CHAPTER V.
1659-1663.
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION--DIFFICULTY OF PRESERVING IT--LETTERS FROM LORD CLARENDON--BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE--THE RESTORATION--CONVOCATION--SAVILIAN PROFESSORSHIP--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 hardships 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 lordships 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 principally consulted were the Bishops of Ely and Salisbury. Many letters passed 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 assure 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 dispassioned 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 Bishoprick 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 Cheshire 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 Bishoprick 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 assure 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 assistance 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, God 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.'
An entry in Evelyn's diary shows the general state of affairs at this time:--
'_October 11._ The armie now turned out the Parliament. We had now no government in the nation; all in confusion; no magistrate either own'd or pretended but the souldiers, and they not agreed. God Almighty have mercy on and settle us!'
Evelyn was not slack in doing what in him lay towards this much-desired settlement:--
'_November 7._ Was published my bold "Apologie" for the King in this time of danger when it was capital to speake or write in favour of him. It was printed twice, so universally it took.'
A fast was kept in secret, apparently about once a fortnight, by the Churchmen in London to pray 'for God's mercy to our calamitous Church.'
On _February 3, 1660_, Evelyn writes:--
'General Monk came to London from Scotland, but no man knew what he would do or declare. Yet he was met on all his way by the gentlemen of all the counties which he passed, with petitions that he would recall the old, long-interrupted Parliament, and settle the nation in some order, being at this time in most prodigious confusion and under no government, everybody expecting what would be next and what he would do.'
Later in the same month Mr. Hyde wrote almost in despair to Dr. Barwick:[75]
'It would be very good news if I could hear of my Lord of Ely being in full liberty, to whom I pray present my humble service. The truth is I have but little hope of the business of the Church but by his being at liberty, and therefore I hope he will make no scruple of accepting it if it be offered, or if it can be reasonably obtained.'
The suspense which Evelyn describes had not long to be endured. On February 11, the very day after Monk had dismayed the city by breaking down its gates and allowing the soldiers to march about it in triumph, he turned out the Parliament then sitting at Westminster, and called together the former one, to the great joy of the people. From this moment all hearts and wishes turned to the exiled royal family as the one hope left of tranquillity and order; thus suddenly, when the royalist hopes were lowest, their hearts' desire was given to them.
[_BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE._]
Monk, now in supreme power, did not forget the Bishop of Ely, whose fellow-captive he had been and who must have rejoiced to see Monk at last justify his confidence. On March 15 the lieutenant of the Tower received the order 'That Dr. Wren, Bishop of Ely, be discharged from his imprisonment.' Thus the eighteen years of captivity came to an end, and the Bishop came forth from the Tower, an old man of seventy-five, broken by many sorrows.
It cannot have been with unmixed joy that he once more trod another path than that wonted one on the leads of the Tower. True, the King was coming home in peace to a people longing to receive him. This return was a promise of deliverance for the Church, and an end to that difficulty of preserving the Apostolical Succession which had so nearly proved a fatal one. And yet, the flood, which in those eighteen years had passed over the land, had swept away many whom the Bishop loved well. The King might return in triumph, but he was not the sovereign whom, from his youth, Bishop Wren had loved and served. The primate with whom he had worked, had been cruelly murdered; and none could restore the wife and children who had pined and died during the long years of his imprisonment. The Church, however, remained, and for her Bishop Wren would work while life lasted. Part of his employment in the Tower had been the writing of treatises and sermons, one of which on the Scotch Covenant, from the text 'Neither behave thyself frowardly in the covenant,' he dispersed over the dioceses of Norwich and Ely, lodging the while where he could in London, as he was not yet allowed to go back either to Downham in Suffolk or to Ely House in Holborn. It appeared, as was truly said, as if he had not been 'so much released as thrust out of prison.'
Homeless and penniless as he then seemed, Bishop Wren's spirit was in no respect daunted; when he left in safety the Tower where he had once thought to lay his head on the block, he planned the thank-offering which he would make to God. His children, from whom he had been so long separated, who were scattered everywhere and had been reduced to the greatest straits, he with much difficulty gathered together again, and they awaited the event of Monk's decision.
