1646-1658.
DEATH OF MRS. M. WREN--KING CHARLES MURDERED--A MONOTONOUS
WALK--INVENTIONS--A DREAM--ALL SOULS' FELLOWSHIP--BEGINNINGS OF
ROYAL SOCIETY--ASTRONOMY--AN OFFER OF RELEASE--THE
CYCLOID--CROMWELL'S FUNERAL--LETTERS FROM LONDON.
La Royauté seule, depuis vingt ans, n'avait pas été mise à
l'épreuve; seule elle avait encore à faire des promesses auxquelles
on n'eut pas été trompé.... On y revenait enfin, après tant
d'agitations comme au toit paternel qu'a fait quitter l'espérance
et où ramène la fatigue.--_Monk_, par M. Guizot, p. 69.
A heavy sorrow fell upon the imprisoned Bishop of Ely at the close of
1646. His wife was worn out by grief for the loss of her children and
anxiety for her husband, for whom Laud's fate seemed but too probable,
and the Bishop's diary records that on 'December 8, 1646, Ad Christum
evolavit pia anima conjugis E. mediâ post 5^{vum} matutinam.'[51] The
diary contains no remark, no murmur, though this loss left Bishop Wren
very desolate and full of anxiety for his seven surviving children, of
whom the eldest, Matthew, was but seventeen. Upon such troubles as these
prison life must have pressed heavily, and if Bishop Wren's captivity
was half as strict as was that of Dr. John Barwick, who was consigned to
the Tower in 1650,[52] it was a sufficient hardship. Every rumour which
reached his ears from the tumultuous world outside must have added to
his grief. The King's affairs grew more desperate, and the shadow of
Cromwell loomed larger and larger. Probably the Bishop did not expect a
long captivity. It must have come to his ears that in the proposed
treaty of Newport (1648), 'the persons only who were to expect no
pardon were the Princes Rupert and Maurice; James, Earl of Derby; John,
Earl of Bristol; William, Earl of Newcastle; Francis, Lord Cottington;
George, Lord Digby; Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,' and some fifty
others.[53]
Condemned thus without a trial, without a chance of his vindication
being known, the Bishop betook himself to prayer, and to writing a
commentary on the Holy Scriptures, a task for which, as a fine Hebrew,
Greek and Latin scholar, he was well qualified. In this work he found
solace and support, and quietly waited until the tyranny should be
overpast.
There is no need to recall in detail the thickcoming sorrows of that
time; it is but too easy to guess how doubly galling imprisonment must
have been to Bishop Wren when the royalists who were at liberty were
straining every nerve, exhausting every device to save if possible their
beloved King from his fate. In vain--at length came the fatal January 30
(1649), and King Charles, attended by Bishop Juxon, walked to the
scaffold and uttered his final words, 'I have a good cause and a
gracious God on my side; I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible
Crown where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.' There
was one of the King's loyal subjects who, we may well believe, envied
Bishop Juxon his privilege of attendance on his master to the
last--Bishop Wren, who had been with him in bright early days, had
attended him when Prince of Wales, on his romantic journey to Spain,
and, when the weight of the corruptible crown first came upon the
prince's head, had accompanied him on the journey to Scotland for his
coronation at Scone, who ever since then had been so trusted by him.
No word of his own grief, of his unavailing longing to see his King once
more, and once more kiss his hand, is expressed in the brief record in
his diary. It is simply 'A sanguinibus, O Deus!'
[_A MONOTONOUS WALK._]
Horror at the crime, at the stain of innocent blood which now defiled
his country, seems to have swallowed up all expression of personal
feeling. By degrees the rigour of his imprisonment appears to have been
a little relaxed, and by the connivance of his gaoler he obtained the
opportunity, rarely granted to prisoners, of walking upon the leads of
one of the towers. Thither he daily went for his exercise, and, says the
writer of the 'Parentalia,'
'by a just computation, he walked round the world. The earth being
affirmed to be 216,000 miles in compass (at a calculation of sixty
miles to a degree);[54] if it were possible to make a path round
the earth, an able footman going constantly twenty-four miles a
day, would compass it in 900 days, and so on in proportion of time
and miles.'
