In this same year Wren was made Controller of the Works, for which he received a salary of 9_l._ 2_s._ 6_d._ a year; not a very magnificent sum considering that a good deal of petty work and cares went with the office. It was necessary to see that this person had not incroached on the castle stables, or that person on the castle ditch; to measure and plan, and settle little quarrels and disputes in a way infinitely tormenting, one would think, to a man who had already such enormous works to consider. But Wren's genius was a patient one, and had a great grasp of details; he dealt with point after point as it arose, and no one seems ever to have complained of his breaking an engagement or neglecting to settle their difficulties. While this work was going on all London was startled by the tidings of Charles II.'s sudden illness and death, when all the luxury of the Court was at its height. With all his grave faults, the King's death caused considerable grief throughout England; to both Wren and Evelyn he had been always kind and friendly, and both looked with great anxiety to the reign of his successor. The Royal Society certainly lost a steady friend in Charles II. and was soon to see its court favour fade away. It was, however, much occupied with a discussion between Newton and Robert Hooke concerning the planetary motions. The question was one which deeply interested Wren, and which hitherto he had not been able to answer. As he and Hooke were walking together--Wren, whom one can never imagine but with all the courtesy and refinement of a finished gentleman, and Hooke half a miser, utterly slovenly, and jealous of any rising fame--they were met by Dr. Halley, an astronomer of some note even then, who was struggling with this problem and confessed that he had hitherto failed. Wren promised a book worth forty shillings to whoever should solve the problem, whereupon Hooke declared he understood it from Kepler's 'Law of Periods and Distances,' and would show his solution some day to Wren; this he never did, and very soon Newton published his 'Principia,'[191] in which he solved this problem, acknowledging freely that Wren and Halley had independently deduced the law of gravity from Kepler's second law. He had a great quarrel with Hooke, the less to be wondered at, as, excepting Sir Christopher, Hooke quarrelled with everybody and was a philosopher of the sourest type. In 1685 Sir Christopher was returned to Parliament for the borough of Plympton S. Maurice, in Devonshire, a Parliament in which his cousin Charles also sat. The elections in Devonshire are supposed to have been specially influenced by the Court.