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BISHOP WREN ACCUSED—WESTMINSTER ABBEY ATTACKED—IMPRISONMENT OF THE BISHOPS—BISHOP WREN’S DEFENCE—‘UTTERLY DENIETH ALL POPISH AFFECTIONS;’—THE GARTER JEWELS—ARCHBISHOP LAUD MURDERED—CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD—PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS.

For though outnumber’d, overthrown,

And by the fate of war run down,

Their duty never was defeated,

Nor from their oaths and faith retreated;

For loyalty is still the same,

Whether it win or lose the game;

True as the dial to the sun,

Although it be not shined upon.

Hudibras, pt. iii. canto 2.

The concession Bishop Wren had thus made did not satisfy the Commons, and on July 20 they drew out the report into twenty articles of accusation, containing all the former charges and several additional ones, among which were the setting up of altar-rails, ordering the Holy Communion to be received kneeling, ordering the reading of the ‘Book of Sports,’ and preaching in a surplice; causing by prosecutions 3,000 of the King’s poor subjects to go beyond the sea.

For these offences they prayed that Bishop Wren might answer, and suffer such punishment as law and justice required. The articles were transmitted to the House of Lords at a conference, and were read by Sir T. Widdrington, Recorder of York,[32] who prefaced them by a venomous speech against the Bishop of Ely, whom he compared to ‘a wolf devouring the flock; an extinguisher of light; a Noah, who sent out doves from the ark, and refused to receive them back unless they returned as ravens, to feed upon the carrion of his new inventions, he himself standing with a flaming sword to keep such out of his diocese.’ He accused the Bishop of raising fines for his own profit; called him a great robber, a malefactor, ’a compleat mirror of innovation, superstition, and oppression: an oppugner of the life and liberty of religion, and a devouring serpent in the diocese of Norwich.’

These are but a few phrases from Sir Thomas’s speech; he used no argument, adduced no proof, but contented himself simply with clamour and reviling, and these were amply sufficient. In the Long Parliament it was enough to accuse anyone, especially a bishop, of Popery, superstition and ‘innovation’—which was a term invented by Bishop Williams, then as now commonly applied to the oldest dogmas and practices of the Church—to insure his imprisonment, or at the least a heavy fine. In Wren’s Diary opposite the day of the month is merely, ‘Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.’ Dr. Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was attacked at the same time; but at first no active steps were taken against them, perhaps because the Commons found matters not yet ripe for a wholesale imprisonment of the Bishops. Dr. Wren well knew that matters would not stop here, and while awaiting the next attack began to prepare his Defence against the Articles of Accusation.

The mob in the meanwhile were encouraged by caricatures, libels, and invectives to rail against the Bishops and impute every misfortune and every trade failure to them, by which means the Puritan leaders contrived to stir up a yelling mob of men and women.

ATTACK ON WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

THE DECOY DUCK.

