About this period he was sauntering with Charles the Second through the hunting-lodge at Newmarket, in reference to which his majesty remarked—
“These rooms are too low.”
“An’ please your majesty, I think them high enough,” said Wren, as he walked up, carrying his figure, which was the reverse of tall, with much of the stateliness of those cavaliers whom, in boyish days, he had seen at his father’s deanery. Charles, with a merry twinkle of his eye, squatted down to Wren’s height, saying, as he did so—
“Ay, Sir Christopher, on second thoughts I think they are high enough, too.”
Sir Stephen Fox, progenitor of that family which has since produced so many celebrated persons—a man who had risen from obscurity to high honors in the state—persuaded the king that a military hospital should be founded. Wren furnished designs for, and superintended, the building at Chelsea, which was not completed till the reign of William and Mary. He also prepared designs for the palace of Winchester. In 1784 he was appointed Comptroller and Principal Officer of the Works at Windsor Castle.
Wren had been born and bred among men who, from their position, took a lively interest in political affairs; and, in spite of his multifarious duties, he was far from declining such distinction in that sphere as was not likely to interfere with his professional pursuits. He was indebted to the people of Plympton—the native place of Sir Joshua Reynolds—for his first election to the House of Commons, in 1685. After the Revolution he was returned for New Windsor, and became a great favorite with that daughter of the banished king who then shared the English throne with her Dutch consort. She admired his genius, and perhaps appreciated the affection which he entertained for the kingly race whose errors had been her husband’s opportunity. Being pleased with the situation and scenery of Hampton Court, she commissioned the architect, who had done honor to the patronage of her merry uncle and her gloomy sire, to furnish designs for a splendid palace, to be connected with the pile which Cardinal Wolsey had reared and made over to the bluff Killer of Wives and Defender of the Faith. The queen was presented with several designs, and selected one which did credit to her character for taste and elegance, but the sanction of the royal Dutchman was required before she could finally decide. That great prince and soldier was a hero, though, unfortunately for his fame, one of no very scrupulous nature; and heroes are generally men of one design. If the question had been how to raise in England funds to carry on the war against France, his judgment would hardly have erred; but the construction of a palace was a different matter; and he chose and stuck by the very plan which had been prepared as a foil to the others. The queen was forced to yield, and the architect sighed at being thus obliged to erect a palace of which he disliked the plan; but regret could produce no remedy for the evil, and the work was proceeded with. He next designed Greenwich Hospital, and during the reign of Queen Anne he continued to enjoy from that royal lady a favor and protection not unworthy of a grand-daughter of Charles the First.
The distinguished architect, however, had not pursued his prosperous course without making enemies; and the time at length arrived when they could gratify their hoarded malice. When the first representative of the House of Brunswick left his delightful Electorate to ascend the throne of Great Britain, Wren was in his eighty-second year; and though so often thwarted in his designs during three reigns by citizens, and kings, and commissioners, he had done wonders, and on every side there were traces of his rare and fertile genius. The new sovereign, however, was almost as devoid of taste or capacity as he was destitute of virtue or popularity; and, from the beginning, he regarded the venerable architect with an inimical eye. After a lapse of four years the public learned, with astonishment and indignation, that Sir Christopher was dismissed from his office, and replaced by a wretched pretender, to whose undistinguished name Pope has given a somewhat unenviable notoriety.
The old knight had lived too long, and seen too much of the world, in a most eventful age, to be very deeply affected by this circumstance; though the insult touched his friends to the heart. He removed from his official residence in Scotland Yard, and betook himself to rural retirement. He had long survived his first wife; and not relishing a prolonged widowerhood, he sought and found a second bride in the daughter of a peer of Ireland. He now took a house at Hampton Court, where he passed the greater part of his remaining years in study and contemplation of the Holy Scriptures, which cheered his solitude and consoled him in his preparation for a higher state of existence. He indulged in a sleep in his easy chair after dinner, maintained the utmost serenity, and exhibited all his wonted vivacity. Gradually his limbs, which had been active, failed; and his movements thus became dependent on the assistance of others. Now and then he rejoiced in a visit to the metropolis, to inspect the repairs of Westminster Abbey, and look once more on the dome of St. Paul’s. His intellect remained unimpaired long after his bodily vigor had ceased. A journey between London and Hampton Court, then a more formidable affair to a person of advanced age than it has since become, proved more than his frame could endure, and, after a short illness, he died on the 27th of February, 1723. His corpse was consigned to the vaults of the magnificent cathedral, which stands alike the monument and the master-piece of his architectural genius, as his most appropriate epitaph is the brief inscription which has been alluded to at the commencement of this sketch. Sixty-nine years later the surrounding earth was disturbed on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds; and the mortal remains of the illustrious painter, whose magic pencil had redeemed Englishmen from the reproach of being indebted to foreign nations for artistic skill, were, with much pomp and circumstance, laid by the side of the great architect, in the consecrated cemetery.