Sir Christopher Wren

by Lawrence Weaver

1632. Birth of Sir Christopher Wren, October 20.
1642. Entered Westminster School.
1647. Invention of weather-clock.
1649. Entered Wadham College.
1651. B.A.
1653. M.A. and Fellow of All Souls.
1654. Meets John Evelyn at Oxford.
1657. Appointed Gresham Professor of Astronomy.
1658. Attempt to solve Pascal’s problem.
1660. Royal Society founded in Wren’s room at Gresham College.
1661. Appointed Savilian Professor of Astronomy.
D.C.L., Oxford and Cambridge.
Appointed Assistant to Sir John Denham, Surveyor-General.
1662. Offer of Tangier surveyorship refused.
Appointed to survey old St. Paul’s.
1663. Doorway, Ely Cathedral.
Pembroke Chapel, Cambridge, begun.
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
1665. Trinity College, Oxford: new court.
Visit to Paris (July).
1666. Return from Paris (March).
Report on old St. Paul’s (May), and First Design for dome over crossing.
The Great Fire (September).
Prepared new Plan of London.
Appointed Surveyor-General and Principal Architect for repairing St. Paul’s, the City churches, and other public buildings.
1668. Emmanuel Chapel, Cambridge (1677).
Repairs to Salisbury Cathedral Spire.
1669. First Marriage: to Faith Coghill, December 7.
Appointed Surveyor-General of the King’s Works.
1670. St. Olave’s, Jewry (1679).
St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East (1671).
St. Michael’s Wood Street (1687).
St. Mary Aldermanbury (1686).
St. Mary-at-Hill (1676).
St. Christopher’s (1675).
St. Vedast Fosters (1673).
St. Sepulchre’s (1677).
St. Mary Woolnoth (1677): the pre-Hawksmoor church.
St. Mildred Poultry (1679).
St. Benet Fink (1681).
St. Mary-le-Bow (1680).
St. Lawrence Jewry (1686).
St. Bride’s (1684).
St. Dionis Backchurch (1686).
St. Michael’s Cornhill (1677).
St. Edmund the King (1679).
St. Sepulchre’s (1677).
“Rejected Design” for St. Paul’s.
Temple Bar.
1671. St. Nicholas Cole Abbey (1681).
St. George Botolph (1679).
St. Mary-le-Bow Steeple (1683).
St. Magnus (1687).
The Monument.
Wren meets Grinling Gibbons.
1672. St. Stephen’s Walbrook (1687).
Wren knighted (or possibly 1674).
1673. St. Paul’s: “Model Design” approved by King (afterwards rejected).
Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
1674. St. Bartholomew Exchange (1686).
St. Stephen’s Coleman Street (1681);
St. James Garlickhithe (1687).
Honywood Library, Lincoln Cathedral.
1675. St. Paul’s: “Warrant Design” approved by King and first stone laid.
Birth of son Christopher. Death of first wife.
Greenwich Observatory.
1676. St. Anne and St. Agnes (1687).
St. Michael’s Queenhithe (1687).
St. Michael Bassishaw (1682).
1677. Christ Church (1691).
St. Peter’s Cornhill (1687).
St. Benet Paul’s Wharf (1685).
St. Martin’s Ludgate (1687).
All Hallows the Great (1687).
St. Swithin’s (1687).
All Hallows Bread Street (1687).
Second marriage: to Jane Fitzwilliam, February 24.
Birth of daughter Jane, November.
1678. St. Antholin’s (1691).
Design of Charles I.’s tomb.
1679. Kilmainham Hospital, Dublin.
Birth of son William.
1680. St. Austin’s (1687).
Death of second wife, October.
St. Clement Danes.
1681. St. Mildred Bread Street (1687).
St. Benet’s Gracechurch (1687).
St. Mary Abchurch (1687).
St. Matthew’s Friday Street (1687).
Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford.
Sworn in as President of the Royal Society, January 12.
1682. St. Alban’s Wood Street (1687).
Chelsea Hospital begun.
Latin School, Christ’s Hospital.
1683. St. James Piccadilly.
St. Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street (1687).
St. Clement’s Eastcheap (1687).
Palace at Winchester begun but not completed.
1684. St. Margaret Pattens (1689).
St. Michael’s Crooked Lane (1694).
Appointed Controller of Works, Windsor Castle.
Middle Temple Gateway.
Repairs to Chichester Cathedral Spire.
1685. St. Andrew’s Wardrobe (1695).
1686. St. Margaret’s Lothbury (1693).
St. Mary Somerset (1694).
All Hallows Lombard Street (1694).
St. Michael’s Royal (1694).
1688. Town Hall, Windsor.
1689. M.P. for Windsor.
1690. Hampton Court begun.
1690. Kensington Palace.
1691. Chapel, Trinity College, Oxford.
1693. Library, Queen’s College, Oxford.
1694. Chapel, Trinity College, Oxford.
1695. Greenwich Hospital begun.
Morden College, Blackheath.
1697. St. Paul’s: Choir opened for service, December 2.
1698. Marlborough House, London.
North Transept front, Westminster Abbey.
1700. M.P. for Weymouth.
1703. Death of daughter Jane.
1704. Orangery, Kensington Palace.
1710. St. Paul’s: top-stone of Lantern laid.
1711. St. Paul’s: nominal completion.
1717. St. Paul’s: Wren’s complaint to Commissioners against the Balustrade.
1718. Dismissed from Surveyorship.
1723. Death of Wren, February 25.