All petitions against the Church were received and the petitioners encouraged and praised. The populace insulted the Bishops whenever they appeared, and threatened their lives. Westminster Abbey was attacked, when the Bishops were there, by a violent mob, led by Wiseman, a knight of Kent. The officers and choirmen of the Abbey with the boys of the School, among whom must have been Christopher Wren, defended it gallantly, and the fray ended when Wiseman was killed by a tile thrown from the battlements by one of the defenders. After this the Bishops who were in London met in the Deanery at Westminster, the lodging of Williams, Archbishop of York, who had just been translated from Lincoln to York, in succession to the late Archbishop Neile,[33] to consult what should be done. At the Archbishop’s suggestion, they drew up a paper, remonstrating against the abuse offered them, and the manner in which they had been hindered from coming to the House of Lords, their coaches overset, their barges attacked and prevented landing, and they themselves beset and threatened. They claimed their right to sit in the House of Lords and vote, and protested against all that had been done since the 27th of that month (December, 1641), and all that should hereafter pass in time of this their forced and violent absence. This paper was signed by the Archbishop and eleven Bishops, of whom Bishop Wren was one, and presented to the King, who delivered it to Littleton, the Lord Keeper, to be communicated next day to the Peers. The Lord Keeper, who had already deserted his benefactor, Lord Strafford, contrary to the King’s orders showed the paper first to ‘some of the preaching party in both Houses,’ and then to the Peers. Upon the reading a conference was desired between the Houses, and the Lord Keeper declared that the Bishops’ paper contained ‘matters of high and dangerous consequence, extending to the deep intrenching upon the fundamental privileges and being of Parliament.’ The Commons, whose part, like that of the Lord Keeper[34] was pre-arranged, impeached the Bishops of high treason; the usher of the Black Rod was despatched to find and bring them before the House. They, lodging in different parts of London, were not all collected until eight o’clock on the winter’s night, and then, their offence being signified, were committed to the Tower.[35] The Bishops of Durham and Lichfield, both aged and infirm, obtained leave to be in the custody of the Black Rod. The other bishops were carried to the Tower on the following morning. A libellous pamphlet was published at this time, entitled ‘Wren’s Anatomy, discovering his notorious Pranks &c., printed in the year when Wren ceased to domineer,’ has in the title-page a print of Bishop Wren sitting at a table; out of his mouth proceed two labels: on one, ‘Canonical Prayers;;’ on the other, ‘No Afternoon Sermon.’ On one side stand several clergy, over whose heads is written ‘Altar-cringing Priests.’ On the other, two men in lay habits, above whom is this inscription, ‘Churchwardens for Articles.’ It serves to show what were considered as really the Bishop’s crimes, and that he had a fair proportion of faithful clergy.[36] The Archbishop of York had served the Commons’ turn in procuring the King’s assent to Lord Strafford’s death-warrant, and had enjoyed for a short time a remarkable though transient popularity both on that account and as Laud’s bitter opponent. The Commons were, however, soon weary of him, and gladly availed themselves of the pretext afforded by the protest to throw him aside. A pamphlet was published, which had a great success, entitled the ‘Decoy Duck,’ in allusion to the fens of his former diocese of Lincoln, in which he was represented as only released from the Tower in order to decoy the other bishops there. It was thought prudent that the bishops should make no attempt either to see each other, or Archbishop Laud, who had preceded them to that dreary lodging, so that only loving messages passed between the prisoners. So many bishops being in custody, and five sees vacant, the Commons took their opportunity, and brought in a Bill depriving the Bishops of their seats in Parliament, and of the power of sitting as judges or privy councillors. It was feebly opposed by the Churchmen, who had been alienated by the prelates’ desertion of Lord Strafford, and was finally carried. The remark made a little later by Lord Falkland on Sir E. Deering’s ‘Bill for the Extirpation of Episcopacy,’ when the Churchmen, weary of their attendance, left the House at dinner-time, and did not return—‘Those who hated the bishops, hated them worse than the devil, and those who loved them did not love them so well as their dinner,’—appears to have been applicable to this occasion also. Not very long after the first-named Bill had passed, some of the bishops were set at liberty, but Bishop Wren was not released until May 6, 1642.

IMPRISONMENT.

It was a brief respite. He went down to his diocese, to a house at Downham, near Ely, where his wife and children were living, and there, August 17, he kept the last wedding-day that he and his wife were ever to celebrate together. On August 25 King Charles set up his standard at Nottingham and the Civil War began. On the 30th of the month Bishop Wren’s house was entered by soldiers and he was taken prisoner, without, it will be observed, the shadow of a legal charge against him. On September 1st he was again thrown into the Tower, leaving Mrs. Wren with a daughter only eight days old and mourning for their son Francis, who had died in the previous month. Matthew, the eldest son, was then only thirteen years old. Bishop Wren’s was a singularly steadfast, hopeful nature, and it may be that he expected to be speedily released by the victorious Royalist armies. Could he have foreseen the duration of his imprisonment and the miseries which were to befall the Church and the country, even his dauntless spirit might have been crushed. He did not seek an interview with Archbishop Laud, lest they should be accused of plotting, and so each injure the other. Otherwise it would not have been difficult, as the Archbishop was at first carelessly watched, in the hope that he would, by escaping, rid the Commons of a difficulty. The Archbishop ‘would not, at seventy years, go about to prolong a miserable life by the trouble and shame of flying,’ though Grotius sent him an intreaty to copy the example of his own marvellous escape from Loevenstein Castle twenty-one years previously.[37] The services in the Tower Chapel, where they probably met at first, could have given them little comfort, marred and mangled as the services were by the intruders, who came often with no better object than to preach insulting sermons against the prelates.

