[Gutenberg 42007] • Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times / With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.

Excerpt:

ANCESTRY OF THE WRENS—MATTHEW WREN—TRAVELS TO SPAIN WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES—INTERVIEW AT WINCHESTER HOUSE—BISHOP ANDREWES’ PROPHECY—WREN MADE MASTER OF PETERHOUSE—BISHOP OF HEREFORD—CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DORE—OFFICE OF RECONCILIATION—FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS AND THE NORWICH WEAVERS—RESULT OF ‘A LECTURER’S’ DEPARTURE.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream

Bears all its sons away.

The name of Christopher Wren is no doubt familiar to the great majority of English people, and to Londoners especially; but it is to many of them little more than a name with which is connected S. Paul’s Cathedral and a now, alas! diminished number of City churches. Yet the great architect’s ninety-one years of life were passed among some of the most stirring times of our history, in which his family played no inconsiderable part, and he himself was not only the best architect of his day, but was also the foremost in many other sciences. A singularly patient and far-seeing intellect aiding a strong religious faith enabled him ‘to keep the even tenour of his way’ through a life of incessant labour and considerable temptation. It has been truly said,

‘It seems almost like a defect in such a biography as that of Wren, that it presents nothing of that picturesque struggle, in the rise from a lower to a higher condition, which has so commonly attended the conquest of genius over difficulty.’[2]

Far otherwise, the Wren family was an old one, tracing its descent from the Danes; one of the house fought in Palestine under Richard I., and his fame long survived, as in Charles I.’s time it was quoted against one of the knight’s descendants.

In 1455, during the reign of Henry VI., in the Black Book (or register) of the Order of the Garter, mention is made of a Wren who probably belonged to this family:—

‘The Lord of Winchester, Prelate of the order, performed the Divine Service proper for S. George the Martyr, but the Abbots Towyrhill and Medmenham being absent, were not excused, in whose stead Sir William Stephyns read the gospel and Sir W. Marshal the epistle, both of them singing men of the king’s choir. The dean of the same choir presented the gospel to the sovereigne to be kissed, and the next day celebrated Mass for the deceased, Sir J. Andevere and John Wrenne assisting in the reading of the epistle and gospel. The reader of the gospel, after censing the reader of the epistle, reverently tendered the heart of S. George to the sovereigne and knights in order to be kissed.’

The heart of S. George was presented by Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, on his admission to the Order of the Garter.

The spelling of ‘Wrenne’ was a very common form of the family name, and it seems very likely that John Wrenne belonged to this family, who were much connected with S. George’s, Windsor.

OLD FAMILY MOTTO.

William Wren was in Henry VIII.’s time the head of the family; his younger brother Geoffrey, who was a priest, was of Henry VII.’s privy council, and was confessor both to him and to Henry VIII. He held the living of S. Margaret’s, Fish Street, in the City of London, from 1512 till his death.[3] Geoffrey Wren was also a canon of S. George’s at Windsor, where he founded the seventh stall. There he died in 1527, and was buried in the north aisle of the chapel under a brass bearing his effigy in the Garter mantle, with this inscription at his feet: