Sir Christopher Wren Part 8

'London, October 25, 1658.'

Dr. Sprat[68] writes also to Christopher at about the same time:

'Dear Sir,--This day I went to visit Gresham College, but found the place in such a nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so infernal that if you should now come to make use of your tube, it would be like Dives looking out of h.e.l.l into heaven. Dr. G.o.ddard, of all your colleagues, keeps possession, which he could never be able to do had he not before prepared his nose for camp perfumes by his voyage into Scotland, and had he not such excellent restoratives in his cellars.'

FOOTNOTES:

[51] 'December 8, 1646. The pious soul of my wife Eliza flew up to Christ at half-past five in the morning.'

[52] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, ed. 1724, p. 122.

[53] Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol.

iii. p. 333.

[54] It is really 24,899 miles.

[55] The box is, I believe, in Peterhouse Library to this day, but a portion of the Commentary was published as a treatise against the Socinians by the Bishop's son Matthew, under the t.i.tle of _Increpatio Bar Jesu, sive polemicae adsectiones locorum aliquot S. Scripturae ab imposturis perversis in Catechesis Racoviana collectae._

[56] Petty's history is a curious one. The son of a clothier of Rumsey; he educated himself; was some years in the navy; became Gresham professor of music; then a physician of some fame; was also Henry Cromwell's secretary; was a commissioner for Ireland, and married Sir Hardress Waller's daughter. Soon after the Restoration he was knighted by Charles II. Petty invented a 'double-bottomed s.h.i.+p to sail against wind and tide; it was flat-bottomed, had two distinct keels cramped together with huge timbers, so as a violent stream run between: it bore a monstrous broad sail.' It excited much interest at the time, made one very successful voyage, and was afterwards wrecked in a frightful storm. Its model is still preserved at the Royal Society, of which he became a member.

He died in 1687. _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, p. 217.

Ward. See also Evelyn's _Diary_ of March 22, 1675, for an interesting account of Petty's career.

[57] Seth Ward, born 1617. Was Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford and an active member of the Royal Society. Afterwards Bishop of Exeter and then of Salisbury; died 1689.

[58] _Life of Sir C. Wren_, by J. Elmes, p. 12. The full t.i.tle of the play was '[Greek: Ploutophthalmia Ploutogamia],' a pleasant comedy int.i.tuled _Hey for Honesty_, &c., augmented and published by F. J. A copy, published in 1651, and containing a MS. note saying that Wren took the part of 'Neanias Adolescens,' was in the possession of Isaac Reed, a commentator on Shakespeare and a great book collector, who died in 1807. His epitaph (given in _Notes and Queries_, series v., xiii. p. 304) was as follows:--

'Reader of these few lines take heed, And mend your ways for my sake; For you must die like Isaac Reed, Tho' you read till your eyes ache.'

T. Randolph was a friend and pupil of Ben Jonson's; he published _The Muses' Looking Gla.s.s_, which satirised the Puritans; died 1634.

[59] Miscellanies, ed. 1696.

[60] _Diary_, July 13, 1654.

[61] _Praesul. Ang._, p. 779. G.o.dwin.

[62] _Hist. of Royal Society._ Bishop Sprat, ed. 1722, p. 53.

[63] 'Dr. Christopher Wren, Deane of Windsor, was buried June 3, 1656,' is the entry in the register; there does not appear to be any monument or bra.s.s to his memory. The _Parentalia_ and Elmes's Life give 1658, but the dates are frequently inaccurate in both books.

[64] Evelyn's _Diary_, March 31, 1658. 'That holy martyr Dr. Hewer condemned to die, without law, jury or justice by a mock council of State as they called it. A dangerous, treacherous time. June 8, _ib._ That excellent preacher and holy man Dr.

Hewer was martyred for having intelligence of his Majesty, through the Lord Marquess of Ormond. He was beheaded on Tower Hill. The name was spelt Hewer, Hewet, and Hewett.

