FAMILY LIFE
Of Wren’s mother nothing is known, not even the date of her death. Of
his seven sisters (the number given in Rylands’ pedigree), the only one
to survive was Susan, who became Mrs. Holder, and wisely used her great
skill in nursing during her brother’s delicate childhood. She was five
years his senior, and had no children of her own.
Christopher’s boyhood must have been clouded not a little by the
misfortunes of his stout-hearted uncle, Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,
whose son, another Matthew, was a faithful cousin to Christopher in
later years. This is no place to tell the story of the Bishop who, with
eleven of his brethren, was impeached for resisting the Parliament
in 1641, and went to the Tower. After a short freedom in 1642 he
was imprisoned again, and, being charged with Catholic practices,
languished there while Laud was tried and beheaded, and, himself never
brought to trial, remained a close prisoner until he was released by
Monk’s warrant on March 15, 1660. Broken though he was by domestic
bereavements during his eighteen years of captivity, the brave old man
took up again his episcopal duties at the age of seventy-five.
That he remained a prisoner so long was due to his refusal to bow the
knee to the new order. It does not appear that Christopher ever saw
his uncle in the Tower, save on one great occasion, when he made an
unsuccessful effort to secure his release.
Wren was twenty-four when he became professor of astronomy at Gresham
College, and made the acquaintance of Richard Claypole, husband of
Cromwell’s favourite daughter, Elizabeth. At their dinner table Wren
became a frequent guest, the more welcome because Elizabeth Claypole
remained a devout Church of England woman. One day Cromwell strode
in and sat down to dinner, and fixing his eye on Christopher, said:
“Your uncle has been long confined to the Tower.” To Wren’s reply,
“He has so, sir, but he bears his afflictions with great patience and
resignation,” the Protector made the astonishing reply: “He may come
out an he will.”
When Christopher asked if he might take that message to Bishop Matthew
from the Lord Protector’s own mouth, he got the answer: “Yes, you may.”
But when the young man hurried off to the Tower with his message, the
Bishop roundly refused to deal with the usurper on terms which meant
submission, and preferred to tarry the Lord’s leisure and owe his
deliverance to Him alone. A loyal race, the Wrens.
In 1656, not long before this incident, Dean Wren had died at
Bletchingdon, where his son-in-law, Dr. Holder, had been parson for
some years, and was buried in the chancel of the church.
It was there that Christopher must have met Faith, daughter of Sir
Thomas Coghill of Bletchingdon, Oxon. Born in 1636, she was four years
younger than Wren, who is likely to have known her since his childhood.
We know extremely little of the intimate side of Wren’s life. The only
document, but that a very precious one, is the autograph love-letter in
the heirloom _Parentalia_ written by him to Faith. It is as follows:
MADAM,
The Artificer having never before mett with a drowned watch; like an
ignorant physician has been soe long about the cure, that he hath
made me very unquiet that your comands should be soe long deferred:
however I have sent the watch at last, and envie the felicity of it,
that it should be soe neer your side, and soe often enjoy your Eye,
and be consulted by you how your time shall passe while you employ
your hand in your excellent workes. But have a care of it, for I have
put such a Spell into it; that every Beating of the Ballance will
tell you, ’tis the pulse of my Heart, which labours as much to serve
you and more trewly than the watch; for the watch I believe will
sometimes lie, and sometimes perhaps be idle and unwilling to goe,
having received soe much injury by being drenched in that briny bath,
that I dispair it should ever be a trew Servant to you more: But as
for me (unless you drown me too in my teares) you may be confident I
shall never cease to be
Your most affectionate humble servant
CHR: WREN.
_June 14._
I have put the watch in a Box that it might take noe harme, and wrapt
it about with a little leather, and that it might not jog, I was fain
to fill up a few shavings of wast paper.