It would seem that the Bishop, finding his life was for the time spared,
and having a steady conviction that the evil days would pass, had
determined to keep himself ready in body, as in soul, for what work the
future might bring. A prison life leaves little to be recorded; the days
wore away in the Tower, divided between devotion, study, and that
unchanging monotonous walk which at least gave the prisoner a distant
glimpse of the world from which he was excluded.
He was allowed the Bible and paper and ink, but no other books. It is
the testimony of one who has studied Bishop Wren's manuscript--
'He wrote in an exquisite hand, in very fair Latin, a commentary on
much of Holy Scripture enough to fill an oak box of no mean
dimensions. This box he committed to the care of Dr. Beaumont,
master of S. Peter's College.[55] Had the Puritans read the MS.
they would have found some antidote to their poison.'
Two sermons and some treatises were also written during his captivity.
Probably suspicion attached to anything that he did, for it is said to
have been all written by stealth.
His nephew's life differed as widely from his own as did their
characters. Christopher was at Oxford, deep in the experiments of the
'New learning,' and in the inventions which it suggested to his ready
brain and dexterous fingers.
[_DIPLOGRAPHIC PEN._]
One invention which he was at the time proud of was that of a--
'diplographic instrument for writing with two pens,' whose uses he
thus describes; 'by the help of this instrument, every ordinary
penman may at all times be suddenly fitted to write two several
copies of any deeds and evidences, from the shortest to the
longest length of lines, in the very same compass of time, and
with as much ease and beauty, without any dividing or ruling; as,
without the help of the instrument, he could have despatched but
one.'
So successful was this instrument, that he obtained a patent for it for
seventeen years. In the same year an exact duplicate of this invention
was brought from France, and another patent taken out for the same
number of years, by Mr. William Petty,[56] who claimed to be the
inventor.
Wren was indignant at the notion that he had copied another person's
idea, and gives good reasons for his belief that his own instrument had
been described to Petty by a friend of his. Three years later Wren wrote
of it as 'an obvious Thing, a cast-off Toy;' ending, 'Indeed though I
care not for having a Successor in Invention, yet it behoves me to
vindicate myself from the Aspersion of having a Predecessor.'
Another invention Wren describes as a 'weather clock.' It consisted of a
clock affixed to a weather cock that moved a rundle covered with paper,
upon which the clock moved a black-lead pencil, so that the observer,
by the traces of the pencil on the paper, might certainly conclude what
winds had blown in his absence for twelve hours' space. The 'Parentalia'
contains a careful drawing in pen and sepia of this invention
elaborately worked out and remarkable for the truth and finish of the
drawing. Some of these designs, and an instrument for sowing corn,
nearly identical with a modern 'drill,' he dedicated in a quaintly
formal letter to his father's friend, the Prince Palatine. He appeared
before the Prince in another character, due probably to his Westminster
training. A play was performed (about 1652) at Oxford before the Prince,
Dr. Seth Ward,[57] and several others, entitled 'Hey for Honesty, down
with Knavery,' translated by Thomas Randolph from the Plutus of
Aristophanes, in which Christopher sustained the part of Neanias.[58] It
is provoking to have this bare record merely, and no clue as to the
success or failure of any part of the performance, especially where the
young actor was concerned.
To about the same date belongs a Latin letter written by Christopher to
his father, signed 'Christophorus Regulus,' describing in glowing terms
a visit paid in the spring to a friend's house. Some pretty touches give
'the lofty woods with their clamorous republic of rooks, the great
fountains, the placid pools--without, you might say a terrestrial
paradise, but within, heaven itself.' It may have been, though there is
nothing in its favour but conjecture, that this was Bletchingdon House,
and that among 'the virgins singing holy psalms,' whom he mentions, was
his future bride Faith, (or as she spelt it, 'ffaith') Coghill. The
letter says much, as does all that passed between them, for the warm
affection existing between father and son, and the sincerely religious
tone of Christopher's mind.
[_BATTLE OF WORCESTER._]
The desperate efforts of the Royalists shortly after this period to
overthrow Cromwell's tyranny and to put Charles II. on the throne,
received a cruel check in the disastrous battle of Worcester (1651),
Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' This crushed the hopes of the Royalists and
obliged them to turn their every effort and thought to effecting the
escape of their prince. He must have passed very near Knoyle Hill, when
he crossed Salisbury Plain and met at Stonehenge the friends who at last
succeeded in conveying him to the coast. Knoyle Hill had its own
fugitive to shelter.