[65] Pascal is said to have written his treatise on the cycloid from a religious motive. It was a common opinion in France that the study of natural sciences, especially of mathematics, led to infidelity. Accordingly Pascal, writing for geometricians and mathematicians, wished to show, by the solution, vainly sought before, of this problem, that the same man who wrote the _Lettres a un Provincial_ could also instruct them in abstract science, and he published his treatise in the intervals of writing the _Pensees_. See _Vie de Pascal, par sa soeur Mad. Perier, Pensees de Pascal_, p.

13, ed. 1839.

[66] _Hist. of England_, vol. vii. ch. lxi. p. 292.

[67] Gresham Professor of Divinity, confirmed in his post by Cromwell.

[68] Thomas Sprat, D.D., Dean of Westminster, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester; was an active member of the Royal Society, and was educated at Wadham College with Sir C. Wren, whose intimate friend he was: born 1636; died 1713.

CHAPTER V.

1659-1663.

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION--DIFFICULTY OF PRESERVING IT--LETTERS FROM LORD CLARENDON--BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE--THE RESTORATION--CONVOCATION--SAVILIAN PROFESSORs.h.i.+P--ROYAL SOCIETY--'ELEPHANT IN THE MOON'--PEMBROKE CHAPEL BEGUN.

Yet bethink thee that the spirit whence those princely bounties flowed To the ties of private feeling all its force and being owed; Severed from the bonds of kindred, taught his lonely heart to school, By his Father's chastening kindness or his Church's sterner rule; Oft to spots by memory cherished, where his earliest love began, In his age's desolation, fondly turned the childless man.

_Phrontisterion_, by Dean Mansel.

All was confusion, doubt and anxiety in the country; the Royalist plots failed; the Parliament was powerless; no one knew whether Monk intended, as was still hoped by a few, to bring back the King, or to support the Parliament, or to make himself dictator; those were keen eyes which could discern through the darkness any ray of approaching light.

Nowhere perhaps did matters seem more desperate than in the Church. Her discipline and order, barely revived by the murdered Archbishop, had been for eighteen years trampled upon and neglected; 'by the licentiousness of the times,' many were growing up unbaptised and ignorant of Christianity. The number of bishops living was but small, many sees being already vacant when the Civil War broke out, and imprisonments and hards.h.i.+ps had so reduced the Prelates that, in 1659, but ten survived, one of whom, Dr. Brownrigg, Bishop of Exeter, very soon died. Of the nine others, many were very old; the Bishop of London (Juxon) was very ill, and the Bishop of Ely was in prison. How was the succession to be preserved if the troubles of the times continued? The Scotch Church had been reduced by persecution; the Irish Bishops were in as evil a plight as their English brethren, and the difficulty of communication was great. There was then no daughter Church in America or in the Colonies to render back in time of need the grace they had themselves received. It was hardly possible for the English Bishops to meet for consultation; but the indefatigable Dr. Barwick was authorised[69]--

'not only to ride about among them all, and by proposing and explaining to each what was thought for the Church's Service; to collect the opinions and resolutions of every one of them upon all difficult affairs; but also to procure the communication of all that was needful between their lords.h.i.+ps and His Majesty, which he frequently did by letters written in characters' (_i.e._ cypher).

[_LETTERS IN CYPHER._]

Great difficulties lay in the way of the first step--a canonical election--and in the face of the watchful enmity of the Church of Rome, no doubtful step could be taken; and even were this difficulty surmounted and three Bishops got together, the risk of imprisonment and death to both consecrators and consecrated needed no one to point it out. The two with whom Dr. Barwick princ.i.p.ally consulted were the Bishops of Ely and Salisbury. Many letters pa.s.sed between Dr. Barwick and Mr. Hyde,[70] at Brussels, in one of which, written on July 8, 1659,[71] the latter speaks of--

