S. Mary Magdalene’s, Fish Street,[192] is more after Wren’s usual manner, with its good proportions, its highly ornamented round-headed windows, its stone balustrade and solid square stone tower, with the little steeple rising from it on seven steps. Within, carving in ‘right oak’ was bestowed with no sparing hand, especially in the altar-piece. And here one may say that, while defects in church arrangement, such as galleries, pews, and the like, are invariably laid on Sir Christopher and said to be the inevitable concomitants of his style, it should be borne in mind that in many and many an instance the churchwardens during the eighteenth century repewed and ‘beautified’ the churches which Wren had left as completed; in what style, and on what principle one can readily guess. It should be remembered also that an ‘altar-piece,’ as the old books call it, was an invariable part of his design. If there was rich carving, if there was black and white marble, he placed it there; the altar was the principal part of the church in his eyes, even though he did not often avail himself of the dignity given by a flight of steps. The close altar rails which are now not admired, were, it must be remembered, ordered by Archbishop Laud to protect the Holy Table from profanation, and were always so placed by Wren.

S. Mary Magdalene’s included the parish of S. Gregory, the little church which nestled by old S. Paul’s, so that Fuller described the Cathedral as ‘the mother church, having a babe in her arms.’[194]

S. Bennet’s, Gracechurch Street, or Grasschurch Street, as it was really named, from a herb market formerly held hard by, is, or rather was, of the same date. It was well placed at the corner of two streets, and stood boldly out with a tall tower crowned with a cupola and slender spire; the interior was full of carving and ornament. S. Bennet’s is, however, a thing of the past; the building is gone, the site desecrated, and the memory of such an edifice alone survives in the names of the streets which formerly led to and now usurp its place.

The little plain Church of S. Matthew, Friday Street, close pressed by neighbouring houses, is the last completed in this year. Obscure as the street where it stands may have been, it was full of associations for Wren. In Friday Street was the house where his aunt Anna lived, and where his uncle Matthew ‘lay,’ when summoned to that memorable conference with Bishop Andrewes. Hard by in the parish of S. Peter’s, Eastcheap, now incorporated with that of S. Matthew, Christopher’s merchant grandfather had lived and died, and there his own father had been born. S. Peter’s churchyard was preserved, and its single plane-tree is carefully protected.

S. Matthew’s has a less pleasant association: the living was for a time held by the notorious Henry Burton,[195] the friend and ally of Prynne. Burton was at first designed to accompany the Prince of Wales to Spain, but doubts of his principles arising, he was rejected and dismissed from his attendance as the Prince’s chaplain. This formed one strong motive for the bitter spite he bore to the church of his ordination. It is likely also that he stirred Prynne’s malice against Bishop Wren, who appears to have been Burton’s successor in the vacant chaplaincy.

The lesser details of the Surveyor-General’s work must this year have been a burden. There were complaints from Winchester, where the sudden stoppage of the buildings and plans for the palace caused great inconvenience; a complaint from Catherine Barton, the beautiful niece of Sir Isaac Newton, widow of Colonel Barton, who sold her farm to Charles II., and by the trickery of the agent never received her money; and a complaint of the same kind from Sir Richard Tichbourne’s son. Sir Christopher examined both these cases carefully, and compelled the agent to submit, and to satisfy the parties. Then there were troubles with the Duke of Buckingham and the ‘chaos’ he had made in Spring Gardens, that chaos so vividly described in ‘Peveril of the Peak.’ Nobody but Wren could give the estimates for the new stables at S. James’s Palace, or order the new planting at Hampton Court and in Greenwich Park, or secure the proper tithes for the Rector of S. Thomas’s, Winchester.

Again, there was Verrio the painter’s account for work done at Whitehall and Windsor to be examined. For the chapel at Whitehall Verrio demanded 1,250l., and, says Wren, ‘I suppose when the rest of the ceiling and walls are finished, as they ought to be, it may fully deserve it.’ The whole bill was 2,050l., of which Verrio had received already more than 1,400l., so that he may be reckoned as fortunate.