Aubrey, the Wiltshire Antiquary, gives the account of a vivid dream
which Christopher Wren had, when staying, in the autumn of 1651, with
Dean Wren at Knoyle. He
'dreamed he saw a fight in a great market-place, which he knew not,
where some were flying and others pursuing; and among those who
fled, he saw a kinsman of his, who went into Scotland with the
King's army. They heard in the country that the King was come into
England, but whereabouts he was they could not tell. The next night
came his kinsman to Knoyle Hill, and brought with him the
disastrous news of Charles II.'s defeat at Worcester.'[59]
It seems likely that this 'kinsman' was Bishop Wren's son Matthew, who
afterwards went to the Hague. There also, when his escape had been with
great difficulty contrived, went King Charles, as his brother-in-law,
the Prince of Orange, was his steady friend. In the hope of utterly
putting down the Cavaliers, the greatest severity was shown at this time
to all who had helped the King, and even to those who merely boasted of
their good will towards him. Among those who suffered was Inigo Jones,
who had been architect to James I. and to Charles I., had been steadily
loyal to the Stuarts, and was therefore an object of suspicion. He lived
to see what was thought the utter downfall of the monarchy, and
following upon this the desecration and ruin of the finest churches in
England. S. Paul's, on which he had spent much labour and skill, was, as
being connected with Archbishop Laud, an object of special hatred to the
Puritans. It suffered every possible injury. The fine portico designed
by Inigo Jones was filled with stalls, blocked up by booths, and used as
a market-place. The year after the battle of Worcester, Inigo Jones
died, poor and lonely, in a lodging close to the defaced cathedral. He
and Christopher Wren must probably have met. Wren had a sincere
admiration for his predecessor's skill, and spoke of the S. Paul's
portico as 'an exquisite piece in itself.'
[_MAKING HIMSELF._]
In the autumn of 1653, Wren, then just twenty-one, was elected to a
fellowship at All Souls, and happy in the comparative tranquillity of
Oxford, pursued the various studies which he loved. All this time he was
'making himself,' as was said of Sir Walter Scott in his childhood on
the Scotch hills, though perhaps at the time no one could have guessed
the particular manner in which he would distinguish himself.
In the following summer he made acquaintance with John Evelyn, who had
come up to Oxford to hear the 'Philosophy Act.' Evelyn mentioned that
after a dinner at All Souls he 'visited that miracle of a youth Mr.
Christopher Wren, nephew to the Bishop of Ely.'[60]
'A day or two later Evelyn dined with 'that most obliging and
universally curious Dr. Wilkins at Wadham College, who showed him
his "transparent apiaries, built like castles, and so ordered one
upon another as one might take the honey without hurting the bees,"
his "hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words, by a
long, concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks
through it at good distance;" and his gallery filled with
mathematical and other curiosities; a "thermometer," still a
curiosity, though fifty-two years had elapsed since Galileo
invented the first; a "way-wiser," which, when placed in a coach,
exactly measured the miles it travelled, and showed them by an
index; "a monstrous magnet," and many other inventions, most of
them of his owne and that prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher
Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble which he had
stained with a lively red very deepe, as beautiful as if it had
been natural.'
The acquaintance thus made with Christopher Wren ripened into a
friendship lasting until Evelyn's death in 1706.
Dr. Wilkins was also of Evelyn's friends, though he was very submissive
to Cromwell.[61] It is curious to contrast two accounts which occur in
the same page of Evelyn's diary.
'_December 25, 1655._ There was no more notice taken of Christmas
Day in churches. I went to London, where Dr. Wild preached the
funeral sermon of Preaching, this being the last day, after which
Cromwell's proclamation was to take place, that none of the Church
of England should dare either to preach or administer Sacraments,
teach schoole etc. on paine of imprisonment or exile. So this was
the mournfullest day that in my life I had seene, or the Church of
England herselfe since the Reformation; to the greate rejoicing of
both Papist and Presbyter. So pathetic was his discourse (on 2 Cor.
xiii. 9) that it drew many teares from the auditory. Myself, wife,
and some of our family received the Communion; God make me
thankfull that hath hitherto provided for us the food of our soules
as well as bodies! The Lord Jesus pity our distressed Church, and
bring back the captivity of Sion!