Dr. Wren busied himself in the completion of the ‘Defence,’ to which allusion has been made in the first chapter.[38] It is too long to allow of being set out in full, but a few points may be touched upon. Of the ‘fifty painful ministers;’ whom he was said to have excommunicated, for some of the sentences there was, as has been said, very sufficient reason. As the Bishop says, ‘Excommunication doth by law fall upon those that are absent, either from visitation, or synods; and suspension is a censure which in the practice of those courts is incurred in one hour and taken off in another, and is of little or no grievance at all except it be wilfully persisted in.’ He complains of so vague a charge, not stating who the clergy were, and proceeds as well as he can recollect to mention those who had fallen under his censure. For those whose licence to preach had been withdrawn, the greater number ought never to have received it at all; one had been a broken tradesman in Ipswich, one a country apothecary, another a weaver, another ‘no graduate, not long translated from common stage-playing to two cures and a publick lecture.’ Yet still when all were reckoned who had ever been censured or admonished, the Bishop thinks that the fifty will hardly be made up.[39]

BOWING TO THE ALTAR.

It is a curious instance of the temper of the times that one head of so serious an indictment should be that ‘To manifest his Popish Affections, he in 1636, caused a crucifix to be engraven upon his Episcopal seal.’ Bishop Wren carefully addresses himself to the defence of this point, and to that of bowing at the name of our Lord, and to the Altar.

‘He began so to do by the example of that learned and holy Prelate Bishop Andrewes, now with God, under whom this defendant was brought up from his youth, and had depended upon him more than forty years since, and constantly and religiously practised the same upon all occasions ... as his own years and studies increased he found first, the bowing at the name of the Lord Jesus, had not only been practised by the clergy but had also been enjoined to all the people, ever since the first reformation, as appeareth by the Injunctions, 1^o Eliz. Cap. 52, thereby to testify our due acknowledgment that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and Eternal Son of God, is the only Saviour of the world, in whom alone the mercies, graces and promises of God to mankind for this life and the life to come are fully and wholly comprised, 1^o Jac. Can. 18.’

For bowing to the Altar, while setting out how old a practice of the Church it was, designedly continued at the Reformation, how a like reverence was paid always to the King, or to his chair of estate if he was not in the Presence Chamber,

‘No Christian would ever deny that bowing or doing adoration, was to be used as a part of God’s worship, the affirmative act being necessarily included in the negative precept, “Non adorabis ea, ergo adorabis Me.”’ ‘No more as he humbly conceiveth is it any superstition, but a sign of devotion, and of an awful apprehension of God’s divine Presence, to do Him reverence at the approach into the House of God, or unto the Lord’s Table....

For the crucifix—

‘He utterly denieth all popish affections, and saith that the figure of Christ upon the Cross may be had without any popish affection, and that the said figure upon his seal did itself declare what affection it was to manifest. For there was this posy engraven with it, “Ἐν ᾧ κόσμος ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ τῷ κόσμῳ,” being taken out of S. Paul, Gal. vi. 14.... In an holy imitation whereof this defendant beareth divers coats of arms (as the use is) upon the said seal, to wit, the arms of the See of Norwich, and the arms of the See of Hereford, and of the Deanery of Windsor, and of the Mastership of Peterhouse, together with his own paternal coat of an ancient descent; he, considering with himself, that these were emblems all, and badges but of worldly and temporal glories, and desiring that the world should have a right apprehension of him, and to testify that he did no way glory in any thing of this transitory world, but humbly endeavoured to wean himself from all temporal and vain rejoycing, he therefore caused such a small figure of Christ on the Cross to be set over all the said coats.’

He adds that he principally used it in signing ‘presentments of Popish recusants.’ ... not to say that although the said seal lay all the year long locked up in a chest, but at the time of sealing, and that when any sealing there was no worship done by any; yet nevertheless, as soon as he understood that any had taken scruple at it, he presently, to avoid all pretence of scandal, caused the said seal to be altered and the figure of Christ to be wholly omitted.’[40]

EASTWARD POSITION.

The part of the Defence, which has been most challenged, is that for the use of the ‘Eastward position.’ It is, however, important to remember that the Bishop had to defend himself against the charge, that once, while celebrating in the Tower Church at Ipswich, he had ‘used idolatrous actions’ in administering the Holy Communion, Consecrating the Elements with his face eastward, elevating the Paten and Chalice ‘above his shoulders and bowing low either to or before them when set down on the Table.’

