Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.Phillimore, Lucy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Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.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. Margaret Pattens,[199] in Rood Lane, was finished in 1687: built of
brick and stone with a tall tower and graceful spire, and much enriched
by carving within. Its existence has been threatened, but it stands out
an honourable, though fortunately not at all a solitary example, of a
well-worked, and therefore well-filled, City church, and it is to be
hoped may defy its threatened destroyers.
Early in the following year came the trial of those Seven Bishops who
refused to publish in church the King's declaration of liberty of
conscience.[200]
It was perhaps the most unwise thing that James II. ever did, and as the
Bishops passed to the barge that was to take them to the Tower, rank
upon rank of kneeling people besought their blessing. It was an event to
move Wren greatly: he could remember when a child hearing of Archbishop
Laud's imprisonment, and the long years of Bishop Wren's captivity were
frequently cheered by his nephew's visits to the Tower. Most of those
who now passed to that ill-omened abode were his friends or
acquaintance. Bishop Turner of Ely was on the S. Paul's Commission;
Bishop Lloyd of S. Asaph while rector of S. Martin's had baptized Wren's
daughter and youngest son; Bishop White he had known in the days when he
was rector. Bishop Ken at Winchester, and Archbishop Sancroft had been
for years his steady friends. If he failed in dignity at one crisis,
there is abundant material in Sancroft's letters, and in the rest of his
life, to show he must have been a charming companion and capable of
inspiring sincere affection.
[_DEATH OF MRS. HOLDER._]
They remained in the Tower about a week, and on June 29 were
triumphantly acquitted. The story of their acquittal has been told once
for all by Lord Macaulay and need not be re-told here. London was full
of illuminations, the favourite device being seven candles--the tallest
central one representing the arch-bishop--and all the newly-hung bells
of the city were set ringing. Wren had private sorrows to hinder him
from entering into the public rejoicing: his only surviving sister,
Susan, died just at this time, and Wren must have been watching by her
on the very day of the Bishops' acquittal. A little later, he, and her
husband, Dr. William Holder, brought her body to the crypt of S. Paul's
and laid her there. The epitaph, on a marble monument, is written with
all the diffuseness of style common to those of that time, but is
touching from its real affection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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