“Your uncle has long been confined to the Tower,” he remarked after a pause, during which he keenly surveyed the short but dignified person of the youth.
“He has,” replied Wren, with some stateliness; “but he bears his affliction with patience and resignation.”
“He may come out, if he will,” said Cromwell.
“Will your highness permit me to tell him so?” asked Wren, with eagerness.
“Yes, you may,” said the Lord Protector.
Wren seized an early opportunity of retiring, and, with something of boyish delight, hurried to his venerable relative with the glad tidings; but the imprisoned prelate disdained the thought of obtaining liberty from the great usurper, and, after denouncing the proposal with ardent indignation, declared that he was determined to tarry the Lord’s leisure, and owe deliverance to Him only. The Restoration soon after set him free.
Wren resigned his chair at Gresham College when promoted to the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy at Oxford, where had for years existed the club out of which arose the Royal Society, of which he became a member, and afterward president. His reputation as a successful cultivator of the sciences had already extended his reputation to foreign lands, when he gloriously proved his possession of a very different and more popular kind of accomplishment. He had previously attracted the attention of the king, who must have been aware that the youth had been unostentatiously storing his mind with that minute knowledge of architecture which proved his source of power; and at the age of twenty-eight he was summoned to Whitehall, and informed that the time had arrived for putting his powers to the proof. He was appointed to assist at the public works then contemplated: namely, the building of a new palace at Greenwich, the embellishment of Windsor Castle, and the completion of old St. Paul’s, whose interior had been used as a stable by Cromwell’s troopers, and its beautiful pillars defaced and applied to the most sordid purposes. The Government were in no haste to commence operations. Perhaps
“The delay was wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.”
At all events, Wren remained unemployed for two long years; and at the end of that period, delay having done its work, and there appearing no prospect of his talents being in requisition, he manifested symptoms of impatience. Under such circumstances ambitious spirits are not seldom troublesome, and Wren, no doubt, bore himself like other people; but his complaints were cut short by the offer of an office at Tangier, whither he was requested to go and direct the defenses of the harbor and citadel. The young architect did not pause long to consider the course he should pursue: an ample salary was indeed rather tempting; but, with characteristic decision, he declined the appointment, and returned to Oxford.
The condition of St. Paul’s, however, was such as could not be altogether disregarded. Soldiers had converted the body of the ancient church into quarters for their horses; the beautiful pillars of Inigo Jones’s portico had been hewed and broken down, and large portions of the roof had fallen in. The spectacle it presented was woeful in the extreme, and could no longer be overlooked; and, accordingly, Wren was commissioned to survey the building and furnish plans for its complete restoration.