The charge of ‘idolatry’ divides itself into three heads. The last two Wren met by a full denial, the first he confesses, while explaining his reason for his position in that special instance, when, as he says, the Elements being on the middle of the Holy Table, ‘were farther from the end thereof than he, being but low of stature, could reach over his book unto them and yet still proceed in reading the words without stop or interruption and without danger of spilling the Bread and Wine ... and he humbly conceiveth that although the Rubrick[41] says that the Minister shall stand at the north side of the Table, yet it is not so to be meant as that upon no occasion during all Communion time he shall step from it.’ For the rest, the whole tone of the Defence is brave and dignified; and despite the knowledge that his life was at stake, despite of the ‘humbly conceiveth’ which runs through it, it is evident that the Bishop considered his position to be in reality unassailable, and that he was more or less condescending in making these explanations. There is an irony in the studied simplicity with which the scholar and theologian explains elementary truths and ordinary rules of church discipline to a House of Commons who certainly stood in need of instruction in such matters.

The Bishop, when his part was done, and he had received notice to prepare for trial on a day appointed, put his manuscript, with an injunction of secresy, into the hands of a lawyer who was supposed to be friendly, that he might give his advice on the technical and legal parts.

‘The person,’ says the ‘Parentalia,’ ‘thus intrusted discovering (on the perusal) matters of such moment, as he conceived might be very expedient for the Prosecutors to be forewarned of, betrayed his trust, and to ingratiate himself treacherously delivered up the Bishop’s papers to the chief persons in power of the governing faction. The consequence thereupon was—that the resolution which had been taken to bring him to trial for life was suddenly countermanded and an order by the House of Commons made to continue him in prison during their pleasure.’

GARTER JEWELS.

So began the long years of Bishop Wren’s captivity. Few trials could have been harder for a man of vigorous active nature to bear than this one which rendered him powerless, when all he held dear was at stake, loaded him with calumnies and prevented his uttering a word in his defence. The diary gives no hint of what his feelings were. In silence he resigned himself, resolved to afford no triumph to his enemies. Dean Wren was somewhat better off, though he had his share of misfortunes. The valuable plate and treasures belonging to the Order of the Garter were a serious responsibility, and, though the treasure-house was strong, he could not feel that it offered a sufficient security. The plate and armour were not easily hidden, but the Diamond George and Garter of Gustavus Adolphus he determined, if possible, to save. Accordingly, with the help of one trustworthy person and every precaution for secresy, he dug a hole in the treasury floor and there deposited them, concealing the place with the utmost care, and leaving a note in the hand of one worthy person intimating where the jewels might be found in the event of his death. He had good cause to rejoice in this precaution, for a few months later, in October 1642, down came

‘one Captain Fogg pretending a warrant from the King and demanding the keys of the Treasury, threatening if they were denied him by the Dean and Prebendaries, to pull the Chapel about their ears.’

As his threats had no effect, he forced the stone jambs of the doorway with crowbars, and carried off all the treasures except those which the Dean had buried. These, however, did not long remain secure, for in 1645 they were discovered and placed in the keeping of Colonel Ven, then governor of Windsor Castle, and finally, through several hands, reached the trustees of the Long Parliament, who sold the jewels to Thomas Beauchamp, their clerk. The Deanery was not spared during the first pillage of the chapel, though the Dean possessed a formal protection from the Committee of Public Safety, but was ransacked by the soldiers, and the Registry of the Garter, sealed by order of the House of Lords, broken open, and the records stolen. Dean Wren lost many things of value—books and manuscripts dear to the careful scholar, and also plate, including two large silver tankards, the gifts of the Elector Palatine. Of his own effects the Dean was only able, after an interval of six years, to recover one harpsichord valued at ten pounds; but he succeeded, after much expense and frequent attendances at Somerset House, by the favour of the trustees’ chairman, Major Wither, in regaining the registers of the Order of the Garter, known from the colours of the velvet in which they were bound as ‘the Black, the Blue, and the Red,’ though not until a considerable space of time had passed; they contained all the principal records of the Order, and were therefore very valuable. The diamonds however, he was never able to regain, or the Altar Plate. After the first plunder of the Chapel and the Deanery Dr. Wren appears to have left Windsor and to have followed the Court for a time.

