Sir Christopher Wren

On the 20th October, 1632, Christopher Wren was born in the Rectory at East Knoyle in Wiltshire. His father, also Dr. Christopher Wren, is said to have descended from an ancient English family of Danish origin which settled in the county of Durham; but I can find no authority for the Danish story except Parentalia.

In J. W. Rylands’ Records of Wroxall Abbey there is a pedigree which shows Sir Christopher’s grandfather, Francis Wren, Citizen and Mercer of London, who lived from 1552 to 1624. His father was Cuthbert and his grandfather William Wren, of Sherborn House, Durham, who died in 1539. This William is described as brother to a Christopher Wren, of Wythebroke, Warwick, who died in 1542, but the authority is doubtful. If it is accurate, however, it may be an added reason for Sir Christopher’s purchase of the Warwickshire estate of Wroxall for his son, who settled down there as a country gentleman.

Sir Christopher’s mother was Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Cox, of Fonthill, Wiltshire. So on both sides Christopher was well born. He was an only son, with seven sisters, but one of them only is important in Wren’s story. She married, in 1640, Dr. William Holder, of Blechington, Oxford.

We know nothing of Christopher’s mother except her name, but his father cut some figure in Charles I.’s reign. A loyalist of loyalists, he succeeded his more distinguished brother, Bishop Matthew Wren, in 1635, as Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the Garter. When St. George’s Chapel was plundered by the Cromwellian troops, the spoils included the three Registers of the Garter Knights, but by making a heavy payment the Dean got them back again, and cherished them until his death in 1658. They then passed into the safe keeping of Christopher, who soon after the Restoration handed them over to Dr. Bruno Ryves, then the Registrar of the Garter.

Dean Christopher was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and St. John’s, Oxford, and his son’s scientific attainments were inherited. He was a man of delightful character, and evidently there was between father and son the closest affection, which shines even through the formal phrases used in those days by children when writing to their fathers. That he added skill in architecture to his wide literary and mathematical knowledge is clear from the fact that he was employed in 1634 to design a building at Windsor for Charles I.’s Queen, and a detailed estimate prepared by the Dean has survived. As the building was to cost over £13,000, it must have been an ambitious undertaking, but it never took shape owing to the disturbances of the time.

It was of great importance to Wren that his early training should have been given to him by so able a father, especially as he was, in childhood, exceedingly delicate. The Rev. William Shepheard helped the Dean as domestic tutor, and the boy’s mathematics were looked after by Dr. William Holder. Aubrey, in his Lives of Eminent Men, says of Holder that “he was very helpful in the education of his brother-in-law, a youth of prodigious inventive wit, to whom he was as tender as if he had been his own child. He gave him his instructions in geometry and arithmetic, and when he was a young scholar at the University of Oxford was a very necessary and kind friend.”

Amongst the manuscripts in the heirloom Parentalia is a letter in Latin, dated “E Musæo meo, Calendis Januarii, 1641,” from Wren to his father, beautifully written, and expressing filial gratitude in a high degree, and below is a Latin verse with its English translation. At the foot the delighted father has written, “Scripto hoc, A^o ætatis suæ Decimo ab octobris 20^o elapso.” It was certainly a remarkable accomplishment for a boy of nine.

Also amongst the Parentalia MSS. is a versified paraphrase of the first to the fourteenth verses of the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel. The penmanship of this is also admirable, and Wren maintained this merit of legibility until the end of his life.

Wren went in due course to Westminster, and worked under the redoubtable Dr. Busby. His father’s choice of the school was doubtless due to the vehemently loyalist attitude of the great headmaster, but it may also have been influenced by the fact that Busby, though a notable classic, did not frown upon mathematical and scientific studies. Christopher was a Town Boy, and never entered the College proper. Possibly it was at Westminster that Wren first met Robert Hooke, with whom he was to be so closely associated in after life, though this guess is a little doubtful, for Hooke was older by three years; but he was also a Town Boy, and boarded in Busby’s house, going but little into school. John Sargeaunt thought that Hooke studied mathematics apart, and that this liberty was probably shared by young Christopher. It is likely that owing to Christopher’s delicate health he left Westminster early and pursued his studies under the eye of Sir Charles Scarborough, a young but famous physician who had developed a marked genius for mathematics and science. If Wren had remained at Westminster, he would almost certainly have proceeded in the ordinary course, like most Westminster boys, either to Christ Church, Oxford, or Trinity College, Cambridge: the choice of Wadham was no doubt dictated by his friendship with the Warden. Evidently, however, Wren retained an affection for his old school, because he took much trouble over the design of a new dormitory which led to a great deal of wrangling, and the work of building was postponed again and again. When, ultimately, the policy of rebuilding was settled in 1721, Wren was ninety, and no longer in practice. His design, therefore, was put aside, and the Earl of Burlington produced what purported to be a new one, but was, in fact, Wren’s, with some slight modifications. The existing building, in fact, which looks out on the quiet Abbey Garden, may be regarded as a work of Wren, though technically the amateur Burlington was responsible for it.

