profered credit by the same merchant he uses for his son, and I will thinke of it, but before I change, you must make up your account with your merchant, and send it to me. My hearty service to young Mr. Strong and tell him I am obliged to him for your sake. I bless God for your health and pray for the continuance of it through all adventures till it pleases Him to restore you to me and your Sister and friends who wish the same as doth Your most affectionate Father CHR. WREN. Poor Billy continues in his indisposition and I fear is lost to me and the world to my great discomfort and your future trouble. It would seem that young Strong, the son of Wren’s famous master-builder, was the boy’s bear-leader. Wren is rather fretful with his son, and rather melancholy as to his own health, but he was then only sixty-six, and was to live until past ninety. In a different tone is the letter to young Christopher from his father, dated October 11, 1705, the original of which is also in the heirloom _Parentalia_. There is no longer the note of rebuke which followed the young man’s extravagance in Paris. His taste had changed, and Holland wooed him rather to the buying of good books, a traffic the old man cannot disapprove. Poor Billy managed to live another forty years, despite Wren’s desponding postscript. John Evelyn stood godfather on June 17, 1679, “to a sonn of Sir Christopher Wren, surveyor of His Majesty’s buildings, that most excellent and learned person (Evelyn never misses a chance of praising Wren), with Sir William Fermor, and my Lady Viscountess Newport, wife of the Treasurer of the Household.” This was poor Billy, whose sponsors show that his father was the intimate friend of Court personages. William seems to have been very delicate, if not defective. When Sir Christopher died he did not bequeath anything to William, but left him in the charge of Christopher. William lived on until March, 1738-9, and was thus close on sixty when he died. His elder brother, Christopher, survived until August 24, 1747, when he was seventy-two. That Wren lived on affectionate terms with his son Christopher may be assumed not only from the terms of his will, but from his having sunk most of his fortune in an estate for Christopher’s benefit. His own connection with Wroxall Abbey, Warwickshire, can be set out in few words.