Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.Phillimore, Lucy
History
Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.
Phillimore, Lucy
Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714 -- Biography; Wren family; Wren, Christopher, Sir, 1632-1723
His personal appearance is only known to us from pictures: it seems he
was 'thin and low of stature,' and it is recorded that when he was
building a hunting palace at Newmarket for Charles II., the King came to
see it, looked round, and was well satisfied with the general effect,
but said he thought the rooms were too low. Wren, who knew the King
well, and could hold his own when needful, looked up to the ceiling, and
said quietly: 'Sir, I think they are high enough.'
On hearing this, King Charles stooped till he was the architect's
height, crept about the room in this attitude, and said laughing, 'Ay,
Sir Christopher, I think _they are high enough_.'[170]
The beautiful S. Stephen's, Walbrook, was finished in 1679, and the
parishioners, aware that their church was a gem of no common order,
offered 'a purse of twenty guineas to the Lady of Sir Christopher Wren,
as a testimony of the regard that the parish has for the great care and
skill that Sir Christopher Wren showed in the rebuilding of our
church.'[171] Lady Wren did not long survive to share in her husband's
fame and to sympathise in his work.
Early in October she died and was buried in S. Martin's-in-the-Fields,
where Dr. Thomas Tenison[172] had succeeded Dr. Lloyd, when the latter
was made Bishop of S. Asaph. He, too, was a hard-working parish priest,
though neither so zealous nor so whole-hearted a churchman as the former
vicar. He communicated to Evelyn[173] his plan 'of erecting a library in
S. Martin's parish for the public use, and desired his assistance with
Sir Christopher Wren about the placing and structure thereof.' Dr.
Tenison said that he had 'between thirty and forty young men in orders
in his parish either governors to young gentlemen, or chaplains to
noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting taverns
or coffee-houses, told him they would employ their time better if they
had books.' Wren fell readily into a scheme so congenial as this, and
in a very few days the two friends were together at Dr. Tenison's making
a drawing and estimate of the library to be begun in the spring of that
same year.
[_POPISH PLOT._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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