It is not wonderful that in 1686, Wren attended no meeting of the Society. Two churches were finished this year: S. Clement’s, East Cheap, and S. Mary’s, Abchurch, in Cannon Street.

S. Clement’s, with its square tower and balustrade, has within a great deal of fine oak carving, and its ceiling adorned with one great circle with an outer line of curious fretwork. Bishop Pearson was rector before the Fire, and the famous treatise on the Nicene Creed is dedicated to his parishioners there.

S. Mary’s, with its quaint little round windows and flat-topped roof, is not externally beautiful, but within it is one of the gems which Wren bestowed on out-of-the-way nooks: its cupola[196] is gracefully supported on eight arches and pendentives, the east end is rich with Gibbons’ carving of festoons of fruit, palm leaves and a pelican in her piety. Much handsome work has also been bestowed on the inside doorcases.

Wren’s promise to Evelyn to employ Gibbons was certainly redeemed; for, besides the works which have been glanced at, Gibbons was busied on the stalls of S. Paul’s choir, where, darkened but uninjured by time, his work stands out in all the peculiar grace and tenderness which his chisel could give to wood. The angels which cluster beneath the great organ seem themselves to be taking part in the music which flows from it, and are as unlike as possible to the lumps of marble or wood with which other hands too often deform a church, and which the old guide-books term ‘Cupids’!

Still, it is a physical impossibility that all the work which bears Gibbons’ name is by him and him only.

The fame of the Cathedral, its architect, and its carvings, was widely spread, and brought many from the country to seek for work on the new building. Of one of these a curious account remains.[197] A young man, named Philip Wood, of Sudbury, Suffolk, who had great skill in carving, came up to London to make, if he could, sufficient fortune to enable him to marry the daughter of his patron, a retired London merchant named Haybittle. After long waiting in London, without work, till his money was all but spent, he, remembering the rich wood work which abounded in the churches of his native Suffolk, bethought himself that in the Cathedral, whose progress he daily watched, ‘they would surelie put carvings.’ The foreman to whom he spoke repulsed him, saying ‘We want no carpenters here.’ Undiscouraged, the young man came again day after day for a week, till at length Sir Christopher noticed him, and learning from the foreman that he was ‘a country fellow who troubled them to give him some of the carving to do,’ beckoned to Wood to come and speak to him. As the young man approached full of hope, he said, ‘Friend, you want carving work—what have you been used to carve?’ At this critical, long-desired moment the poor youth lost his presence of mind, and instead of mentioning the ‘sundry figures of lions and elephants’ that he had carved for Mr. Haybittle’s house, stammered out, ‘Please your worship, I have been used to carve troughs.’ ‘Troughs!’ said Sir Christopher; ‘then carve me as a specimen of your skill, a sow and pigs (it will be something in your line), and bring it to me this day week. I shall be here.’ So he went away, with a smile at the presumption which could aspire to step straight from such work to that of adorning S. Paul’s.

Distracted at his own folly and the loud laughter of the workpeople, Wood rushed back to his lodging, and but for the kind advice of his Quaker landlady, would have given up all for lost. She wisely told him to take Wren at his word and carve the best sow and pigs that he could make.

He obeyed her exactly, spent his last guinea on a block of pear-wood, and wrought with all his might to get it ready by the appointed day. Sir Christopher was showing the building to a party of friends, but as soon as he saw Wood with his carving hidden in an apron, he beckoned him forward. Wood produced his carving; Wren looked at it a moment in silence, and then said, ‘I engage you, young man; attend at my office to-morrow forenoon.’ Shortly afterwards he came to Wood again and said, ‘Mr. Addison[198] wishes to keep your carving, and requests me to give you ten guineas for it;’ then with his gentle courtesy, he added, ‘Young man, I fear I did you some injustice, but a great national work is entrusted to me, and it is my solemn duty to mind that no part of the work falls into inefficient hands. Mind and attend me to-morrow.’ Wood was employed for seven years in the Cathedral, and received considerable sums of money; and it is pleasant to know that he did marry Hannah Haybittle.

