Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.Phillimore, Lucy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Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.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
S. Mary Magdalene's included the parish of S. Gregory, the little church
which nestled by old S. Paul's, so that Fuller described the Cathedral
as 'the mother church, having a babe in her arms.'[194]
S. Bennet's, Gracechurch Street, or Grasschurch Street, as it was really
named, from a herb market formerly held hard by, is, or rather was, of
the same date. It was well placed at the corner of two streets, and
stood boldly out with a tall tower crowned with a cupola and slender
spire; the interior was full of carving and ornament. S. Bennet's is,
however, a thing of the past; the building is gone, the site desecrated,
and the memory of such an edifice alone survives in the names of the
streets which formerly led to and now usurp its place.
The little plain Church of S. Matthew, Friday Street, close pressed by
neighbouring houses, is the last completed in this year. Obscure as the
street where it stands may have been, it was full of associations for
Wren. In Friday Street was the house where his aunt Anna lived, and
where his uncle Matthew 'lay,' when summoned to that memorable
conference with Bishop Andrewes. Hard by in the parish of S. Peter's,
Eastcheap, now incorporated with that of S. Matthew, Christopher's
merchant grandfather had lived and died, and there his own father had
been born. S. Peter's churchyard was preserved, and its single
plane-tree is carefully protected.
[_COMPLAINTS FROM WINCHESTER._]
S. Matthew's has a less pleasant association: the living was for a time
held by the notorious Henry Burton,[195] the friend and ally of Prynne.
Burton was at first designed to accompany the Prince of Wales to Spain,
but doubts of his principles arising, he was rejected and dismissed from
his attendance as the Prince's chaplain. This formed one strong motive
for the bitter spite he bore to the church of his ordination. It is
likely also that he stirred Prynne's malice against Bishop Wren, who
appears to have been Burton's successor in the vacant chaplaincy.
The lesser details of the Surveyor-General's work must this year have
been a burden. There were complaints from Winchester, where the sudden
stoppage of the buildings and plans for the palace caused great
inconvenience; a complaint from Catherine Barton, the beautiful niece of
Sir Isaac Newton, widow of Colonel Barton, who sold her farm to Charles
II., and by the trickery of the agent never received her money; and a
complaint of the same kind from Sir Richard Tichbourne's son. Sir
Christopher examined both these cases carefully, and compelled the agent
to submit, and to satisfy the parties. Then there were troubles with the
Duke of Buckingham and the 'chaos' he had made in Spring Gardens, that
chaos so vividly described in 'Peveril of the Peak.' Nobody but Wren
could give the estimates for the new stables at S. James's Palace, or
order the new planting at Hampton Court and in Greenwich Park, or
secure the proper tithes for the Rector of S. Thomas's, Winchester.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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