Sir Christopher Wren Part 6

'I delivered this Pet.i.tion in ye Parliament Howse before they sate, Jan. 23d. 1647.' (O. S.)

[_G.o.d'S PRISONER._]

A copy of this Pet.i.tion he sent to the Deputy Chancellor. It would seem to have startled the Knights, and Dr. Wren evidently wishes the way smoothed. His letter, also an autograph, is headed

'Copye of my letter sent to the Deputie Chancelor for removal of some scruples w^{ch} arose among ye Knights of ye Order before ye Time of their meeting in Council.'

'Honble Chancelor.--I have no pticular aime in this my humble suite to ye Lords of ye Order to propose any private or Personal Interest of my owne, or any other man's, much lesse to engage their Honors in anything that may seeme to contest w^{th} or dissent from ye Highe Court of Parliament wherein they now sit & from whence I am not ignorant ye Most Honble Society of ye Most n.o.ble Order receaved as at first Life and Being soe now holds its establishment. My humble & earnest desires, are to represent such Things only as I humbly conceave may nearly concerne ye Honor & Interests of their Most n.o.ble Order. To w^{ch} (next as yr. Selfe Honored Sir) I am by oath obliged: (to preserve ye Honor thereof, & of all in itt to my utmost Power) For zeale of this duty w^{ch} upon ye intimation of what I here profess, I presume they will not reject, I beseech you to give y^m this a.s.surance as yf itt were from ye tender of my owne mouthe, who am at this period G.o.d's Prisoner, & under Him,

'Yr servant, C. W.'

Whether the Dean succeeded in gathering the Knights together, and what the 'Things nearly concerning their Honor' may have been if they were _not_, as the letter implies they were not, the King's deliverance, the 'Parentalia' does not say, neither does it give any hint of the illness to which the end of the Dean's letter appears to point.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] _Vide supra_, p. 17.

[33] R. Neile, successively Bishop of Rochester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Durham and Winchester, and Archbishop of York, died 1640. G.o.dwin speaks strongly of his loyalty to Church and King, and the hatred borne to him by the Puritans.--_Praesul.

Ang._

[34] 'The Commons not being able to come at their intended alterations in the Church while the Bench of Bishops remained entire in the House of Peers, formed several schemes to divide them.'--_Hist. of the Puritans_, vol. ii. p. 388. Neale.

[35] 'We, poor souls,' says Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, in his _Hard Measure_, 'who little thought we had done anything that might deserve a chiding, are now called to our knees at the bar, and charged severally with high treason, being not a little astonished at the suddenness of this crimination compared with the perfect innocency of our own intentions, which were only to bring us to our due places in Parliament with safety and speed, without the least purpose of any man's offence; but now traitors we are in all the haste, and must be dealt with accordingly. For on December 30, in all the extremity of frost at eight o'clock on the dark evening, are we voted to the Tower; only two of our number had the favour of the Black Rod, by reason of their age, which though desired by a n.o.ble lord on my behalf would not be granted; wherein I acknowledge and bless the gracious Providence of my G.o.d, for had I been gratified I had been undone both in body and purse; the rooms being strait, and the expense beyond the reach of my estate.'--_Annals of England_, p. 420.

[36] _Biographical History of England_, vol. ii. p. 157. Grainger.

[37] _Vide Life of Barnevelde_, vol. i. p. 408. Motley.

[38] P. 26.

[39] 'Certainly,' says Nalson, 'notwithstanding this black accusation (he is speaking of the 'fifty painful ministers'), there cannot be a greater demonstration of the innocence of this worthy prelate than the very articles; and that this accusation wanted proof to carry it further than a bare accusation, and a commitment to the Tower, where, with the courage and patience of a primitive Christian, he continued prisoner till the year 1660.'--_History of the Puritans_, vol.

ii. p. 223. Grey, Examination of Neale's.

[40] It is curious that nearly as violent an attack was made a hundred years later upon Bishop Butler (the author of the _a.n.a.logy_), because, when Bishop of Bristol, he put up a plain, inlaid, black marble cross in the Chapel of the Palace there. He died 1752.

[41] The Rubric before the Prayer of Consecration in the Prayer Book of 1559-1604, was simply:--

'Then the Priest, standing up, shall say as followeth.'

The first rubric of position at the beginning of the service had placed him 'at the north side of the Table.' For a full and very interesting defence of Bishop Wren, see _Wors.h.i.+p in the Church of England_, Right Honourable A. B. B. Hope, and, _Dean Howson 'Before the Table,'_ by the same author, in the _Church Quarterly Review_, January, 1876.

[42] South's _Sermons_, vol. v. p. 45, ed. 1727.

[43] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 267, ed. 1724.

[44] See _Appendix I._

[45] Dr. Wilkins published a book (_A Discovery of a New World_), concerning the art of flying, in which he said he did not question but in the next age it will be as usual to hear a man call for his wings when he is going a journey, as it is now to call for his boots. The d.u.c.h.ess of Newcastle objecting to Dr.

Wilkins the want of baiting places on the way to his New World, he expressed his surprise that the objection should be made by a lady who had all her life been employed in building castles in the air. (_The Guardian_, No. 112. Addison.) This scheme does not seem to have reached the length of an experiment!

[46] A most zealous Royalist; King Charles called him 'my plain-dealing chaplain,' because Dr. Hudson told him the truth when others would not. He was murdered at Woodcroft House, Northamptons.h.i.+re, 1648. _Desiderata Curiosa_, p. 378. Peck.