Thus some of his work is in S. Paul’s, and to him London streets were indeed paved with gold. Yet one cannot but think sadly, for one who thus succeeded, what numbers then and now come full of hope, to the great city, and without help or friends lose their all, and are left without even the means of returning. To the number of these the House of Charity, which occupies one corner of Wren’s once handsome Soho Square, can bear but too true a testimony.

CHAPTER XI.
1687–1696.

Wren’s parliamentary career was soon interrupted, for King James dissolved, in 1687, an assembly which had done so little to forward his views.

Church building went on apace. S. Andrew’s, Holborn, which, though the fire had not reached it, was in a ruinous state, was rebuilt and made a large handsome stone church, with an interior very like that of S. James’s, Westminster. The tower was merely repaired and not rebuilt.

Christ Church, Newgate, on the site of the old Franciscan Monastery of Grey Friars, had formerly been a magnificent edifice: the choir only was rebuilt by Wren, and sufficed to make a large parish church, which was filled with handsome carving; a graceful pillared steeple was added in 1704.

S. Margaret Pattens,[199] in Rood Lane, was finished in 1687: built of brick and stone with a tall tower and graceful spire, and much enriched by carving within. Its existence has been threatened, but it stands out an honourable, though fortunately not at all a solitary example, of a well-worked, and therefore well-filled, City church, and it is to be hoped may defy its threatened destroyers.

Early in the following year came the trial of those Seven Bishops who refused to publish in church the King’s declaration of liberty of conscience.[200]

It was perhaps the most unwise thing that James II. ever did, and as the Bishops passed to the barge that was to take them to the Tower, rank upon rank of kneeling people besought their blessing. It was an event to move Wren greatly: he could remember when a child hearing of Archbishop Laud’s imprisonment, and the long years of Bishop Wren’s captivity were frequently cheered by his nephew’s visits to the Tower. Most of those who now passed to that ill-omened abode were his friends or acquaintance. Bishop Turner of Ely was on the S. Paul’s Commission; Bishop Lloyd of S. Asaph while rector of S. Martin’s had baptized Wren’s daughter and youngest son; Bishop White he had known in the days when he was rector. Bishop Ken at Winchester, and Archbishop Sancroft had been for years his steady friends. If he failed in dignity at one crisis, there is abundant material in Sancroft’s letters, and in the rest of his life, to show he must have been a charming companion and capable of inspiring sincere affection.

They remained in the Tower about a week, and on June 29 were triumphantly acquitted. The story of their acquittal has been told once for all by Lord Macaulay and need not be re-told here. London was full of illuminations, the favourite device being seven candles—the tallest central one representing the arch-bishop—and all the newly-hung bells of the city were set ringing. Wren had private sorrows to hinder him from entering into the public rejoicing: his only surviving sister, Susan, died just at this time, and Wren must have been watching by her on the very day of the Bishops’ acquittal. A little later, he, and her husband, Dr. William Holder, brought her body to the crypt of S. Paul’s and laid her there. The epitaph, on a marble monument, is written with all the diffuseness of style common to those of that time, but is touching from its real affection.

The crypt of S. Paul’s was of course the part of the building first finished. Long ago Wren had spoken of ‘the quantity of work to be done in the dark,’ and it certainly proved enormous. The crypt of S. Paul’s is one of the largest and most intricate that exists, extending under the entire church, not the choir only, as is the case in S. Peter’s at Rome. The dimness of a London atmosphere renders it hard to get much effect of light and shade, but on a clear day the curious twilight effect is striking. There are all the tombs which were preserved from the old cathedral, there are now the remains of some of our greatest dead, and there is the Church of S. Faith, the floor of which is now being slowly covered with a beautiful mosaic.[201]

When, however, Sir Christopher laid his sister there, all was empty and not fully complete; the cluster of pillars and arches that sustain the great dome with their massive strength must have been but newly finished.