'_February 10, 1656._ I heard Dr. Wilkins preach before the Lord
Mayor in S. Paul's, shewing how obedience was preferable to
sacrifice. He was a most obliging person, who had married the
Protector's sister, and tooke greate paines to preserve the
Universities from the ignorant sacrilegious commanders and
souldiers, who would faine have demolished all places and persons
that pretended to learning.'
[_GERM OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY._]
Dr. Wilkins appears, like too many of that time, to have regarded the
Church as utterly overthrown, and probably believed honestly in his
peculiar interpretation of the text upon which he preached. Much credit
is however due to him for the idea of the Oxford meetings, and for the
hospitality which he showed. These meetings were the germ of the Royal
Society, and to them Dr. Thomas Sprat (afterwards Bishop of Rochester),
a great friend of Christopher Wren's, bears testimony:--
'Wadham College,'[62] he says, 'was then the place of resort for
virtuous and learned men. Their first purpose was no more than
only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing
in quiet, one with another, without being engaged in the passions
and madness of that dismal age. And from the institution of that
assembly it had been enough if no other advantage had come but
this; that by these means there was a race of young men provided
against the next age, whose minds receiving from them their first
impressions of sober and generous knowledge, were invincibly armed
against all the enchantments of enthusiasm.... It was in good
measure by the influence which these gentlemen had over the rest,
that the university itself, or at least any part of its discipline
and order, was saved from ruin.... Nor indeed could it be
otherwise, for such spiritual frenzies, which did then bear rule,
can never stand long before a clear and deep skill in nature. It is
almost impossible, that they who converse much with the subtilty of
things, should be deluded by such thick deceits. There is but one
better charm in the world than real philosophy, to allay the
impulses of the false spirit, and that is the blessed Presence and
assistance of the True.'
In 1656, on the 29th of May, Dean Wren died. Sorrow and anxiety, the
desolation of the Church, the apparent ruin of the monarchy, had worn
out his gentle spirit; and probably little thinking how great a change
was approaching to free the country, he passed away, aged 69, at the
house of his son-in-law, Mr. Holder, and was buried in the chancel of
Bletchingdon Church.[63] When we look back to the years of the
Rebellion, their darkness is lightened for us by the knowledge that the
Restoration came at last, and it is difficult to realise fully how the
times appeared to those who actually lived in them, to whom the years
brought only fresh losses and sorrows, and the sickness of hope
deferred.
Knowing how, on the 29th of May, but four years later, all England was
welcoming back the King to 'enjoy his own again,' one can hardly forbear
wishing that Dean Wren might have been spared to see that day; yet those
who loved him best cannot have grudged him the fulness of that peace
which all his life he had desired, and which he had invoked upon his
first home. Christopher was very warmly attached to his father, as all
his letters show, and must have grieved greatly for his death.
[_ASTRONOMY PROFESSORSHIP._]
Soon after this he was summoned to London. The Gresham professor of
astronomy, Mr. Laurence Rooke, retired in 1657, and the chair was
offered to Wren. He was but twenty-four and doubted whether he should
accept such a post while so young, and he clung to Oxford and his
studies there.
The friends whom he consulted advised him differently; accordingly he
came up to London and delivered his opening address to a considerable
audience. It was in Latin, and after a brief apology for his youth
passed into a sketch of the history of astronomy. He dwells on the great
riches of the science, how it is the handmaid of theology, the queen of
sciences, speaks of the vast discoveries made by its means, touches upon
Copernicus, whose mind first grasped the idea that the earth moved round
the sun, then upon Kepler and upon Galileo, and the storms that had
arisen, when in 1632 he had demonstrated that truth at which Copernicus
had guessed; he praises highly Galileo's invention of the telescope,
pays a tribute to the great men who had lectured at Gresham on these
subjects, and especially to his own predecessor, Rooke, and winds up
with an eloquent description of London as a Pandora of cities to whom
each of the choir of planets gave a peculiar blessing, on whom the sun
shines benignly, who possesses more inhabitants than any city in the
world, a healthy air, a fertile soil stretching far around her,
beautiful buildings springing as of themselves from the earth, and,
lastly, is blessed by the moon, 'the governess of floods,' who alluring
the seas thus far inland by means of the beloved Thames, makes her the
city which nourishes the best seamen of the world. The rough draft of
this address, written by Christopher in a bold hand with a few changes
and corrections, is preserved in the 'Parentalia.'