[_THE RESTORATION._]
At length came that 29th of May so often described in history and fiction. Evelyn's[76] account of it is interesting, as that of an eyewitness:--
'This day his majestie Charles II. came to London, after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the king and church, being seventeen yeares. This was also his birthday; and with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streetes hung with tapestry, fountaines running with wine; the maior, aldermen, and all the companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; lords and nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windowes and balconies well set with ladies: trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven houres in passing the citty, even from two in afternoone till nine at night. I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed God. All this was don without one drop of bloudshed, and by that very army which rebelled against him.'
By degrees, matters settled down to a more ordinary level. The Church Service was restored at Whitehall, and on June 28 Pepys mentions[77] 'poor Bishop Wren going to chapel, it being a thanksgiving day for the King's returne.'
The vacant sees were now filled up as speedily as possible. Bishop Juxon was translated to Canterbury, Sheldon succeeding him as Bishop of London; the northern province, then wholly without bishops, had its losses supplied.
The Prayer Book was not by any means commonly used again for some time. Pepys characteristically says--[78]
'_July 1._--This morning come home my fine camlett cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit which cost me much money, and I pray God make me able to pay for it. In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a good sermon by a stranger, but no Common Prayer yet.'
In the following November, to quote the same writer, 'men did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer.' Matters were really progressing, the cathedrals and the court chapels as well as those in the Bishop's palaces setting the example. In February (1661) Evelyn heard 'Dr. Baldero preach at Ely House on St. Matthew vi. 33; after the sermon the Bishop of Ely gave us the blessing very pontifically.'[79]
[_ELY HOUSE._]
Ely House was an ancient possession of the see,[80] the gift of William de Ludd, who in the reign of Edward I. gave the house and endowed it with his manor of Ouldbourne, a name which soon grew into Holbourn. The garden and its strawberries are immortalised by Shakespeare. It was leased to Sir Christopher Hatton by Bishop Cox in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and a struggle between the Hatton family and the Bishops of Ely then began which lasted until 1772.[81] In Wren's time, the Bishops had recovered some of the buildings, and he had lived here before the rebellion. During that time the house had been used as a prison for 'malignant priests,' especially those of the city of London, and he must have found the whole building sorely defaced and injured.
The chapel, dedicated to S. Etheldreda, is a beautiful piece of Gothic architecture; and there, when it had been cleansed and restored to some order, many of the new bishops were consecrated, and Bishop Wren assisted at that preservation of the Apostolical Succession which but two years before had seemed well-nigh hopeless.
Much was done at Ely House. In the May of 1661 the Convocation of Canterbury met in S. Paul's, its marred, plundered condition not inaptly showing the adversities through which the Church of England had passed. The Convocation had much work before it, the most pressing being to prepare a service for the baptism of those of riper years and for May 29. In order to this a committee of both Houses of Convocation was formed, which met at Ely House, and of which Bishop Wren appears to have been the ruling spirit. Many were still half afraid of their true position and afraid of the Puritan party; eighteen years of confusion and persecution had slackened all discipline, and many things seemed natural to the new generation which neither Bishop Andrewes nor Archbishop Laud would have tolerated for a day. It is implied in Dr. Barwick's Life that many of those who should have upheld the Church discipline were willing, from a mistaken notion of conciliation and peace, to let it go. Bishop Wren set his face resolutely against this doctrine.
[_REVISION OF THE PRAYER BOOK._]
In November the Convocation met again. Dr. John Barwick had been appointed to the deanery of S. Paul's, and in spite of very failing health, had resumed the weekly Communions, daily prayers, and musical services of the cathedral, and had succeeded in making the choir, where the Puritans had stabled their horses, once more fit for Divine service. At this session of Convocation the Prayer Book was finally revised, after the Bishops had heard at the Savoy Conference all that the Puritans could urge against it. Bishop Wren had been actively engaged in this work, and suggested a considerable number of alterations and additions, many of which were adopted. A large number of grammatical errors had crept in to the old book: for example, 'which' instead of 'who' was in almost all the collects and the Apostles' creed. It still, by some oversight, survives in the Lord's Prayer.[82] 'The altering whereof,' says Bishop Wren, 'if it may seem strange at first to unskilful ears, yet will it not be a nine days' wonder, but for ever after a right expression in all our addresses unto God.'