Only one church was completed by Sir Christopher in this troubled year, that of S. Michael, Crooked Lane; a handsome stone church with a stately tower and spire. It contained the tomb of a famous city worthy, Sir William Walworth:

This association had no value in the eyes of the Corporation of London, with whom it might have weighed: they were as indifferent to this lesser reason as to the infinitely higher claim of consecrated ground, and in 1830 the church was swept away for the new London Bridge.

All through the year the relations between King James and his people were growing more and more strained. Messages were passed and repassed between many of the high officials and the Prince of Orange, and in their dread of the Church of Rome, the people forgot what they had suffered under the tyranny of the Puritan sects. Hurry and confusion were everywhere; as the year advanced the Prince of Orange’s landing was hourly reported on all parts of the coast. Too late King James took some of the measures which, taken earlier, might have saved all; and on November 5, 1688, the Prince landed at Brixham in Torbay.

For some time all was confusion and all private business was suspended. Early in the next year a convention was called of the Lords and Commons, and the crown offered to William and Mary. The Queen’s behaviour, the absence of even the show of feeling for her father, were much remarked on at the time and are a great stain on her memory. A Parliament was called on the 13th of February, to which Sir C. Wren was returned for the borough of New Windsor. His election was set aside for a technical error in the manner of his return, but he was instantly re-elected. It is evident from this that he took the new oath of allegiance, probably holding, with Evelyn and other honourable men, that King James had abdicated and that therefore the throne was vacant. The S. Paul’s commission was renewed, and amid all the changes the work there went on; making in its steady, undeviating progress, its unity of design, a fair type of the growth of the spiritual church, despite the sharp contrast apparently existing between the peaceful, regular growth of the material edifice, and the hindrances and trials that beset the spiritual one. Those were the days when some of the best and most learned churchmen, unable to reconcile the contradiction of the two oaths, lost high office, honours, and all prospects of worldly success by becoming ‘non-jurors.’ It should be borne in mind that it was on no doctrinal ground that they left the Communion of the Church in England, but simply because, considering James II. still as King, they could not honestly take an oath of allegiance to William as his successor, or attend services where an usurper was prayed for as the rightful sovereign.

It was a most grievous blow to the Church, by no means recovered from the struggle with Puritanism or from the semi-Puritan clergy she had been constrained to accept. Yet, in the midst of all these misfortunes, thus much at least was gained; men were forced to understand the true grounds of their position and to learn, as the Church in Scotland learnt by a sharper lesson, that State aid, and State protection, are not among the essentials of the Church. The misfortune of so many friends, and especially that of good Archbishop Sancroft, must greatly have moved Wren, and it is provoking that his grandson has given no intimation of his ancestor’s views, not even saying on which side he voted in the Convention Parliament, which offered the crown to William and Mary.

Wren certainly knew how to manage his Windsor constituents. He had erected from time to time several buildings there, among which was the Town Hall, built upon arches, with a wide vaulted space below, which is now used as the Corn Exchange.

When all was finished, the mayor and corporation came in state to inspect the new building, and to stamp with their approval another of the great architect’s works. Much seems to have been approved of, but one member of the municipality declared in alarm that the room above the vaulted space was inadequately supported and would one day fall in.

In vain Wren, who had built vault after vault and knew to a nicety what weight each of his arches would bear, explained the perfect security of the upper room; the anxious man could not be pacified and the architect promised to put two columns below. He did so, and the alderman was calmed, little knowing that Sir Christopher’s columns when complete had about half an inch of space between themselves and the ceiling they were supposed to support! Wren must many a time have laughed to himself when he passed that way.

Two other buildings of his, one of which is called ‘the Bank House,’ stand in Windsor not far from what are known as ‘The Hundred Steps.’ There is another house there of his design, now used by the freemasons and the volunteers. Wren sent his eldest son to Eton, where the boy was at this time, and afterwards to Pembroke College, where his name alone was a recommendation.

