Sir Christopher Wren

The question as to when Wren started his University career presents considerable difficulties, but it is worth exploring, because his youth at Oxford had an enduring effect on the development of the man.

Parentalia is explicit: “In the year 1646 and Fourteenth of his Age, Mr. Wren was admitted a Gentleman-Commoner at Wadham College ... where he soon attracted the Friendship and esteem of the two most celebrated Virtuosi and Mathematicians of their Time, Dr. John Wilkins, Warden of Wadham, and Dr. Seth Ward....” This date is confirmed by the Lansdowne Chronology MS., prepared by Wren’s son, and initialed by Sir Christopher himself two years before his death. The MS. states:

“1646. Admissus in Collegio de Wodham.”

But it is necessary to consider other evidence. R. B. Gardiner, in Registers of Wadham College, notes that Wren’s caution money as Fellow Commoner was received on June 25, 1649 or 1650. Sir Thomas G. Jackson gives 1649 as the year when Wren entered the college as Fellow Commoner. Wilkins did not become Warden, in place of Dr. Pitt, expelled by the Parliamentary Visitors, until April 13, 1648, when his name was entered in the Buttery Book. On May 5, 1648, Wilkins had a dispensation for twelve months from the full performance of his duties in consequence of his attendance on the Prince Elector, whose Chaplain he was. It was not impossible that Wren should have gone to Wadham at fourteen—the profligate Rochester matriculated at twelve and was M.A. before he was fourteen—but it is unlikely. Wren was exceedingly delicate as a boy, there was no Wilkins at Wadham to attract him there when he was fourteen or for two years after, and he was, even in 1649, the first Fellow Commoner entered during Wilkins’ wardenship. If Wilkins took the year’s leave granted him, and if June 25, 1649, be taken as the correct date for the payment of Wren’s caution money, he went there a month after the Warden settled down in his post.

If Wren had proceeded direct to Oxford at fourteen from being under Busby at Westminster, he would almost certainly have gone to Christ Church, not to Wadham. Moreover, it is certain that during his sixteenth year, and perhaps later, he was very busy with mathematics and science under Sir Charles Scarborough in London.

It is just conceivable that he entered at Wadham soon after Oxford surrendered to the Parliament in 1646, and that he did not come into residence until 1649 or 1650, but no document has ever suggested that, and the theory can be dismissed. It is the opinion of Mr. Wells, the reigning Warden, that if Wren only matriculated in 1650 he could not have proceeded to his B.A. in 1651, as in fact he did. But the year 1649, accepted by Sir Thomas Jackson, is feasible on the basis of Wren’s notable precocity and the then readiness of the University not to insist on three years, as is seen by Rochester’s case.

It is, however, fair to add that the entry of Wren’s £5 in the Wadham book is undated, but it comes at the foot of a page headed 1650, on which the preceding entry is dated June 25, and the three previous names are registered by Gardiner as 1650. It may be, however, that as the Wren entry is undated, it was added later. On the other hand, if he had gone to Oxford in 1646 he could scarcely have occupied the then unheard-of time of five years before taking his B.A., March 18, 1650-51.

I attach no importance to the MS. prepared by Wren’s son Christopher, or, indeed, to any of his documents, and prefer to rest on the College records. Miss Phillimore followed the MS., but Miss Milman, without setting down any evidence, assumed that Wren spent three years in London between Dr. Busby and Oxford. I think she did wisely, and on all the evidence, obscure and conflicting as it is, I accept 1649 as the year when Wren began his Oxford career.

The rest of the dates can be cleared off shortly. He became M.A. December 11, 1653, having been elected a Probationer Fellow of All Souls in November of the same year, and was made D.C.L. at All Souls on September 12, 1661.

Wren was fortunate in the influence of the Warden of Wadham, which was so powerful during the formation of Wren’s character that it is necessary to form some picture of the man. John Wilkins reigned beneficently over the college from 1648 to 1659, and was described by Aubrey as “no great-read man, but one of much and deepe thinking; and a prudent man as well as ingeniose.” As the late Dr. Wright Henderson, the biographer of Wilkins, wrote of him, “his greatness fell short of genius, for it was the effect of ordinary qualities, rarely combined and tempered into one character; but more effective for useful work in the world than genius without sanity.” Soon after the Civil War broke out, Wilkins was living in London as the chaplain of Charles Lewis, Prince Elector Palatine, with whom Christopher renewed a childish acquaintance. Mr. Wright Henderson thinks that Wilkins became the leader, as he was certainly the friend, of the group of students of natural philosophy who afterwards formed the Royal Society. It seems obvious that Wren was entered at Wadham in order that he might be under Wilkins. It is certain that he became the Warden’s favourite pupil.

It is evident from the amazing “Catalogue of New Theories, Inventions, Experiments, and Mechanick Improvements,” exhibited by Mr. Wren at the “First Assemblies at Wadham College in Oxford for Advancement of Natural and Experimental Knowledge” which is printed in Parentalia that Wren took all knowledge for his province. There are fifty-three items, ranging from such solemnities as the “Hypothesis of the Moon’s Libration, in Solid” and “To find whether the earth moves” through the uncertainties of “Probable Ways for making Fresh Water at Sea,” and the largeness of “Divers Improvements in the Art of Husbandry” down to the pleasant simplicity of “A Way of Imbroidery for Beds, Hangings, cheap and fair.”