Page after page he corrected with the utmost care, from the very title-page and calendar to the end. July has the characteristic note, 'Out with Dog-days from amongst the Saints.'--A considerable number of his suggestions are part of the Prayer Book to this day. The final clause of the prayer for the Church Militant beginning 'We also bless, etc.,' though not Bishop Wren's composition, as he intended to have replaced the Commemoration of the Saints and the Thanksgiving as it stood in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., is yet due to his suggestion. The whole series of notes and emendations is very interesting, though they are more than can be given here. Two things plainly appear: that he wished to return as nearly as possible to the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., as the one most closely resembling the offices of the Early Church; that he was very desirous to have the book made as full, as plain, and as clear as the English language could make it. He was anxious that no needless stumbling-blocks should remain in the path either of Churchmen or of Nonconformists, but at the same time he had no intention of bartering any portion of Church truth or discipline for the doubtful advantages of 'comprehension.'
It is a proof that he was not, with all his high-minded firmness, the persecuting prelate of Puritan pamphleteers, or the sour and severe man which, in early days, Lord Clarendon thought him, that both in Norwich, his former diocese, and in the one he then ruled, most of the clergy renounced the Covenant.[83]
S. Bartholomew's day, 1662, was the time fixed for those who refused to conform to the Church to resign their livings. It has been easy to represent this as a piece of cruel tyranny, as the turning out of a body of pious men who were labouring in the work which others neglected. In truth, as even Milton says, they were 'time-servers, covetous, illiterate persecutors, not lovers of the truth, like in most things whereof they had accused their predecessors.' To this grave indictment must be added that they were, in the strictest sense, intruders, thrust into charges by Cromwell's authority, while the true priests were imprisoned, fined, forbidden to minister, or even to teach as schoolmasters, and literally left to starve.
'The majority of these were dead and none had been ordained to fill up the gaps, during all the long years since the Church's overthrow.... Of the eight thousand intruding Nonconformists, a bare two thousand--1700 would probably be nearer the number--refused conformity.
'In other words, the Church of the Restoration had to begin her work with a clergy of whom at least three-fourths were aliens at heart to her doctrine and her discipline. To the politician this result was most satisfactory; to the Church little short of disastrous.'[84]
[_GARTER RECORDS RESTORED._]
One of the earliest appointments made at the Restoration was that of Dr. Bruno Ryves[85] to be Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Garter. In the August of 1660, Christopher Wren went to Windsor, and solemnly delivered to the Dean the three registers and the note books of the Order of the Garter, which Dean Wren had, with so much difficulty, recovered and hidden carefully until, at his death, he transferred the charge to his son. Dean Ryves gave a written acknowledgment to Christopher that he had safely received the books, and the service his father had done in preserving them was fully admitted. Gresham College had been cleansed and set in order after the Restoration, and Christopher resumed his lectures there, which were largely attended.
After one of these lectures given in November, Lord Brouncker, Mr. Robert Boyle, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Dr. Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray and others withdrew with Wren to his room, where they discussed a project for a philosophical College or Society. It was not an entirely new idea, for it had been a favourite scheme of Evelyn's, also of the poet Cowley's.[86] It was not a matter to be arranged in one sitting, and accordingly they settled to meet weekly in Wren's rooms after his lectures, and agreed that for incidental expenses each should pay down ten shillings and subscribe a shilling weekly. A list was made of between thirty and forty probable members, among them those previously mentioned, and Christopher's old friend Sir C. Scarborough, Dr. Seth Ward, Matthew Wren, Cowley, Sir Kenelme Digby, Mr. Evelyn and others. Sir Robert Moray undertook to explain the project to King Charles, and brought back a gracious message that he well approved of it, and would be ready to give it every encouragement. One of the first orders of the Society was that Wren should at the next meeting of the Society bring in his account of the pendulum experiment, with his explanation of it: this experiment related to 'the determination of a standard measure of length by the vibration of a pendulum.'[87] There followed experiments for the improvement of shipping, in which Wren worked with Dr. Petty and Dr. Goddard. It was a question to what mechanical powers sailing, especially when against the wind, was reducible; 'he showed it to be a wedge; and he demonstrated how a transient force upon an oblique plane would cause the motion of the plane against the first mover. He made an instrument that mechanically produced the same effect and showed the reason of sailing to all winds.'