[47] _Annals of England_, p. 432.

[48] i.e. the art of dial-making.

[49] _Lives of the Gresham Professors._ Ward, p. 96.

[50] _Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 290.

CHAPTER IV.

1646-1658.

DEATH OF MRS. M. WREN--KING CHARLES MURDERED--A MONOTONOUS WALK--INVENTIONS--A DREAM--ALL SOULS' FELLOWs.h.i.+P--BEGINNINGS OF ROYAL SOCIETY--ASTRONOMY--AN OFFER OF RELEASE--THE CYCLOID--CROMWELL'S FUNERAL--LETTERS FROM LONDON.

La Royaute seule, depuis vingt ans, n'avait pas ete mise a l'epreuve; seule elle avait encore a faire des promesses auxquelles on n'eut pas ete trompe.... On y revenait enfin, apres tant d'agitations comme au toit paternel qu'a fait quitter l'esperance et ou ramene la fatigue.--_Monk_, par M. Guizot, p. 69.

A heavy sorrow fell upon the imprisoned Bishop of Ely at the close of 1646. His wife was worn out by grief for the loss of her children and anxiety for her husband, for whom Laud's fate seemed but too probable, and the Bishop's diary records that on 'December 8, 1646, Ad Christum evolavit pia anima conjugis E. media post 5^{vum} matutinam.'[51] The diary contains no remark, no murmur, though this loss left Bishop Wren very desolate and full of anxiety for his seven surviving children, of whom the eldest, Matthew, was but seventeen. Upon such troubles as these prison life must have pressed heavily, and if Bishop Wren's captivity was half as strict as was that of Dr. John Barwick, who was consigned to the Tower in 1650,[52] it was a sufficient hards.h.i.+p. Every rumour which reached his ears from the tumultuous world outside must have added to his grief. The King's affairs grew more desperate, and the shadow of Cromwell loomed larger and larger. Probably the Bishop did not expect a long captivity. It must have come to his ears that in the proposed treaty of Newport (1648), 'the persons only who were to expect no pardon were the Princes Rupert and Maurice; James, Earl of Derby; John, Earl of Bristol; William, Earl of Newcastle; Francis, Lord Cottington; George, Lord Digby; Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,' and some fifty others.[53]

Condemned thus without a trial, without a chance of his vindication being known, the Bishop betook himself to prayer, and to writing a commentary on the Holy Scriptures, a task for which, as a fine Hebrew, Greek and Latin scholar, he was well qualified. In this work he found solace and support, and quietly waited until the tyranny should be overpast.

There is no need to recall in detail the thickcoming sorrows of that time; it is but too easy to guess how doubly galling imprisonment must have been to Bishop Wren when the royalists who were at liberty were straining every nerve, exhausting every device to save if possible their beloved King from his fate. In vain--at length came the fatal January 30 (1649), and King Charles, attended by Bishop Juxon, walked to the scaffold and uttered his final words, 'I have a good cause and a gracious G.o.d on my side; I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.' There was one of the King's loyal subjects who, we may well believe, envied Bishop Juxon his privilege of attendance on his master to the last--Bishop Wren, who had been with him in bright early days, had attended him when Prince of Wales, on his romantic journey to Spain, and, when the weight of the corruptible crown first came upon the prince's head, had accompanied him on the journey to Scotland for his coronation at Scone, who ever since then had been so trusted by him.

No word of his own grief, of his unavailing longing to see his King once more, and once more kiss his hand, is expressed in the brief record in his diary. It is simply 'A sanguinibus, O Deus!'

[_A MONOTONOUS WALK._]

Horror at the crime, at the stain of innocent blood which now defiled his country, seems to have swallowed up all expression of personal feeling. By degrees the rigour of his imprisonment appears to have been a little relaxed, and by the connivance of his gaoler he obtained the opportunity, rarely granted to prisoners, of walking upon the leads of one of the towers. Thither he daily went for his exercise, and, says the writer of the 'Parentalia,'

'by a just computation, he walked round the world. The earth being affirmed to be 216,000 miles in compa.s.s (at a calculation of sixty miles to a degree);[54] if it were possible to make a path round the earth, an able footman going constantly twenty-four miles a day, would compa.s.s it in 900 days, and so on in proportion of time and miles.'

It would seem that the Bishop, finding his life was for the time spared, and having a steady conviction that the evil days would pa.s.s, had determined to keep himself ready in body, as in soul, for what work the future might bring. A prison life leaves little to be recorded; the days wore away in the Tower, divided between devotion, study, and that unchanging monotonous walk which at least gave the prisoner a distant glimpse of the world from which he was excluded.

He was allowed the Bible and paper and ink, but no other books. It is the testimony of one who has studied Bishop Wren's ma.n.u.script--

'He wrote in an exquisite hand, in very fair Latin, a commentary on much of Holy Scripture enough to fill an oak box of no mean dimensions. This box he committed to the care of Dr. Beaumont, master of S. Peter's College.[55] Had the Puritans read the MS.

they would have found some antidote to their poison.'

Two sermons and some treatises were also written during his captivity.

Probably suspicion attached to anything that he did, for it is said to have been all written by stealth.

His nephew's life differed as widely from his own as did their characters. Christopher was at Oxford, deep in the experiments of the 'New learning,' and in the inventions which it suggested to his ready brain and dexterous fingers.

[_DIPLOGRAPHIC PEN._]