In 1689 Wren finished building the College of Physicians in Warwick Lane; as far as the confined space would admit, the front was handsome, but the dome and its ornament provoked the satire of Garth in the opening lines of his ‘Dispensary’:[203]

Whatever its exterior defects may have been, the theatre within was arranged with masterly skill so as to enable all the students to see and hear during the lectures and demonstration. The difficult science of acoustics was one to which Wren gave much attention, and his churches are, in this respect, very successful. The Physicians retained the college Wren built for them until very recent times, when they moved into the present building which does not adorn Trafalgar Square.

Not all the Halls belonging to the City Companies perished by the fire, though many suffered severely. Wren, and Jarman, the City Architect, rebuilt and repaired some seventy-nine of them.[205]

Of these, a large number have been altered or pulled down, but a few may be mentioned.

The Mercers’ Hall in Cheapside; the Grocers’, a portion of which was long used by the Bank of England; the Haberdashers’, where the rich ceiling was its great ornament; the Tallow Chandlers’, with its interior colonnade and its fountain; the Apothecaries’, one of the largest in the City; the Stationers’; and, last but not least, the Alderman’s Court adjoining Guildhall, rebuilt almost immediately after the fire; a very handsome room, rich in carving, and finely proportioned.

S. Edmund the King, in Lombard Street, was finished this year. The necessities of the site caused Wren to build it north and south, the altar being at the north end. The front to Lombard Street, the only part of the outside visible, is of stone and very picturesque with its belfry and little domed spire. The interior has been lately re-arranged with a wise treatment of the old work and carving. The ‘marble font possesses, like that of S. Mary Abchurch, a very beautiful canopied cover; it is in two stages, the lower being domed, and above are four seated figures of the Cardinal Virtues; it is railed in and is on the west side of the church.’[206]

S. Margaret’s, Lothbury, belongs to the same date, and was rebuilt of stone. Some years later Wren bestowed much rich wood carving on the interior. He chose the Corinthian style for this building and handled it with considerable skill.

Queen Mary, who had the Stuart love for genius, was invariably gracious and even friendly to Wren, with whom she held many a conversation on matters of art and science. He considered her to be very well versed in all these subjects and enjoyed discussing them freely with her. Queen Mary was much charmed with the situation of Cardinal Wolsey’s old palace of Hampton Court, and engaged Wren to make alterations there. The old buildings were accordingly in part pulled down and two sets of royal apartments built; Queen Mary, though she amused herself with planning the gardens and making suggestions, had yet the wisdom to defer to Wren’s better taste and knowledge. Her husband, with characteristic obstinacy, insisted on his own ideas, thereby dwarfing the cloisters and marring much of the architecture. It is, however, fair to say that King William always owned that the defects[207] were his, the merits, Wren’s; and these merits are very great, as anyone who knows the fine old palace with its rich red brick, its arcades, and the quaint formal gardens will readily allow. He built, at about the same time, the Pavilion and Ranger’s House in Bushey Park.

Kensington Palace was also under Wren’s hands. It had been the property of Lord Chancellor Finch, and was sold by his son to William III. Wren added another story to the old house, which forms the north front of the palace, and also built the south front. The defect of the building as seen at the end of the long avenue of Kensington Gardens is its want of height, but on a nearer approach this fault is much diminished. King William was in the midst of his Irish campaign while the work went on, but found time to send back repeated inquiries as to its progress, and complaints when that did not answer his expectations. There, five years later, Queen Mary died, to the regret of all her subjects, and even of her cold-hearted husband.

