The _Parentalia or Memoirs of the Wrens_, by Christopher, the son of Sir Christopher, is the main source of information about the great architect. It is as ill-constructed a book as one may meet, yet it possesses a charm of its own. Christopher’s idea of a biography seems to have been to print notes, letters, and discourses as they came to his hand, without any thread of text to give coherence to very diverse material. The result is a rather forbidding publication, which demands of the reader no little resolution. The _Parentalia_ deals not only with Sir Christopher, but with his father, Dean Christopher, and his uncle, Bishop Matthew. The father, as Registrar of the Order of the Garter and Dean of Windsor, and the uncle, as Bishop of Ely, filled no small parts in the Church history of their day; but we are little concerned with them here, except as they came into Sir Christopher’s life. This ill-compiled miscellany when completed by the younger Christopher, who died in 1747, was published by his son Stephen in 1750. It served as a mine for the _Lives_ by Elmes, Miss Phillimore, and Miss Milman, and has necessarily been consulted freely by all who have made Wren the subject of their pens. In 1903 that part of the _Parentalia_ which referred to Sir Christopher was reprinted by Mr. C. R. Ashbee at the Essex House Press, and twenty fine drawings of Wren’s churches by E. H. New were reproduced. It is finely printed, and Mr. Ernest J. Enthoven’s editing ensured an accurate transcript of the original edition as published by Stephen Wren. To the kindness of Mr. New and Mr. Enthoven I owe the permission to reproduce here some of the former’s drawings. Stephen Wren was unmarried, but contrived to beget a daughter, Margaret, who took the name of Wren. For her a copy of the _Parentalia_ was bound sumptuously in red leather, tooled and gilt. It bears the initials “M. W.” and Margaret’s autograph appears on the title-page. Interleaved in this delightful and unique volume are many manuscripts, autograph letters, and engravings. Some are in connection with the Dean and the Bishop, but most have to do with Sir Christopher. About 1908 I became acquainted with Mrs. Pigott, _née_ Catherine Wren-Hoskyns, the last surviving direct descendant of Sir Christopher. She was then old and in ill-health, and contemplated bequeathing the heirloom copy to a distant collateral. I persuaded her to allow me to collect a suitable sum of money which she might bequeath instead, and the story of that piece of mendicancy, with a list of the people who generously backed me, is deposited with the heirloom copy in the Library of the Royal Institute of British Architects.