Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

Then he had an ‘Uncle Matthew,’ who was Bishop of Ely, and as he grew older he would go and visit him, and would wander across from the Palace into Queen Etheldreda’s beautiful Minster Church, and stand and look up in wonder at the Lantern Tower; and his uncle would tell him the story of how it once fell, and how Alan de Walsingham built it up again, and perhaps it was that which gave him the idea, which he carried out afterwards at St. Paul’s, of a great church with an enormous dome in the centre of it, under which thousands of people could assemble, as they do on Sunday afternoons at St. Paul’s to-day, and listen to the sermon of some great preacher.

He did something else first, however, for he was very fond of watching the stars, and when he went to Oxford he watched them so closely, and learned so much about them, that he was made Professor of Astronomy.

But although he was made Professor of Astronomy, he seems to have gone on all the time studying architecture, and drawing plans of churches, and at last King Charles heard of him, and asked him to draw some plans of churches for him. In this way he became known as a clever architect, and when the Great Fire took place, and a large part of London had to be rebuilt, he not only built a new Cathedral, but forty-two other churches as well; besides which he built Marlborough House, and a great part of Greenwich Hospital.

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ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL: NELSON’S MONUMENT
(Page 59)

So you see that he had a useful, busy life, and it was a very long one as well, for he lived till he was an old man of ninety-one. He was not very kindly treated towards the end of his life, and this was because of what is called ‘political jealousy.’ It had been the Stuart Kings who had brought him into notice, and given him the post of Surveyor-General; but when the House of Hanover came into power, their followers said, ‘Oh, we cannot have any of the friends of the Stuarts holding good posts; we must take them from them, and give them to those of our own party.’

And so Sir Christopher Wren’s office was taken from him, and given to another man, and something else was done that vexed him quite as much as losing his post.

He had meant his great Cathedral to stand as it stands to-day, with an open space all round it. Someone suggested that it would look much better if it were enclosed by a wall. And, in spite of Sir Christopher’s remonstrances, a wall was built, which quite spoilt the effect in his eyes.

He might have gone up and down the world trying to prove to everyone that his idea was best, and he might have made himself and his friends very unhappy over the unkindness and injustice that had been shown him, but, instead of this, he only shrugged his shoulders when he looked at the unsightly wall, and said, with a little laugh, that ‘ladies thought nothing looked well without an edging.’ Then he retired quietly to Hampton Court, where he had a house, and occupied himself until he died with his old hobby of Astronomy, and with reading Theology and Philosophy.

We read that occasionally the old man would ‘give himself a treat,’ and do you know what that treat was? He would come to London, and walk quietly up the Strand to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and stand and look for a while at the great and beautiful Cathedral that he had built, and then he would go home feeling quite content and happy, for he knew that it would stand for long centuries after the ugly wall had been pulled down again, and that future generations would forget all the unkind and untrue things that people had said about him, while they would always remember that it was he, Christopher Wren, who was the builder of St. Paul’s.