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.
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.
Interior of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook.
Engraved by T. Woolnoth. CORNEILLE. From an original Picture by C. Lebrun in the possession of the
