after the death of Sir John Denham, he was made
Surveyor-General of the Royal Works, the office which he had for some
time executed as deputy. On the 30th of July he was unanimously chosen
Surveyor-General of the repairs of St. Paul’s (another office which
Denham had also held) by the commissioners appointed to superintend that
work, of whom he was himself one. At first it was still thought possible
to repair the cathedral; and a part of it was actually fitted up as a
temporary choir, and service performed in it. After some time, however,
it became evident that the only way in which it could ever be restored
was by rebuilding the whole from the foundation. Before the close of the
year 1672 Wren had prepared and submitted to the King different plans
for the new church; and his Majesty having fixed upon the one which he
preferred, a commission for commencing the work was issued on the 12th
of November, 1673. On the 20th of the same month, Wren, who had been
re-appointed architect for the work, and also one of the commissioners,
was knighted at Whitehall, having resigned his professorship at Oxford
in the preceding April.
During the space of time which had elapsed since the fire, the
Surveyor-General of Public Works had begun or finished various minor
buildings connected with the restoration of the city, and also some in
other parts of the kingdom. Among the former may be mentioned the fine
column called the Monument; the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside,
the spire of which is considered the most beautiful he ever constructed,
and a masterpiece of science, both begun in 1671, and finished in 1677;
and the church of St. Stephens, Walbrook, begun 1672, and finished in
1679, the interior of which is one of the most exquisite specimens of
architectural art which the world contains, and has excited, perhaps,
more enthusiastic admiration than anything else that Wren has done.
During the whole of this time, too, notwithstanding the little leisure
which his professional avocations must have left him, he appears to have
continued his philosophical pursuits, and his attendance on the Royal
Society, of which, from the first, he had been one of the most active
and valuable members. His communications, and the experiments which he
suggested, embraced some of the profoundest parts of astronomy and the
mathematics, as well as various points in anatomy and natural history,
and the chemical and mechanical arts.
The design which Wren had prepared for the new Cathedral, and which had
been approved by the King, being that of which a model is still
preserved in an apartment over the Morning-Prayer Chapel, did not in
some respects please the majority of his brother-commissioners, who
insisted that, in order to give the building the true cathedral form,
the aisles should be added at the sides as they now stand, although the
architect is said to have felt so strongly the injury done by that
alteration, that he actually shed tears in speaking of it. This
difficulty, however, being at length settled, his Majesty, on the 14th
May, 1675, issued his warrant for immediately commencing the work; and
accordingly, after a few weeks more had been spent in throwing down the
old walls and removing the rubbish, the first stone was laid by Sir
Christopher, assisted by his master-mason, Mr. Thomas Strong, on the
21st of June. From this time the building proceeded steadily till its
completion in 1710; in which year the highest stone of the lantern on
the cupola was laid by Mr. Christopher Wren, the son of the architect,
as representing his venerable father, now in the seventy-eighth year of
his age.
The salary which Sir Christopher Wren received as architect of St.
Paul’s was only £200 a year. Yet in the last years of his
superintendence a moiety of this pittance was withheld from him by the
Commissioners, under the authority of a clause which they had got
inserted in an act of parliament entitling them to keep back the money
till the work should be finished, by way of thereby ensuring the
requisite expedition in the architect. Even after the building had been
actually completed, they still continued, on the same pretence, to
refuse payment of the arrears due, alleging that certain things yet
remained to be done, which, after all, objections and difficulties
interposed by themselves alone prevented from being performed. Like his
great predecessor, Michael Angelo, Wren was too honest and zealous in
the discharge of his duty not to have provoked the enmity of many
persons who had their private ends to serve in the discharge of a great
public duty. He was at last obliged to petition the Queen on the subject
of the treatment to which he was subjected; but it was not till after a
struggle of some years that he succeeded in obtaining redress. The
faction by whom he was thus opposed even attempted to blacken his
character by a direct charge of peculation, or at least of connivance at
that crime, in a pamphlet entitled ‘Frauds and Abuses at St. Paul’s,’
which appeared in 1712, and in reference to which Sir Christopher deemed
it proper to appeal to the public in an anonymous reply published the
year after, wherein he vindicated himself triumphantly from the
aspersions which had been thrown upon him.