Nor were these the only palaces which Wren contrived for Queen Mary. That of Greenwich had been begun by Inigo Jones for Henrietta Maria, and a wing had been built for Charles II., but it had been left unfinished. Wren, who knew Greenwich well from his visits to the Observatory, and who took a great interest in sailors, observing the entire lack of any refuge for them in illness, proposed to Queen Mary the magnificent plan of making the palace into a seaman’s hospital. The Queen willingly entered into the idea, and proposed to add to the Queen’s House, as it was called, so as to make it a dwelling for herself, at the same time. Evelyn, Sir Stephen Fox and others, came readily into the scheme and contributed liberally. Wren’s contribution, though not in money, was a liberal one also; for he gave his time, labour, skill and superintendence, despite his innumerable other works.

The plans were prepared and money collected, but nothing was actually done until some years later.

Wren’s eldest son had in the meantime finished his Eton and Cambridge career and had obtained, by his father’s interest, the post, which must surely have been a sinecure! of Assistant Deputy Engrosser. He does not seem to have inherited any of the brilliant genius of his father, though apparently of very fair abilities and with much taste for antiquities. Far more like Sir Christopher was his daughter Jane, who shared his tastes and studies and took a vivid interest in his work. She added to her other accomplishments that of being a very skilful musician. She was never married, but remained all her life her father’s affectionate companion.

Wren’s old friend, Dr. Bathurst of Trinity College, Oxford, appealed to him, in the spring of 1692, for help in the buildings which were still going on there.

Wren’s answer comes promptly, and shows his generous readiness to help the schemes of others, no matter how pressing his own work was.

In the same year the Church of S. Andrew by the Wardrobe[209] was finished; recent alterations in the city have benefited this building; it now stands well above a flight of steps, with its square tower, and the red brick which contrives to be red and not black, and stone dressings.

Two years later Wren rebuilt All Hallows, Lombard Street, on an ancient foundation: outside it is one of his plainest and most solid churches, inside he spent upon it much rich work and curious carving both in stone and wood.

S. Michael Royal, College Hill, belongs to this same date, and was built under Wren’s directions by Edward Strong, his master-mason. It is a well-lit, handsome church with a tower at one corner, and contains an altar-piece of singular beauty, carved by Grinling Gibbons in ‘right wainscot oak.’ The old church was founded and made a collegiate church of S. Spiritus and S. Mary by no less a person than Sir Richard Whittington, three times Lord Mayor of London (1397, 1406, 1419), whose fame, with that of his cat, survives in the well-known story. He founded also another college, known as the Whittington College, and endowed it with a divinity lecture ‘for ever.’ Edward VI., however, suppressed both the colleges and the lecture, though the Whittington College was allowed partially to survive as almshouses for poor men. Whittington[210] was buried in this church, but his monument perished in the Fire.

In the following year Wren added a well-proportioned, peculiar steeple, the gift of the parishioners, to the little stone Church of S. Vedast[211] in Foster Lane, a church to which a painful interest now attaches from the recent persecution and imprisonment of its rector, the Rev. T. P. Dale.

The church was decorated, as was Wren’s custom, with fret-work, carving, and stucco, but is not otherwise remarkable.

S. Mary’s, Somerset, or Somers’hithe, was likewise finished in this year: a stone church with two aisles surmounted by a handsome cornice and balustrade; its great feature was the beautiful pinnacled tower, which, though the church is gone, still stands a perpetual memorial of that reckless disregard of God’s honour, which has counted any common want, any farthing of money, of more importance than the claims of His service, or than gifts solemnly offered to Him.[212]

The Cathedral meanwhile grew slowly, though many a hindrance annoyed its architect. The Parliament took part of the fabric money and applied it to the expenses of King William’s wars, so that, as Sir Christopher complained, his wings were clipt and the Church was deprived of its ornaments.[213] The organ was another annoyance. Sir Christopher’s wish and intention was to place the organ where it now is, on either side of the choir, in order to leave the vista clear from the west door to the altar, which in his design stood grandly raised under a handsome canopy. This was overruled, and the organ was to be placed in a gallery cutting right across the entrance of the choir. With his wonted philosophy, Wren bent his mind to reducing as much as possible the injury to the architectural effect, by keeping the pipes as low as he could. But in the builder of the organ, Bernard Smith, or ‘Father’ Smith, as he is called, Wren had a difficult person to deal with. Far from lowering the pipes, Smith made them higher than in his estimate, so that the case and ornaments had to be enlarged, and Sir Christopher complained bitterly that the Cathedral ‘was spoilt by that box of whistles.’ The rival organ builder, Renatus Harris, if indeed he was the author of an anonymous paper, called ‘Queries about the S. Paul’s Organ,[214] was not sparing in his criticisms. One query asks