This professorship obliged him to come up to London and give a course of
lectures every Wednesday in term time at Gresham College. None of these
lectures have been preserved, and it seems from a hint in one of Dr.
Sprat's letters, that Wren was in the habit of lecturing from rough
notes merely, and used no pains to keep any record of them.
['_HE MAY COME OUT AN HE WILL._']
At this time he made acquaintance with Richard Claypole, who was
married to Elizabeth, Cromwell's favourite daughter; both she and her
sister, Lady Falconbridge, were faithful members of the persecuted
Church of England. Dr. Hewet still read the Prayer Book services in S.
Gregory's Church, which adjoined S. Paul's, and there the two sisters
resorted, there Dr. Hewet secretly married Mary Cromwell to Lord
Falconbridge, as neither would be satisfied with the ceremony performed
by an independent preacher. Cromwell's daughters used all their
influence with their father on the side of mercy, but when the excellent
Dr. Hewet fell under his displeasure they pleaded in vain for his
life.[64] Mr. Claypole professed a fondness for mathematical science and
frequently invited Christopher Wren to his house. On one of these
occasions when Wren was dining there, Cromwell himself entered, and, as
was his custom in his own family, sat down to table without speech or
ceremony. After a while he fixed his eyes on Christopher and said, 'Your
uncle has been long confined in the Tower.' 'He has so, sir,' said Wren;
'but he bears his afflictions with great patience and resignation.' 'He
may come out an he will,' was Cromwell's unexpected reply. 'Will your
Highness permit me to take him this from your own mouth?' said Wren,
hardly able to believe his ears. 'Yes, you may,' said Cromwell briefly.
At the earliest possible moment Christopher hurried to the Tower to
communicate to his uncle the tidings that the long years of his
imprisonment were over. When he had poured out his news the Bishop
replied warmly that it was not the first time he had received the like
intimation from that miscreant, but he disdained the terms proposed for
his enlargement, which were a mean acknowledgment of his favour and an
abject submission to his detestable tyranny; that he was determined to
tarry the Lord's leisure, and owe his deliverance, which was not far
off, to Him only. Such an answer must have been startling enough to
Christopher, and may have opened his eyes to the causes of Cromwell's
seeming leniency. He left the brave old man to await the deliverance
which the keen sight of faith showed him as drawing near, and returned
to his own work.
The death of Mrs. Claypole in the following summer must have checked an
intimacy upon which Bishop Wren looked with little favour. She died of a
terrible illness, and in the paroxysms of her pain bitterly reproached
Cromwell for the innocent blood that he had shed, and particularly for
that of Dr. Hewet.
At about this period some experiments were made by Wren's philosophical
friends wherein he took a principal part, and to which the barometer,
now in common use, is mainly due. The first instrument of the kind was
invented by Torricelli, the pupil of Galileo, who used it in order to
ascertain the pressure of the air on fluids, the supposed cause of which
pressure was the passing by of the body of the moon. Pascal, in those
earlier days when his great genius employed itself on natural
philosophy, made several experiments at Rouen, in 1646, with a friend,
M. Petit, using 'Torricelli's tube,' as it was called. Similar trials
were afterwards made by M. Perier, his brother-in-law, among the
mountains of Auvergne. They then discovered that the rising and falling
of the mercury was due not to the moon, but to the differences in the
specific gravity of the atmosphere. Wren's experiments led him to the
same conclusion, and at a later period he and Robert Boyle continued
them until they produced the barometer, though it was not used commonly
as a weather-glass until a much later date. Pascal did not pursue his
discovery, but was satisfied with having proved the point for which he
was contending.
[_THE CYCLOID._]
Though Wren and Pascal never met, some communication passed between
them. Pascal, who was Wren's senior by eleven years, propounded a
problem, under the name of Jean de Monfert, to the mathematicians of
England, adding a challenge to them to solve it by a given day.