Christopher, meanwhile, was at Westminster advancing steadily in learning, while the loyal principles of his family must have been confirmed by the whole tone of the school which was ardently royalist. South, in a sermon for January 30, says,[42] speaking of Westminster: ‘Upon that very Day, that black and eternally infamous Day of the King’s murder, I myself heard, and am now a witness, that the King was publickly prayed for in this School but an hour or two (at most) before his sacred head was struck off.’

INCREASING TROUBLES.

Whether at this period Christopher ever saw his uncle in the Tower does not appear. The Bishop’s position was sad enough. During 1643 and 1644 his diary records the death of five of his children; in the monotony of his prison life these sorrows must have pressed on him with double force. Nor was there any consolation to be derived from public matters. The royal cause, prosperous at first, grew less and less so, as the King’s lack of money became an ever-increasing difficulty. Another grief, keenly felt by all Churchmen, was the order of the Parliament for the abolition of the Prayer Book and the alteration of the Thirty-nine Articles in a sense pleasing to the Puritans. Then came the long-deferred trial of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was treated with a cruel disregard of his high position and of his age, every kind of insult and indignity being offered him. He however rose superior to it all, and defended himself with an eloquence, vigour, and courage which dismayed and enraged his enemies, though it could not change their purpose. The Bishop of Ely’s name was frequently mentioned, and his promotion objected to as one of the Archbishop’s crimes; but no further steps were taken against him then, as he was safe in custody, and the Commons had enough on their hands.

In his defence, the Archbishop thought it prudent to say nothing respecting the Bishops whose advancement was objected against him, deeming it for their interest to entangle them as little as possible in his misfortunes. They were able to speak for themselves he said, but the memory of the dead Archbishop Neile he warmly defended. The trial was long protracted in order to give a specious colouring of justice to the predetermined sentence.

For this Prynne ‘kept a school of instruction’ for the witnesses, and tampered with the Archbishop’s papers, of which he had forcibly possessed himself. The spirit that guided the whole trial was shown in his reply to one who said the Archbishop was a good man. ‘Yea, but we must make him ill.’ The Peers raised a feeble opposition. The King, whose consent the Parliament had not attempted to procure, sent to the Archbishop by a sure hand, from Oxford, a full pardon under the Great Seal, but neither received the least attention.

ARCHBISHOP LAUD MURDERED.

On January 10, on Tower Hill, the unjust sentence was fulfilled. Few things are more touching than the account given by his chaplain and biographer, Heylin, of the way in which the Archbishop met that cruel fate. It is some comfort to remember that, though the Church Services were then forbidden, yet his enemies did not interfere, but suffered the Burial Service to be read in All Hallows, Barking, where he was first interred. After the Restoration, the coffin was removed to S. John’s College, Oxford, and buried under the altar in the chapel. He left Bishop Wren and Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, executors of his will. It contained a great number of bequests for charitable foundations, especially for his native town of Reading; but as his whole estate had been taken from him, these were unfulfilled. His murder was an immense triumph to all the Sectarians in England and Scotland, who probably considered it as a death-blow to the Church.

The Bishop of Ely in his cell must have listened in grief and horror to the tolling of the Tower bell which proclaimed the bloody death of the friend with whom he had laboured for many years, latterly his patient fellow-prisoner. The entry in the diary is brief: ‘Parce, O Deus Requisitor sanguinis.’ The same fate seemed very near to himself, and he was ready to follow the Archbishop; but he had eighteen years of close imprisonment to endure, and a different work to do.

Early in 1644, George Monk, then a colonel in the King’s service, was taken prisoner by Fairfax in his attack upon the army besieging Nantwich, in Cheshire. He was imprisoned first at Hull, and then, as he was thought too important to be exchanged except for some considerable prisoner, he was sent to the Tower, and there remained two years. The Tower charges were high, and a long confinement in its walls was a strain upon the resources of a prisoner, which reduced those, whose fortune, like that of Monk, was scanty, to extreme poverty. The King, who knew Monk’s condition, contrived to send him a hundred guineas, and upon this he existed for some time, and resisted the offers of Cromwell, then rapidly rising in power and authority.