This question is easy enough to answer, and fortunately Wren’s wishes have been at last fulfilled by that division of the organ, which now leaves the desired clear view from the great western doors to the altar. Harris, in 1712, proposed to erect a great organ over the west doors of the Cathedral,

Alas! at that time Wren’s approval was enough to determine the majority of the commission to reject any plan thus sanctioned, and Renatus Harris’s grand design survives on paper alone.

CHAPTER XII.
1697–1699.

One serious trouble and hindrance in all public works was the state of the coinage. The money had been so clipped and defaced, that no coin was worth its professed value, and for some time the expedients used by the Government failed to lighten the pressure. In paying such an army of workmen as those employed about S. Paul’s, the inconvenience must have amounted to positive distress. Scattered here and there through Evelyn’s diary are many references to the ‘great confusion and distraction’ it occasioned.

A sudden subsidence of a large part of the ground at Portland, close to the quarries set apart for Wren’s use, caused an inconvenient delay in bringing the stone to London, but yet the work progressed, and on December 2nd, 1697, the choir was opened for service.

It was the occasion of the thanksgiving for the peace of Ryswick, which, though it brought little glory to England, was yet heartily welcomed as the close of a long and exhausting war.

King William went to Whitehall, and heard Bishop Burnet’s flattering sermon, while Bishop Compton preached for the first time in the new S. Paul’s. No report of his sermon has come down to us. The choir was not yet enriched with the carvings of Gibbons; but the pulpit appears to have been very remarkable in its way: Sir Christopher had placed it on wheels, perhaps with a design of using it afterwards, for services under the dome, not unlike those we are now familiar with.

A pulpit on wheels was a novelty, which gave rise, we can well believe, to many squibs, one of which has been preserved.

A faithful copy of the Verses, lately fastened upon the pulpit of S. Paul’s Choir.

TO THE ARCHITECT UPON HIS HAPPY INVENTION OF A PULPIT ON
WHEELS FOR THE USE OF S. PAUL’S CHOIR.

It hardly needs the hint that these lines were affixed to ‘the Dean’s side of the pulpit,’ to read in them a bitter satire on Dean Sherlock, whose sudden change of front relative to the non-jurors, and acceptance of the Deanery of S. Paul’s, laid him open to the grave suspicion of having acted from interested motives, and stirred up much vehement animosity. A spirited, if not an impartial, account of this controversy, is given by Lord Macaulay.[216]

Sir Christopher’s remarkable invention appears to have survived the laughter against it, and to have remained in the Cathedral until 1803.

The vaults of S. Paul’s were opened shortly after this thanksgiving to receive the body of Dr. White, the non-juring Bishop of Peterborough, whose funeral was attended by Bishop Turner, Bishop Lloyd and forty nonjuring clergymen.

At the beginning of the following year, as soon as travelling was possible, Wren sent his son Christopher to Paris; not indeed with the intention of his making that grand tour which a few years later was supposed to finish a young gentleman’s education, but that he might acquire a little experience and knowledge of the world. The young man, evidently, had other ideas, spent a good deal of his money, and then wrote home to his family a letter complaining in true English fashion, of the climate and the cookery of France, and asking leave to continue his journey to Italy. Sir Christopher’s reply has been preserved; and in its folio sheet and brown ink exists in the ‘Parentalia.’ It is, I think, so charming as to double one’s regret that so very few of his letters have been preserved.