But to give all Christopher's experiments would be to write over again the already well-told history of the Royal Society. It had few more assiduous members.
[_SAVILIAN PROFESSORSHIP._]
In 1661, Christopher resigned his Gresham Professorship, in order to accept the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy, at Oxford.[88] It had been held by Dr. Seth Ward, who was soon afterwards made Bishop of Salisbury in succession to Bishop Hyde. Shortly after his appointment, Christopher had a command from the King to make him a lunar globe, according to the observations made with the best telescopes. He constructed one 'representing not only the spots and various degrees of whiteness on the surface, but the hills, eminences, and cavities moulded in solid work.' This curious toy was highly admired, placed in the King's cabinet at Whitehall, and esteemed a great 'rarity.'
In this year Wren took his degree as Doctor of Civil Laws, Oxford, and received a similar honour from the University of Cambridge. King Charles purposed paying a visit to Oxford, and the Philosophical Society both there and in London resolved to give him an entertainment. Lord Brouncker wrote from London to Wren to consult him. Wren wrote back:--
'My Lord,--The Act and noise at Oxford being over, I retir'd to myself as speedily as I could to obey your Lordship and contribute something to the collection of Experiments designed by the Society, for his Majesty's Reception. I concluded on something I thought most suitable for such an occasion; but the stupidity of our artists here makes the apparatus so tedious that I foresee I shall not be able to bring it to anything within the time proposed. What in the meanwhile to suggest to your Lordship I cannot guess.'... 'Geometrical problems, and new methods, however useful, will be but tasteless in a transient show.' He enumerates various things which he had thought of and rejected: 'designs of engines, scenographical tricks, designs of architecture, chymical experiments, experiments in anatomy, which last are sordid and noisome to any but those whose desire of knowledge makes them digest it.' 'Experiments of Natural Philosophy are seldom pompous, and certainly Nature in the best of her works is apparent enough in obvious things, were they but curiously observed; and the key that opens treasures is often plain and rusty, but unless it be gilt it will make no show at Court.'
He proposed to show an experiment with a 'weather wheel to measure the expansions of air.' Another--'no unpleasing spectacle--of seeing a man live without new air as long as you please;' this was to be effected by an instrument of Wren's invention which cooled, percolated, and purified the air. Also 'an artificial eye truly and dioptrically made as big as a tennis-ball.'
['_SO MUCH TATTLE._']
'My Lord,' the letter ends, 'if my first design had been perfect I had not troubled your Lordship with so much Tattle, but with something performed and done. But I am fain, in this letter, to do like some chymist who when Projection (his fugitive darling) hath left him threadbare, is forced to fall to vulgar Preparations to pay his Debts.'
The King appointed Wren as assistant to Sir John Denham, the Surveyor-General of Works. Sir John had been appointed by Charles I., in reversion during the lifetime of Inigo Jones, surveyor at that time, and had succeeded, at Inigo Jones's death, to what was then but a barren honour. Evelyn, who had a dispute with Sir John about the placing of Greenwich Palace in that very year, says: 'I knew him to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb[89] (Inigo Jones's man) to assist him.' Of this Charles II. was probably aware, and anxious to supply his deficiency. That his choice should have fallen upon Wren, unless Evelyn's friendship suggested it, is remarkable, as, until then, Wren seems to have made no special study of architecture. No doubt the practical experience learned in the details of the assistant-surveyor's work was afterwards very serviceable to him. He appears to have had a most retentive memory as well as a very quick eye and power of apprehension. In spite, however, of these calls on his time he was assiduous at the Society's meetings.