Christopher sent a solution, and in his turn propounded a problem which
seems never to have been answered. Pascal is said to have considered
Wren's solution very carefully, but the promised prize of twenty
pistoles was withheld by some trickery. Besides this, Wren wrote four
mathematical tracts on the cycloid, and sent them to Dr. J. Wallis, who
was publishing a book on mathematics. He corresponded with Pascal,[65]
who was writing on the cycloid by the name of _la Roulette_, the
problem being 'to determine the curve made in the air by the nail of a
coach wheel from the moment it rises from the ground, till the moment
when the continual rolling of the wheel brings it back to the ground,
after a complete turn, supposing the wheel a perfect circle and the
ground perfectly level.'
[_CROMWELL'S FUNERAL._]
Wren was engaged also in a series of observations on the planet Saturn.
These pursuits were, however, interrupted by an event that convulsed all
England. On September 3, 1658, during a fearful storm which swept over
London, Oliver Cromwell died. Hume[66] gives a terrible account of the
state of constant suspicion and fear of assassination in which Cromwell
passed the last year of his life; the secret armour which he wore, his
constant guard of soldiers wherever he moved, his fears on a journey,
his habit of never returning the way he had come, nor by the direct
road, seldom sleeping above three nights together in the same chamber,
or in any he did not choose himself, or without sentinels. His body lay
in state for a considerable time. The funeral, on October 22, Evelyn
calls 'superb.' He says:--
'I saw the Protector carried from Somerset House on a velvet bed of
state drawn by six black horses, houss'd with the same; the pall
held up by his new lords; Oliver lying in effigie in royal robes,
crown'd with a crown, sceptre, and globe like a king ... a knight
of honour armed _cap-à-pie_, and, after all, his guard, soldiers,
and innumerable mourners. In this equipage they proceeded to
Westminster; but it was the joyfullest funeral I ever saw, for
there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away
with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streets
as they went.'
Under the feeble rule of Richard Cromwell at first and then under the
multiform tyranny of the reassembled 'Long Parliament,' every kind of
disorder and oppression had free course. Monk grievously disappointed
the Royalist hopes by proclaiming Richard Cromwell. The day of
deliverance appeared more than ever distant.
[_LETTERS FROM LONDON._]
The Gresham Professors were all driven out of the college except Dr.
Goddard, Cromwell's physician, and the place was garrisoned by soldiers,
who did it great damage. Matthew Wren made an attempt two days after
Cromwell's funeral to enter the college, and sent a curious account to
Christopher, who had returned to All Souls at Oxford. He writes:
'Dear Cousin,--Yesterday being the first of the term, I resolved to
see whether Dr. Horton[67] entertained the new auditory at Gresham
with any lecture, for I took it for granted that if his divinity
could be spared your mathematics would not be expected. But at the
gate I was stopped by a man with a gun, who told me there was no
admission upon that account, as the college was reformed into a
garrison. Then changing my pretension, I scarce got permission to
go in to Dr. Goddard, who gave me assurance enough that none of
your colleagues intend to appear this term unless the soldiers be
removed, of which there is no probability. Upon these premises it
is the opinion of all your friends that you may save that journey
hither, unless some other occasion calls you; and for these I
expect you will make me your agent, if they be such as I am capable
of despatching.
'But it will not perhaps be amiss to take from hence the occasion
of a short and civil letter to the Committee, signifying that you
hope you have not deceived their expectations in choosing you, and
that you are ready to attend your duty but for this public
interruption and exclusion from your chamber; or what else you will
that looks towards this.
'I know no more domestic news than what everybody talks of.
Yesterday I was in Westminster Hall, and saw only Keudigate and
Windham in the two courts, and Wild and Parker in the Exchequer. In
the Chancery none at all; Bradshaw keeps the seal as if it were to
be carried before him in the other world, whither he is going. Glyn
and Fountain pleaded at the bar. They talk much of the mediation of
the two Crowns, and proceed so far as to name Marshall Clerambault
for the Embassador who is to come hither from France. My service
to all friends. Dear Cousin, your most humble servant,
'M. W.
'London, October 25, 1658.'
Dr. Sprat[68] writes also to Christopher at about the same time:
'Dear Sir,--This day I went to visit Gresham College, but found the
place in such a nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so
infernal that if you should now come to make use of your tube, it
would be like Dives looking out of hell into heaven. Dr. Goddard,
of all your colleagues, keeps possession, which he could never be
able to do had he not before prepared his nose for camp perfumes by
his voyage into Scotland, and had he not such excellent
restoratives in his cellars.'