The other architectural works which he designed and executed during this
period, both in London and elsewhere, are far too numerous to be
mentioned in detail. Among them were the parish church of St. Bride, in
Fleet Street, which was finished in 1680, and the beautiful spire of
which, originally two hundred and thirty-four feet in height, has been
deemed to rival that of St. Mary-le-Bow; the church of St. James,
Westminster, finished in 1683, a building in almost all its parts not
more remarkable for its beauty than for its scientific construction; and
of which the roof especially, both for its strength and elegance, and
for its adaptation to the distinct conveyance of sound, has been
reckoned a singularly happy triumph of art; and the church of St.
Andrew, Holborn, a fine specimen of a commodious and an imposing
interior: besides many others of inferior note. In 1696 he commenced the
building of the present Hospital at Greenwich, of which he lived to
complete the greater part. This is undoubtedly one of the most splendid
erections of our great architect. Among his less successful works may be
enumerated Chelsea Hospital, begun in 1682, and finished in 1690, a
plain, but not an inelegant building; his additions to the Palace of
Hampton Court, carried on from 1690 to 1694, which are certainly not in
the best taste; and his repairs at Westminster Abbey, of which he was
appointed Surveyor-General in 1698. In his attempt to restore and
complete this venerable edifice, his ignorance of the principles of the
Gothic style, and his want of taste for its peculiar beauties, made him
fail perhaps more egregiously than on any other occasion. In 1679 he
completed the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the most
magnificent of his works; and in 1683, the Chapel of Queen’s College,
and the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford. The same year he began the erection
of the extensive pile of Winchester Castle, originally intended for a
royal palace, but now used as a military barrack. To these works are to
be added a long list of halls for the city companies, and other public
buildings, as well as a considerable number of private edifices. Among
the latter was Marlborough House, Pall-Mall. Indeed scarcely a building
of importance was undertaken during this long period which he was not
called upon to design or superintend. The activity both of mind and body
must have been extraordinary, which enabled him to accomplish what he
did, not to speak of the ready and fertile ingenuity, and the
inexhaustible sources of invention and science he must have possessed,
to meet the incessant demands that were made for new and varying
displays of his contriving skill. It appears, too, in addition to all
this, that the duties imposed upon him by his place of Surveyor of
Public Works, for which he only received a salary of £100 a year, were
of an extremely harassing description, and must have consumed a great
deal of his time. Claims and disputes as to rights of property, and
petitions or complaints in regard to the infringement of the building
regulations in every part of the metropolis and its vicinity, seem to
have been constantly submitted to his examination and adjudication; and
Mr. Elmes has printed many of his reports upon these cases from the
original manuscripts, which afford striking evidence both of the
promptitude with which he gave his attention to the numerous calls thus
made upon him, and of the large expenditure of time and labour they must
have cost him.
The long series of years during which Wren was occupied in the
accomplishment of his greatest work, and which had conducted him from
the middle stage of life to old age, brought to him also of course
various other changes. He had been twice married, and had become the
father of two sons and a daughter, of whom the eldest, Christopher, was
the author of Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens. In
1680, he was elected to the Presidency of the Royal Society, on its
being declined by Mr. Boyle; and this honourable office he held for two
years; during which, notwithstanding all his other occupations, we find
him occupying the chair in person at almost every meeting, and still
continuing to take his usual prominent part in the scientific
discussions of the evening. In 1684 there was added to his other
appointments that of Comptroller of the Works at Windsor. In May, 1685,
he entered parliament as one of the members for Plympton; and he also
sat for Windsor both in the convention which met after the revolution,
and in the first parliament of William III. He afterwards sat for
Weymouth in the parliament which met in February, 1700, and which was
dissolved in November of the year following.
The evening of Wren’s life was marked by neglect and ingratitude. In the
eighty-sixth year of his age he was removed from the office of
Surveyor-General, which he had held for forty-nine years, in favour of
one Benson, whose incapacity and dishonesty soon led to his disgrace and
dismissal. Fortunately Wren’s temper was too happy and placid to be
affected by the loss of court favour, and he retired to his home at
Hampton Court, where he spent the last five years of his life chiefly in
the study of the Scriptures, and the revision of his philosophical
works. He died February 25, 1723, in the ninety-first year of his age.
More minute accounts of his life are to be found in the Parentalia,
already mentioned, and in Mr. Elmes’s quarto volume. We may also refer
the reader to a longer memoir in the Library of Useful Knowledge.
[Illustration: Interior of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by T. Woolnoth._