The letter is dated June 14, but there is nothing to show whether
it was written soon or long before Wren’s marriage to Faith. His
subscription is hardly passionate, and we know from the enchanting
letters of Dorothy Osborne that even in Puritan days such letters were
signed, “I am perfectly yours.”
Wren’s marriage to Faith Coghill took place on December 7, 1669, at the
Temple Church, but most of his domestic events thereafter are connected
with St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which was his parish church. His first
son, Gilbert, died an infant. His second, Christopher, was born in
February, 1674-5, and baptized at St. Martin’s. This first marriage
only lasted a few years, for Faith Wren was buried at St. Martin’s on
September 4, 1675. Wren soon consoled himself, for he was married on
February 24, 1676-7, at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, to Jane,
daughter of William Lord Fitzwilliam of Lifford. By this marriage Wren
had a beloved daughter, Jane, who was baptized in November, 1677, at
St. Martin’s, and a son, William, born in June, 1679. But Wren was
soon again to become a widower. His second wife was buried at St.
Martin’s on October 6, 1680. It is rather surprising that there is no
monument to either of Sir Christopher’s wives at St. Martin’s, although
some tablets from the pre-Gibbs Church are preserved in the crypt.
Jane Wren was, by tradition, Sir Christopher’s favourite child, and
when she died at the age of twenty-six Wren suffered the greatest
sorrow of his life.
Of his son Christopher’s boyhood we know little, but Sir Christopher
wrote to him in France, probably in 1698, when the young man was
twenty-three, a very charming parental letter, which has been preserved
in the heirloom _Parentalia_. It runs as follows:
MY DEAR SON,
I hope by this time you are pretty well satisfied of the condition of
the Climat you are in: if not, I believe you will ere Lent be over,
and will learne to dine upon Sallad.... If you thinke you can dine
better cheape in Italy you may trie, but I thinke the passing the
Alpes and other dangers of disbanded armies and abominable Lodgings
will ballance that advantage: but the seeing of fine buildings
I perceive temptes you, and your companion Mr. Strong, whose
inclination and interest leades him, by neither of which I can find
you are moved; but how doth it concerne you? You would have it to say
hereafter that you have seen Rome, Naples and other fine places, a
hundred others can say as much and more; calculate whether this be
worth the expence and hazard as to any advantage at youre returne.
I sent you to France at a time of businesse and when you might make
your observations and find acquaintance who might hereafter be
usefull to you in the future concernes of your life: if this be your
ayme I willingly let you proceed, provided you will soon returne,
for these reasons, the little I have to leave you is unfortunately
involved in trouble, and your presence would be a comfort to me
to assist me, not only for my sake, but your own that you might
understand your affaires, before it shall please God to take me from
you, which if suddenly will leave you in perplexity and losse. I do
not say all this out of parsimony, for what you spend will be out
of what will, in short time, be your owne, but I would have you be
a man of businesse as early as you can bring your thoughts to it. I
hope, by your next you will give me account of the reception of our
ambassador; of the intrigues at this time between the two nations,
of the establishment of the commerce, and of anything that may be
innocently talked of without danger and reflection, that I may
perceive whither you look about you or noe and penetrate into what
occurres, or whither the world passes like a pleasant dream, or the
amusement of fine scenes in a play without considering the plot.
If you have in ten weeks spent half your bill of exchange besides
your gold, I confesse your money will not hold out, either abroad
for yourself or for us at home to supply you, especially if you goe
for Italy, which voyage forward and backward will take up more than
twenty weekes: thinke well of it, and let me hear more from you, for
though I would advise you, I will not discontent you. Mr. Strong hath
profered credit by the same merchant he uses for his son, and I will
thinke of it, but before I change, you must make up your account
with your merchant, and send it to me. My hearty service to young
Mr. Strong and tell him I am obliged to him for your sake. I bless
God for your health and pray for the continuance of it through all
adventures till it pleases Him to restore you to me and your Sister
and friends who wish the same as doth
Your most affectionate Father
CHR. WREN.