APPENDIX III
A NOTE ON SOME PORTRAITS OF WREN

The following brief particulars of several portraits of Wren, some of which are reproduced in the preceding pages, may lead to more precise information being disinterred:

(a) Wren as a Man of Forty ([Plate II.]).—When I saw this, it was in the possession of the late Mrs. Catherine Pigott. It is now, I believe, in the possession of the Bishop of Southwell, to whom it passed on Mrs. Pigott’s death. It is unsigned, and there is no record as to its authorship. It shows Wren as a young man, and I had thought it represented him while in the twenties. Mr. Richard W. Goulding, F.S.A., dates the cravat about 1675, which would make Wren forty-three. The modelling of the face is not unlike that of the Pearce bust, which tends to confirm the age as about forty.

(b) The Wadham College Portrait ([Plate XIII.]).—This is in itself a poor piece of painting, and has a vague history. It is an 1825 copy by John Smith, of Oxford, deriving ultimately, it is said, from a Kneller portrait at Lambeth Palace, which, I am informed, has disappeared. It seems rather to be based on the Sheldonian portrait, which was attributed by Dallaway to Thornhill, “painted in conjunction with Verrio and Kneller.” I give the unlikely story of its authorship as it is told, adding only that as the plan in Wren’s hand shows the St. Paul’s of the Warrant Design or later, it must be after 1675, and therefore Wren is depicted as a man of forty-three or more, probably a good deal more, for he is markedly older than in the last mentioned.

(c) Bust by Edward Pearce at the Ashmolean ([Plate V.]).—This beautiful work has been dated 1673, by a letter written by Christopher, the architect’s son, and quoted by Mr. Lionel Cust. It may well be Wren as a man of forty-one, and the younger Christopher’s date can be accepted, but he was very casual in his chronologies.

(d) The Royal Society Portrait.—The legend on the frame says this picture is by Michael Wright, but Mr. Collins Baker attributes it, on the ground of style, to Riley and Closterman in collaboration. He claims that it is the basis of the Kirkall engraving (see next note). If so, Kirkall turned the face the other way. The view of St. Paul’s shows a transitional design between the Warrant Design with its nightmare steeple and the dome as built. The clock towers are almost exactly like the intermediate design preserved at All Souls. I suggest it shows a man of seventy.

(e) The Kirkall Engraving after Closterman ([Plate XV.]).—This rare portrait was given to me by Mrs. Pigott shortly before her death, and apart from its having been, as she told me, an heirloom in the Wren family, it has an interest as showing Elisha Kirkall’s “chiaroscuro” style of engraving interpreting Closterman’s portrait.

(f) The St. Paul’s Deanery Portrait ([Plate XIV.]).—This is a copy of the best known portrait of all, the Kneller at the National Portrait Gallery, and an inferior copy, for it reveals a man of far less distinction, both in character and feature, than the National portrait. The latter is attributed to the year 1711, and is therefore of Wren when he was nearly eighty.

(g) The Welbeck Portrait ([Plate IV.]).—The picture is a small whole length on panel. The architect wears a red dressing-gown with white lining, white stockings, and red shoes; his right hand is placed on his hip, and in his left hand he holds a drawing of the elevation of the façade of St. Paul’s. On the left side of the picture there is a lurid sky indicative of the burning of the City; in the right-hand top corner is a bust of Charles II., flanked by an amorino weighing the insignia of royalty (crown, sceptre, etc.), against four shields of arms (England, France, Scotland, and Ireland), and round the waist of the amorino is a scroll lettered “Justum est.”