Somehow or other, Monk contrived to obtain several interviews with Bishop Wren, who did his best to confirm the soldier in his loyalty. He perceived that Monk, whose popularity with the army was very great, and whose military talents were thought to be of a high order, might one day be a valuable ally, and a useful counterpoise to Cromwell. At length, when the King’s cause appeared for the time lost, and Monk himself was reduced to extreme poverty, he yielded to Cromwell’s request, and accepted a commission in the Irish army, under his kinsman Lord Lisle. Before his release, Monk had a final interview with the Bishop of Ely, and, as he knelt to ask the Bishop’s blessing, bound himself with a solemn engagement never to be an enemy to his king, and said he was going to do his majesty the best service he could against ‘the rebels in Ireland, and hoped he should one day do him further service in England.’

Bishop Wren held firmly to his trust in Monk’s loyalty, though many things might well have shaken his confidence. In the curious life of Dr. John Barwick, one of the King’s most faithful agents, from whom Sir Walter Scott may have taken many of the features of his indefatigable plotter ‘Dr. Rochecliffe,’ it is said that[43] ‘he’ (Dr. Barwick) ‘often heard the Right Reverend Bishop of Ely promise himself all he could wish from the General’s fidelity.’ As Monk gave no other hint of his intentions, refusing even to receive Charles II.’s letters, this assurance was precious to the Royalists.

CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD.

In 1646, Christopher Wren left Westminster, and at the age of fourteen went up to Oxford, and was entered as a Gentleman Commoner at Wadham College. He had, young as he was, distinguished himself at Westminster, inventing an astronomical instrument, of which no description remains, and dedicating it to his father in a short Latin poem,[44] which has been often praised for the flow and smoothness of its lines; a set of Latin verses in which the signs of the Zodiac are transformed into Christian emblems, is, in spite of its ingenuity, much less successful; a short poem on the Nativity also in Latin, belongs probably to the same date, and is of the same order of poetry.

Far more graceful are the playful lines cut on the rind of an immense pomegranate sent to ‘that best man, my dearest friend E. F., by Christopher Regulus,’ in which on the ‘Pomo Punico,’ as he calls it, Christopher rings the changes on ‘Punic gifts’ and ‘Punic faith,’ and declares his pomegranate is connected neither with the one nor the other.

One English poem, an attempt to paraphrase the first chapter of S. John’s Gospel, fails of necessity from the impossibility of such an attempt, and Wren handles the English verse far more stiffly and uneasily than he did the Latin. What however is striking is the penmanship of the ‘Parentalia’ autograph; the writing, the capital letters, and the little flourishes are executed with a delicate finish really remarkable.

There is no date to this autograph, but the handwriting appears firmer and more regular than that of the dedication to his father, and it was probably an Oxford composition.

Christopher came up to Oxford a slight, delicate boy, with an understanding at once singularly quick and patient, readily seconded by very dexterous fingers, and keen powers of observation. He brought with him a reputation for, in the phrase of the day, ‘uncommon parts,’ and speedily showed that besides a classical education, he had acquired a strong bent for the experimental philosophy of the ‘New learning.’

Oxford, when Wren came there, was not only the seat of learning, it was a Court and a Camp as well, to which all the Royalist hearts in England turned. In the midst of these curiously differing influences, Christopher pursued his studies under the care of the ‘most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins,’[45] as Evelyn calls him, a man as devoted to experiments as Christopher himself. Dean Wren had been in Bristol with his daughter and son-in-law, accompanying Prince Rupert, and on the Prince’s unexpected surrender of the town to Fairfax (1645), seems to have returned with Prince Rupert and Mr. and Mrs. Holder, either to his own living of Great Haseley, or to Mr. Holder’s at Bletchingdon.

KING CHARLES LEAVES OXFORD.

In those times no place could long be a tranquil habitation. The King’s affairs went from bad to worse, and at length the near approach of Fairfax with his victorious army made it evident that Oxford could no longer be a safe refuge for the Court. King Charles accordingly left Oxford in disguise, and, attended only by Mr. Ashburnham and Dr. Michael Hudson,[46] who was well acquainted with the lanes and byeways of the country, proceeded by Henley-on-Thames and St. Albans, to Southwell in Nottinghamshire, throwing himself on the loyalty of the Scots, then encamped at Newark. How unworthy of his confidence they proved to be, and how they finally sold him to the Parliament, are matters of history too notorious for repetition here.