'much preferring the Bishop of Ely's judgment and advice in that point (the method of election) before any man's. I pray remember my service with all imaginable reverence to my Lord of Ely and a.s.sure him, that the King will always return that candour, benignity and equality to both the Universities, which he wishes; and I hope all who shall be entrusted by him in that great affair will be as just and dispa.s.sioned in all their interpositions and look upon them as equal lights to learning and piety and equally worthy of all encouragement and protection. And if at present my Lord of Ely will recommend any person to his Majesty for the Bishop.r.i.c.k of Carlisle, he shall be approved. And if my Lord will transmit a list of persons to be specially recommended to the King for any dignities of the Church, I dare promise the persons shall find that they could not have been better recommended. I know not what more to add but my hearty service to your sick friend,[72] whose health I pray for as a publick concernment. To yourself I shall say no more but that I shall think myself very faulty if I do not serve you very heartily, and if you do not with the first receive some evidence of the sense the King hath of your service.

'I am very heartily, Sir, your most affectionate servant,

'HYDE.'

These letters, thirty-six in number, were transmitted in cypher, and with the utmost precaution and considerable delay in awaiting a safe opportunity; the one quoted from is endorsed 'Received not till Aug.

29.' Nor was the cypher, however carefully contrived, always a security when the letters fell into the wrong hands. Dr. Wallis, the mathematician, was a most skilful decypherer, and was the person who decyphered the King's papers taken in his cabinet at Naseby, though the Royalists considered this a vain boast until Matthew Wren, the Bishop's eldest son, obtained the proof of it from Dr. Wallis himself. One important letter from Dr. Barwick to Mr. Hyde fell into Dr. Wallis'

hands; Mr. Allestry his coadjutor coming from Brussels was seized and imprisoned as soon as he landed. Bishop Morton of Durham, the last surviving Prelate of the province of York, had died, as his epitaph says, 'deprived of all his goods except a good name and a good conscience.' The rising in Ches.h.i.+re had been unsuccessful. Monk refused to give even his brother any hint of his intentions, and made no reply to the letter which King Charles sent to him from Breda. In short, matters were as adverse as it was possible for them to be, but yet Dr.

Barwick was undiscouraged; with fresh precautions the correspondence with Mr. Hyde was resumed, and in truth the matter pressed; 'for,' says Dr. Barwick, writing in Sept. 1659, after mentioning his circuit among some of the surviving Bishops,[73] 'I fear this winter will go hard with some of them that may worst be spared in the due performance of such a work.' It is evident that Dr. Barwick was able to see and consult the imprisoned Bishop of Ely whenever it was needful. These hurried meetings, full of anxiety and peril as they were, must have been a great refreshment to the Bishop, who thus still took part in the work of the Church. He declined to send any list of names to the King, though he pressed Dr. Barwick to accept the Bishop.r.i.c.k of Man. Mr. Hyde[74] wrote a letter in September, which was not received till November 10, where he says:--

['_WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THE CHURCH?_']

'The King hath done all that is in his power to do; and if my Lords the Bishops will not do the rest, what is to become of the Church?

The conspiracies to destroy it are very evident; and if there be no combination to preserve it, it must expire. I do a.s.sure you the names of all the Bishops who are alive, and their several ages, are as well known at Rome as in England, and both the Papist and the Presbyterian value themselves very much upon computing in how few years the Church of England must expire.' ... And again: 'His Majesty is most confident that the Bishop of Ely will give all the a.s.sistance and advice which his restraint will permit him to do....

I do beseech you,' says the next letter, 'present my humble service to my Lord of Ely, whose benediction, I do hope to live to receive at his own feet. I pray send me word our sick friend is in perfect health.'

But little progress appears to have been made, since Mr. Hyde writes, Nov. 28:--

'I can say no more with reference to the Church, but that if there be nothing hinders it but the winter it be quickly over, whilst preparations are making; and yet, G.o.d knows, it will be almost a miracle, if the winter doth not take away half the Bishops that are left alive; and I must still lament that some way is not found that the Bishop of Ely may be at liberty; which would carry on this work more than any expedient that I can think of.'