FOOTNOTES:
[51] 'December 8, 1646. The pious soul of my wife Eliza flew up to
Christ at half-past five in the morning.'
[52] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, ed. 1724, p. 122.
[53] Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol.
iii. p. 333.
[54] It is really 24,899 miles.
[55] The box is, I believe, in Peterhouse Library to this day, but
a portion of the Commentary was published as a treatise
against the Socinians by the Bishop's son Matthew, under the
title of _Increpatio Bar Jesu, sive polemicae adsectiones
locorum aliquot S. Scripturae ab imposturis perversis in
Catechesis Racoviana collectae._
[56] Petty's history is a curious one. The son of a clothier of
Rumsey; he educated himself; was some years in the navy;
became Gresham professor of music; then a physician of some
fame; was also Henry Cromwell's secretary; was a commissioner
for Ireland, and married Sir Hardress Waller's daughter. Soon
after the Restoration he was knighted by Charles II. Petty
invented a 'double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and
tide; it was flat-bottomed, had two distinct keels cramped
together with huge timbers, so as a violent stream run
between: it bore a monstrous broad sail.' It excited much
interest at the time, made one very successful voyage, and was
afterwards wrecked in a frightful storm. Its model is still
preserved at the Royal Society, of which he became a member.
He died in 1687. _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, p. 217.
Ward. See also Evelyn's _Diary_ of March 22, 1675, for an
interesting account of Petty's career.
[57] Seth Ward, born 1617. Was Savilian Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford and an active member of the Royal Society. Afterwards
Bishop of Exeter and then of Salisbury; died 1689.
[58] _Life of Sir C. Wren_, by J. Elmes, p. 12. The full title of
the play was '[Greek: Ploutophthalmia Ploutogamia],' a
pleasant comedy intituled _Hey for Honesty_, &c., augmented
and published by F. J. A copy, published in 1651, and
containing a MS. note saying that Wren took the part of
'Neanias Adolescens,' was in the possession of Isaac Reed, a
commentator on Shakespeare and a great book collector, who
died in 1807. His epitaph (given in _Notes and Queries_,
series v., xiii. p. 304) was as follows:--
'Reader of these few lines take heed, And mend your ways for
my sake; For you must die like Isaac Reed, Tho' you read till
your eyes ache.'
T. Randolph was a friend and pupil of Ben Jonson's; he published
_The Muses' Looking Glass_, which satirised the Puritans; died
1634.
[59] Miscellanies, ed. 1696.
[60] _Diary_, July 13, 1654.
[61] _Præsul. Ang._, p. 779. Godwin.
[62] _Hist. of Royal Society._ Bishop Sprat, ed. 1722, p. 53.
[63] 'Dr. Christopher Wren, Deane of Windsor, was buried June 3,
1656,' is the entry in the register; there does not appear to
be any monument or brass to his memory. The _Parentalia_ and
Elmes's Life give 1658, but the dates are frequently
inaccurate in both books.
[64] Evelyn's _Diary_, March 31, 1658. 'That holy martyr Dr. Hewer
condemned to die, without law, jury or justice by a mock
council of State as they called it. A dangerous, treacherous
time. June 8, _ib._ That excellent preacher and holy man Dr.
Hewer was martyred for having intelligence of his Majesty,
through the Lord Marquess of Ormond. He was beheaded on Tower
Hill. The name was spelt Hewer, Hewet, and Hewett.
[65] Pascal is said to have written his treatise on the cycloid
from a religious motive. It was a common opinion in France
that the study of natural sciences, especially of mathematics,
led to infidelity. Accordingly Pascal, writing for
geometricians and mathematicians, wished to show, by the
solution, vainly sought before, of this problem, that the same
man who wrote the _Lettres à un Provincial_ could also
instruct them in abstract science, and he published his
treatise in the intervals of writing the _Pensées_. See _Vie
de Pascal, par sa soeur Mad. Perier, Pensées de Pascal_, p.
13, ed. 1839.
[66] _Hist. of England_, vol. vii. ch. lxi. p. 292.
[67] Gresham Professor of Divinity, confirmed in his post by
Cromwell.
[68] Thomas Sprat, D.D., Dean of Westminster, and afterwards Bishop
of Rochester; was an active member of the Royal Society, and
was educated at Wadham College with Sir C. Wren, whose
intimate friend he was: born 1636; died 1713.