We are reminded of the association between architecture and military engineering during the height of the Italian Renaissance, by “To build in the Sea, Forts, Moles, etc.” and “Secure and Speedier Ways of attacking Forts than by Approaches and Galleries.” Sanmicheli had invented the pentagonal bastion: Inigo Jones had fortified Basing House against the Parliament’s attack, and had been one of the defenders. We would give much to learn something of Wren’s invention for “Ways of Submarine Navigation.” If he had developed “Easier Ways of Whale-fishing,” it would have given material for another chapter in Moby Dick. Eheu fugaces! There is a hint of the coming gramophone in “A speaking Organ, articulating Sounds,” and “Divers new Musical Instruments” helps to explain Wren’s devotion to his daughter Jane, whose monument in the crypt of St. Paul’s—she died at the age of twenty-six—shows her in Francis Bird’s rather heavy-handed sculpture as seated at an organ.

The technique of writing always interested Wren, so it is natural to find in the catalogue “To write in the Dark” and “To write Double by an Instrument,” the latter a dodge he developed to the point of patenting it.

The tools of his future profession already attracted him. “A Scenographical Instrument, to survey at one Station” is followed by “A Perspective Box, to survey with it,” and there is a ring of Bacon and Wotton in the compendious phrase “New Designs tending to Strength, Convenience, and Beauty in Building.”

There is certainly no more rightly prophetic entry in the whole astonishing list.

“Several new Ways of graving and etching” gives a certain colour to the story—though it must be discredited—that Wren introduced mezzotint.

“New Ways of Intelligence, new Cyphers” marks his early attachment to an amusement which he shared with others of his day, though without the need to use the art to conceal roguish passages in what he wrote, as was the case with Pepys’ shorthand.

His later excursions into veterinary surgery and the transfusion of human blood are heralded by the memorandum “To purge or vomit, or alter the Mass by Injection into the Blood, by Plaisters, by various dressing a Fontanell.”

We have a glimpse of the experiments connected with the working out of “A Pavement harder, fairer, and cheaper than Marble,” as well as into the social side of these Wadham assemblies, through John Evelyn’s glasses.

On July 13, 1654, he was at Dr. Wilkins’, at Wadham, and saw:

“Variety of shadows, dyals, perspectives, and many other mathematical and magical curiosities, a way-wiser, a thermometer, a monstrous magnet, conic and other sections, a ballance on a demi-circle, most of them of his own and that prodigious young scholar Mr. Chr. Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble, which he had stain’d with a lively red, very deepe, as beautiful as if it had been natural.”

Two days before Evelyn had visited after dinner “that miracle of a youth.” There is no need to fill out the Wadham catalogue of inventions: we can accept Evelyn’s valuation, and he never changed his mind.

But the list from which I have quoted does not complete the story of Wren’s early essays in the scientific field, essays, be it noted, which are overwhelmingly practical. Wren was a devotee not of pure but of applied science.

It is probably at Wadham that Wren concerned himself with what he calls Cheirologia. In the heirloom Parentalia is a sheet with pictures of two hands, and on the next page, another hand and various notes showing the working of the deaf and dumb language invented by Sir Christopher. Though more complicated than the system now in use, it is another evidence of the agility of Wren’s mind, and of his unwearying interest in varying problems. But his time was not wholly spent in the laboratory.

A curious incident at Oxford in 1650 gave occasion for Wren’s poetic gift. A girl condemned for murdering her illegitimate infant was hanged, but revived later under the care of Dr. Petty and Thomas Willis. It is an extraordinary story told with a wealth of unpleasant detail in a pamphlet called News from the Dead. Following the narrative are some dozens of “Ingenious poems on the subject by the Prime Wits” of the University, including one by Wren. It is in a pompous vein, and cites Orpheus, Eurydice, the Fates, and Æsculapius in the fashion of the time.

Morgan reprinted the pamphlet and poems in Phœnix Britannicus, where they may be found by the curious. Wren’s effusion is only worth mention as showing him in the full current of Oxford life: it is likely enough that he had some slight part with Petty and Willis in the long business of resuscitating the young woman.

His fellowship at All Souls did not divorce him from Wadham. In October, 1663, he was paying rent for the chamber over Wadham Gateway which had once been part of the Warden’s lodging.

That he long held in affection the scene of his early scientific labours is shown by his having designed and presented to the College a clock, the face of which appears on the outside of the chapel. The works were only recently replaced, but the old mechanism is preserved in the chapel. In the upper corners of the face are two armorial devices, one of which appears to be the charges from Wren’s coat-of-arms. There is also amongst the college silver a fine sugar castor with an inscription which states that it was given by Wren in 1653. As, however, the maker’s mark dates the piece as being actually of 1720, it is likely that, as often happened, the old inscription on the 1653 piece was transferred to what in 1720 seemed a more modish design.

At Oxford he must have stayed off and on, after his marriage in 1669, because he retained the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy until April, 1673, when he finally settled in London.