If we are to believe Elmes, it was not until 1647, when Christopher was in his fifteenth year, that he became acquainted with Sir Charles Scarborough, but it seems more reasonable to ascribe to the Scarborough period, following Wren’s retirement from Westminster, a manuscript letter in Latin verse to his father, dated September 13, 1645, dedicating to him an instrument called Suum Panorganum Astronomicum, and a tract De Ortu Fluminum. On that assumption Christopher left Westminster before he had completed his thirteenth year.

There is very little to show that Wren was much interested in the graphic arts, but on the sheet in the heirloom Parentalia which contains the Latin letter is an ink sketch of a woman holding up a dial-shaped object, which is possibly the Panorganum.

Possibly, however, this may be the sketch for a design on the ceiling of a room which he did when he was sixteen. It included “two figures, representing Astronomy and Geometry and their Attributes, artfully drawn with his pen.” I cannot affirm that the lady in the heirloom copy is a piece of his “artful” drawing, but it is likely.

What seems to fix the start of Wren’s studies with Scarborough as roughly contemporary with his Panorganum letter is the fact that the boy in 1647 was engaged in translating into Latin, at Sir Charles’ request, Oughtred’s Clavis Mathematicæ. In the same year he had a patent granted him for a diplographic instrument for writing with two pens. Christopher describes his invention at length. An instrument of the kind must have then seemed very important, because Sir William Petty patented a similar contrivance in the same year. About three years later someone stole Wren’s invention. He was exceedingly annoyed, and wrote a letter in which he refers to the fact that Oliver Cromwell’s attention had been directed to it. Without claiming anything great for the invention itself, he wanted to clear himself from the aspersion of having annexed somebody else’s device. In later years there were to be many examples of people picking up an idea of Wren’s, developing it to their own great credit, and failing to acknowledge the man without whose idea they never would have started on their enterprise.

Whenever it was that Wren began working under Sir Charles Scarborough, it was not until his fifteenth year that he informed his father that he was acting as a demonstrating assistant to the physician who lectured on anatomy at Surgeons’ Hall. The story of his activities is set out in a dignified Latin letter, which refers not only to the Scarborough activities, but to Wren’s invention of a weather-clock, of an instrument to write with in the dark, and of a treatise on spherical trigonometry. Very impressive also is a long metrical Latin essay on the Reformation of the Zodiac, which runs to nearly fifteen quarto pages, in an appendix to Elmes’ Life. He was sixteen when he wrote (again in Latin) to Mr. Oughtred, whose important essay on geometry he had translated into Latin. We may agree with Elmes that “these juvenile essays prove the fecundity, the ripeness, and the highly cultivated state of his mind, his zeal, and his ardent enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge and literary honours.”

But the weather-clock was destined to develop from the stage of a “juvenile essay.” When he wrote to his father in 1647 that he was enjoying Scarborough’s society, he added that he had imparted to him “one of these inventions of mine, a weather-clock—namely, with revolving cylinder, by means of which a record can be kept through the night.”

Of this Scarborough thought well enough to ask the lad to have one constructed in brass at his expense. I find in Birch’s History of the Royal Society, vol. i., under date December 9, 1663: “Dr. Wren’s description of his weather-clock consisting of two wings that may be added to a pendulum clock was read.” The engraving published by Birch shows a far simpler arrangement than that of the drawing among the heirloom MSS. The printed Parentalia gives a description of a device more complicated than Birch’s description of Wren’s communication of 1663, and refers to a circular thermometer designed to correct the error caused by the weight of liquid. This does not appear in the drawing; the thermometer is of the ordinary air type. The printed Parentalia refers to Robert Hooke’s improvements on Wren’s design, but they only partly appear in the drawing, which would seem to show an intermediate development between Wren’s original device and Hooke’s latest achievements.

The thing itself is of no importance now, but is worth remembering, as showing not only the early blossoming of Wren’s scientific achievement, but also his patience and persistence in developing an idea over a period of years.

All this was a good prelude to his life at Oxford, which began when he was young to be an undergraduate, by our standards, but older than we have been led to believe.