Oxford, thus saved from the ruin of a siege, capitulated to Fairfax June 24, 1646, on the express condition that the University should be free from ‘sequestrations, fines, taxes and all other molestations whatsoever.’ But the Parliament was not famous for keeping its engagements, and at once proceeded to break through those made with Oxford and reduce it to the same condition as Cambridge, which they had devastated in 1642. A passage from ‘Querela Cantabrigiensis,’ which is supposed to be written by Dr. Barwick, gives some idea of what this condition was:

‘And therefore,’ he says, ‘if posterity shall ask “Who thrust out one of the eyes of this kingdom, who made Eloquence dumb, Philosophy sottish, widowed the Arts, and drove the Muses from their ancient habitation? Who plucked the reverend and orthodox professors out of their chairs, and silenced them in prison or their graves? Who turned Religion into Rebellion, and changed the apostolical chair into a desk for blasphemy, and tore the garland from the head of Learning to place it on the dull brows of disloyal ignorance?” If they shall ask “Who made those ancient and beautiful chapels, the sweet remembrances and monuments of our fore-fathers’ charity and the kind fomenters of their children’s devotion, to become ruinous heaps of dust and stones?”... ’Tis quickly answered—“Those they were, who endeavouring to share three Crowns and put them in their own pockets, have transformed this free kingdom into a large gaol, to keep the liberty of the subject: they who maintain 100,000 robbers and murderers by sea and land, to protect our lives and the propriety of our goods ... they who have possessed themselves of his majesty’s towns, navy, and magazines, to make him a glorious king; who have multiplied oaths, protestations, vows, leagues and covenants, for ease of tender consciences; filling all pulpits with jugglers for the Cause, canting sedition, atheism, and rebellion, to root out popery and Babylon and settle the kingdom of Christ:... The very same have stopped the mouth of all learning (following herein the example of their elder brother the Turk), lest any should be wiser than themselves, or posterity know what a world of wickedness they have committed.”’[47]

PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS.

Wadham College probably suffered less than many, as its head, Dr. Wilkins, who had married Cromwell’s sister, was very submissive to the then Government. As matters settled down somewhat at Oxford towards 1648, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. Wallis, Mr. Theodore Hank, who came from the desolated Palatinate, and Mr. S. Foster, the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, met together weekly, ‘to discourse and consider,’ writes Dr. Wallis, ‘(precluding theology and state affairs), of philosophical enquiries, and such as related thereunto: as physick, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, staticks, magneticks, chymicks, mechanicks, and natural experiments with the state of those studies as then calculated at home and abroad.’

The meetings, at which Christopher Wren, young as he was, appears to have been a constant attendant, were frequently held at the house of Dr. Goddard for the convenience of his having there a workman skilled in the nice work of grinding glasses for microscopes and telescopes. Dr. Goddard became body physician to Cromwell, was by him made Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and subsequently represented the university in Parliament. Dr. Wallis, a famous Oxford mathematician, was employed by the Parliament to decipher the King’s cabinet of letters taken at Naseby, and also was proved by Matthew Wren, the son of the Bishop, to have deciphered several very important letters sent by Charles II. to England, and intercepted at Dunkirk.

As by degrees these meetings were more largely attended, and men came who held very different opinions from those of Dr. Goddard and Dr. Wallis, the exclusion of theology and politics from the discussions was a needful precaution. Many inventions of Christopher’s date from this time, a design for a reflecting dial for the ceiling of a room, ornamented with quaint figures and devices, some Latin lines ending in a chronogram of his age, and the date of the invention, suggested probably by the one in the rectory at East Knoyle, which he had known from a child; an instrument to write in the dark; and an instrument of use in gnomonics.[48] At the same time he had attracted the notice of Sir Charles Scarborough, a friend of Dean Wren’s, then just rising to fame as a surgeon. Christopher, whose health, as has been said, was delicate, fell dangerously ill and considered that he owed his life to the skilful care of his new friend. Dr. Scarborough, who could recite in order all the propositions of Euclid and Archimedes, and could apply them, found in his patient a kindred spirit, and induced Wren, young as he was, to undertake the translation into Latin of the ‘Clavis Aurea,’ by the Rev. W. Oughtred, a mathematical treatise of great reputation.