The death of Laurence Rooke, his friend and fellow-labourer, threw more work on his hands. Rooke was succeeded in the Geometry Professorship by Isaac Barrow, afterwards a well-known divine who, in his first Latin oration, eulogised the Savilian Professor as 'formerly a prodigy of a boy, now a miracle of a man, and a genius among mortals. Lest I should appear to speak falsehood, it will be enough for me to name to you the most ingenious and excellent Christopher Wren.'[90] It was a high compliment, but Barrow knew that his audience would heartily re-echo it. It is to be hoped that Barrow's lectures were somewhat shorter than his sermons, which, fine as they are, were not always listened to with patience.
[_A LONG SERMON._]
'On one occasion, when he was long preaching in the Abbey on a holiday, the servants of the Church, who on those days showed the tombs and effigies in wax of the Kings and Queens to the common people, fearing to spend that time in hearing which they might more profitably employ in receiving, caused the organs to blow until they had blowed him down.'[91]
On March 25, 1663, the Society was finally incorporated by a charter from the King, with a preamble written by Christopher Wren, explaining its objects. The style of the preamble is far more florid than is usual in Wren's writing: it has in it the exultation of one who is accomplishing a long-cherished scheme. One paragraph is evidently intended as a defence against certain attacks which were made upon the English philosophers as they had been in past times against Galileo:--
'Not that herein we would withdraw the least ray of our influence from the present established nurseries of good literature and education, founded by the piety of our royal ancestors and others, and whose laws which as we are obliged to defend, so the holy blood of our martyred Father hath especially endeared to us, but, that we purpose to make further provision for this branch of knowledge likewise, Natural Experimental Philosophy.'... 'Taking care as in the first place for Religion so next for the riches and ornaments of our kingdoms, as we wear an Imperial Crown in which flowers are alternately intermixed with the ensigns of Christianity.'
King Charles, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert, always a lover of experiments, were among the first members of the Society, and its beginning was prosperous enough; but Court favour has always created some envy. It happened that in the self-same year Butler,[92] then secretary to Jeremy Taylor's friend, Lord Carbery, published his famous 'Hudibras.' It created a great sensation; the Court read it, the town read it; Pepys, hearing 'the world cry it up so mightily, tried twice or three times reading to bring himself to think it witty.' It was in everyone's mouth, and Butler naturally thought himself sure of promotion. None, however, came to him, and he directed his bitter wit against those more fortunate than himself, the members of the new Royal Society, and Bishop Sprat in particular, in a poem called 'The Elephant in the Moon,' which opened as follows:--
['_THE ELEPHANT IN THE MOON._']
'A learn'd Society of late, The glory of a neighbouring state, Agreed upon a summer night To search the moon by her own light, To take an invent'ry of all Her real estate and personal.
* * * * *
To observe her country how 'twas planted, With what she abounded most or wanted, And make the proper'st observations For settling of new plantations, If the Society should incline T' attempt so glorious a design.'
With sharp touches indicating the various Members of the Society the satire continues, telling how they see in the moon, through the telescope, marvellous things, and an appearance of an immense elephant; they agree that a record must be made, and during the discussion who is to write it, one of the servants peeping through the telescope discovers that a _mouse_ has got in between the two glasses! It, and a swarm of small flies, are the causes of the mysterious phenomena, the vast beast, the marching and countermarching armies which have been so learnedly explained![93]
The Society does not seem to have paid much attention to the poet, and the experiments went on as usual. A different task was presently offered to Wren by the King. When he married Catharine of Portugal, he received Tangiers, Tripoli, and Bombay as part of her dowry. Tangiers was reckoned as a very important place to the English, whose sailors were still constantly harassed by the Moorish pirates, and the fortifications of the town were a pressing care. King Charles offered, through Matthew Wren, then Lord Clarendon's secretary, a commission to Christopher Wren, as one of the best geometricians in Europe, to survey and direct the works at the mole, harbour, and fortifications of Tangiers, offering him an ample salary, leave of absence from his Professorship, and a reversionary grant of Sir John Denham's office. Flattering though the offer was, Christopher declined it on the ground of his health, and begged the King to command his duty in England.
