There are many documents to show that Wren dealt assiduously and successfully with the daily task of “lodgings” and other trivialities belonging to the interminable routine of his post, but it is evident that Hugh May would have done that and no more. It was an escape. For the first two years of Wren’s new appointment as Denham’s assistant, he received no commissions for public works, and when the King, at the close of the war for Tangier, offered him the task of designing the mole and fortifications he wisely declined on grounds of health. The letter of invitation was, it is worth noting, written by his cousin, Matthew Wren, the bishop’s son, who was secretary to Hyde, the Lord Chancellor. Wren’s decision lost him a good salary and risked the reversion of Sir John Denham’s post of Surveyor-General, which was promised him if he would go to Tangier; but we may be thankful that he resisted even so honourable an exile, and he seems not to have suffered by it. His early labours at old St. Paul’s will be described in the proper chapter, but his first original work in architecture dates from early in 1663, if we except a doorway at Ely Cathedral, of the same year. On April 29 he submitted to the Royal Society his model for a theatre to be built at Oxford for the public acts of the University. The Sheldonian struck a note that was to become typical of Wren’s work, for he was not afraid to adventure on a flat ceiling with a span of no less than 68 feet. It was a cunning piece of construction and covered in a chamber of great interest but of uncertain design. In the same year, 1663, was begun the Chapel of Pembroke College, Cambridge, a thank-offering made by his uncle, Bishop Matthew Wren, for coming safely through his long imprisonment. Pembroke Chapel is a fine achievement of much greater artistic interest than the Sheldonian, and, being completed long before the theatre, was no doubt the model to which people turned, in Wren’s early days of architecture, as the proof of his real capacity in his new profession. In 1665 he was called in by Trinity College, Oxford, to design a new inner court with the definite instruction that he was to build a quadrangle. Wren protested that this idea was wrong, but showed his skill in dealing with troublesome clients thus early. Writing to Dr. Bathurst, then President of Trinity, he said: “I am convinced with Machiavel, or some unlucky fellow, ’tis no matter whether I quote true, that _the world is generally governed by words_. I perceive the name of a quadrangle will carry with it those whom you say may possibly be your benefactors, though it be much the worse situation for the chambers, and the beauty of the college, and of the particular pile of building ... but, to be sober, if any body, as you say, will pay for a quadrangle, there is no dispute to be made; let them have a quadrangle, though a lame one, somewhat like a three-legged table.”