Poor Billy continues in his indisposition and I fear is lost to me
and the world to my great discomfort and your future trouble.
It would seem that young Strong, the son of Wren’s famous
master-builder, was the boy’s bear-leader.
Wren is rather fretful with his son, and rather melancholy as to his
own health, but he was then only sixty-six, and was to live until past
ninety. In a different tone is the letter to young Christopher from
his father, dated October 11, 1705, the original of which is also in
the heirloom _Parentalia_. There is no longer the note of rebuke which
followed the young man’s extravagance in Paris. His taste had changed,
and Holland wooed him rather to the buying of good books, a traffic the
old man cannot disapprove.
Poor Billy managed to live another forty years, despite Wren’s
desponding postscript. John Evelyn stood godfather on June 17, 1679,
“to a sonn of Sir Christopher Wren, surveyor of His Majesty’s
buildings, that most excellent and learned person (Evelyn never misses
a chance of praising Wren), with Sir William Fermor, and my Lady
Viscountess Newport, wife of the Treasurer of the Household.” This was
poor Billy, whose sponsors show that his father was the intimate friend
of Court personages.
William seems to have been very delicate, if not defective. When Sir
Christopher died he did not bequeath anything to William, but left him
in the charge of Christopher. William lived on until March, 1738-9, and
was thus close on sixty when he died. His elder brother, Christopher,
survived until August 24, 1747, when he was seventy-two.
That Wren lived on affectionate terms with his son Christopher may be
assumed not only from the terms of his will, but from his having sunk
most of his fortune in an estate for Christopher’s benefit.
His own connection with Wroxall Abbey, Warwickshire, can be set out in
few words.
On August 29, 1713, he bought the estate for £19,600 from the trustees
of Sir John Burgoyne, Bart., who had died in 1709. Sir John’s son, Sir
Roger, died in 1711, leaving a widow, Constance, daughter of Sir Thomas
Middleton. She was one of the signatories of the deed of sale, and the
younger Christopher, then a widower, married her in 1715. Probably the
Wrens and the Burgoynes were old friends, and as Sir Roger Burgoyne had
left the estate encumbered, the sale to Wren was doubtless to clear off
the mortgages. The estate consisted of a fine Elizabethan brick house
(since Wren’s time very badly remodelled) and 1,850 acres, all of
which Wren conveyed to trustees in March, 1715, bringing them into the
settlement made on the first marriage of his son Christopher, who then
became sole owner.
That the architect ever visited the estate we do not know, but it is
a tradition that he designed a delightful garden wall planned in a
series of semi-circles. Certainly he never lived there. A succession of
Christophers owned the place until 1828, when it went to the daughter
of the last of them, who married Chandos Hoskyns, a descendant of the
Sir John Hoskyns who was Vice-President of the Royal Society when
Sir Christopher filled the chair. Catherine, the eldest daughter of
Chandos Wren-Hoskyns, became in time Mrs. Corbett Pigott, and died in
1911. From her I secured the heirloom copy of the _Parentalia_ for the
R.I.B.A., and she gave me a copy of the rare Kirkall engraved portrait
of Wren, which had come to her from Margaret Wren, daughter of Sir
Christopher’s grandson, Stephen.
I had hoped that Sir Christopher’s will would include some personal
expressions about his family, but it is an uninteresting document,
as anyone who examines it (P.C.C. Richmond 65) may discover. He
characteristically provided that his body should be decently buried
without pomp, and for the rest one sheet of paper was enough to set
out his dispositions. After reference to the trust made at his son
Christopher’s first marriage, he leaves everything to him, desiring
him “to take particular care that my son William Wren be comfortably
maintained supported and lookt after during his life.” The will was
dated April 14, 1713, and proved at London on March 27, 1723.
I consulted the will of the son Christopher (P.C.C. Potter 220) in the
hope that it might make some reference to the disposition of chattels,
such as drawings, that had belonged to his father, but it is short and
uninforming.