[_A WARM FRIEND._]
He no doubt judged wisely, and the refusal gave no offence at Court. Perhaps the leave of absence might not have been easily obtained, for the following letter from Dr. Sprat shows that Wren was already embarrassed by the difficulty of being in two places at once:--
'My dear Sir,--I must confess I have some little Peek against you--therefore am not much displeased, that I have this occasion of telling you some ill news. The Vice-Chancellor did yesterday send for me to inquire where the _Astronomy Professor_ was, and the reason of his absence so long after the beginning of the _term_. I used all the arguments I could for your Defence. I told him that _Charles the Second_ was King of _England_, _Scotland_, _France_ and _Ireland_; and that he was by the late _Act of Parliament_ declared absolute Monarch in these his dominions: and that it was this mighty Prince who had confined you to _London_. I endeavour'd to persuade him that the drawing of lines in _Sir Harry Savill's_ school was not altogether of so great a concernment for the benefit of Christendom as the rebuilding of _St. Paul's_ or the fortifying of _Tangier_; (for I understood those were the great works in which that extraordinary Genius of yours was judg'd necessary to be employ'd). All this I urged, but after some Discourse, he told me, that he was not now to consider you as _Dr. Bayly_[94](for so he ow'd you all Kindness) but as _Vice Chancellor_, and under that Capacity he most terribly told me that he took it very ill you had not all this while given him any Account of what hinder'd you in the Discharge of your Office. This he bid me tell you, and I do it not very unwillingly because I see that our Friendships are so closely ty'd together that the same Thing which was so great a Prejudice to me (my losing your Company all this while here) does also something redound to your Disadvantage. And so, my dear Sir, now my Spite and Spleen is satisfied, I must needs return to my old Temper again, and faithfully assure you that I am with the most violent Zeal and Passion, your most affectionate and devoted Servant,
'THO. SPRAT.'
Wren had also employment at Cambridge, of a kind he would have been loth to put in other hands. His uncle, the Bishop of Ely, had instantly on his release determined to give a chapel to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he had been a scholar under Launcelot Andrewes,[95] and he employed his nephew as his architect. Upon this work and its endowment the Bishop expended 5,000_l._, the first money he received after his release. His personal habits were austerely simple; for the last twenty years of his life he drank no wine, and only ate off a wooden trencher, practising fasting and abstinence with great strictness. He had never spent any of the revenues of his see upon his children, and now he made the chapel his heir, bestowing upon it an estate at Hardwick in Cambridgeshire.
The chapel, which has a peculiar interest as Wren's first architectural work, is built in the classical style he was to make famous in England, and bears his mark in its beautiful proportions, the richness of its stucco ceiling and the pannelled wood-work. The plain glazing of the windows and a something of bareness about the whole, are probably to be accounted for by the necessity of limiting the expense to a fixed sum. Its first stone was laid May 13, 1663, by the Master, Dr. Frank, acting for Bishop Wren, who was not present.[96]
[_A SAD RETURN._]
It was probably at the same time that Wren executed some repairs in Ely Cathedral which had suffered, like every other grand church, from the fury of the Puritans. Bitter indeed must have been the regret with which the surviving clergy returned to find the fabrics of their churches plundered and laid waste, and their flocks scattered or corrupted.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 201.
[70] Afterwards Lord Clarendon.
[71] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 424.
[72] Probably Bishop Juxon, more than once alluded to under this name in these letters.
[73] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 437.
[74] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 449.
[75] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 496.
[76] _Diary_, May 29, 1660.
[77] _Diary_, vol. i. p. 112, ed. 1828.
[78] Ib., p. 114.
[79] _Diary._
[80] _Repertorium_, vol. ii. p. 273. Newcourt.
[81] In that year the last Lord Hatton died; the bishops resigned Ely House to the Crown, and received No. 37 Dover Street in exchange. The chapel, after years of neglect, has also been suffered to pass out of the hands of the Church into those of the Romanists. See _Walks in London_ by A. C. Hare, vol. ii. pp. 196-201.
[82] _Fragmentary Illustrations of the History of the Book of Common Prayer_, edited by the Bishop of Chester, p. 47, _et seq._
[83] Bishop Kennet says, 'One particular will appear' (from Bishop Wren's _Register_), 'that there were but few of the parochial clergy deprived in this diocese (Ely) in 1662, for not submitting to the Act of Uniformity, though more of the old legal incumbents had been sequestered about 1644 than in proportion within any other diocese.'--Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol. iv. p. 328. From the same authority it appears that most of the clerks deprived in 1662 had other callings, _e.g._ cobbling, gloving, skinning, bookselling, husbandry, and to these they generally returned.
Some of his clergy had come to him in the Tower for institution, in the early part of his imprisonment, and that many were faithful to him is evident from the fact they were expelled their livings for 'following Bishop Wren's fancies,' no other crimes being pretended against them.--_Annals of England_, p. 392.
[84] See an interesting article, _The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century_, in the _Church Quarterly Review_, July, 1877, p. 321, _et seq._ It is not however quite accurate to say '_none_ were ordained,' for Bishop Duppa held secretly 'frequent ordinations of young loyal church scholars,' among whom was Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.--_History of the Book of Common Prayer_, Lathbury, p. 296.
[85] Dr. Bruno Ryves, Dean of Chichester in 1642, was in the city during Sir William Waller's siege, and left a description of the sack of the cathedral and robbery of its plate by the commander and his troops. Dean Ryves was fined 120_l._ and deprived.--_Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 286.
[86] Abraham Cowley, born 1618; educated at Westminster; was the intimate friend of Lord Falkland and of the poet Crashaw. Cowley followed Henrietta Maria to Paris, remaining steadily loyal. He died 1667.
[87] _History of the Royal Society_ (by C. R. Weld), p. 96. Galileo is said to have first discovered the use of the pendulum as a measure of time, while watching the oscillations of the bronze lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. A pendulum clock was long reckoned a 'rarity.' Bishop Seth Ward presented one, made by Fromantel, to the Society in 1662, in memory of his friend Mr. Laurence Rooke, late Astronomy Professor at Gresham College.
[88] Founded 1619 by Sir Henry Savile. He required that the Professor should explain the Ptolemaic and Copernican and other modern astronomical systems, should teach and read on Optics, Dialling, Geography and Navigation. He was to be of any nation in Christendom, provided he was of good reputation, had a fair knowledge of Greek, and was twenty-six years of age. If an Englishman he must have taken his M.A. degree. The choice of a professor was to lie with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the University, the Bishop of London, the principal Secretary of State, Chief Justices, the Lord Chief Baron, and Dean of Arches. _Oxford_, vol. ii. p. 188. Ayliffe.
[89] He married Inigo Jones's daughter.
[90] _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, Ward, p. 97.
[91] Isaac Barrow, born 1630. He was so little studious as a boy, and so fond of fighting, that his father used often solemnly to wish that if it should please God to take one of his children it might be his son Isaac. When, however, in 1677, he did really die, the Lord Keeper (Lord Nottingham) sent his father a message of condolence, importing that 'he had but too great reason to grieve, since never father lost so good a son.' Dr. Isaac Barrow, Bishop of Man, 1663, and S. Asaph, 1669, was his uncle. _Life of Dr. Barrow_, vol. i. p. ix., ed. 1830. Among his poems is the following, which seems to be incomplete:--
AD. DD. CHR. WREN. Ad te, sed passu tremulo vultuque rubenti, Fertur ad ingenii culmen, opella levis, Nec quid vult aliud (quid enim velit haud tibi notum) Quam ut justum authoris deferat.--_Ib._ vol. viii. p. 541.
[92] Samuel Butler, born 1612, died, it is said, in great poverty, and was buried in S. Paul's, Covent Garden, 1680.
[93] Wren's lunar globe will be remembered. _Vide supra_, p. 125.
The satire made some sensation and caused La Fontaine to write _Un Animal dans la Lune_, in which, courtier like, he pays a compliment to Charles II., and hints at the happiness of England at peace and able to give herself 'à ces emplois,' while France was at war with Holland, Spain, and the Empire.
[94] Dr. Richard Bayley, President of S. John's College.
[95] Bishop Andrewes bequeathed 332_l._ to the library of Pembroke College.
[96] Some alterations have recently been made at Pembroke, in which, under the late Sir G. Scott's orders, the chapel has been lengthened by about 20 feet, the stucco of the exterior stripped, and the red brick pointed.