Sir Christopher’s mother was Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Cox, of Fonthill, Wiltshire. So on both sides Christopher was well born. He was an only son, with seven sisters, but one of them only is important in Wren’s story. She married, in 1640, Dr. William Holder, of Blechington, Oxford.
We know nothing of Christopher’s mother except her name, but his father cut some figure in Charles I.’s reign. A loyalist of loyalists, he succeeded his more distinguished brother, Bishop Matthew Wren, in 1635, as Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the Garter. When St. George’s Chapel was plundered by the Cromwellian troops, the spoils included the three Registers of the Garter Knights, but by making a heavy payment the Dean got them back again, and cherished them until his death in 1658. They then passed into the safe keeping of Christopher, who soon after the Restoration handed them over to Dr. Bruno Ryves, then the Registrar of the Garter.
Dean Christopher was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and St. John’s, Oxford, and his son’s scientific attainments were inherited. He was a man of delightful character, and evidently there was between father and son the closest affection, which shines even through the formal phrases used in those days by children when writing to their fathers. That he added skill in architecture to his wide literary and mathematical knowledge is clear from the fact that he was employed in 1634 to design a building at Windsor for Charles I.’s Queen, and a detailed estimate prepared by the Dean has survived. As the building was to cost over £13,000, it must have been an ambitious undertaking, but it never took shape owing to the disturbances of the time.
It was of great importance to Wren that his early training should have been given to him by so able a father, especially as he was, in childhood, exceedingly delicate. The Rev. William Shepheard helped the Dean as domestic tutor, and the boy’s mathematics were looked after by Dr. William Holder. Aubrey, in his Lives of Eminent Men, says of Holder that “he was very helpful in the education of his brother-in-law, a youth of prodigious inventive wit, to whom he was as tender as if he had been his own child. He gave him his instructions in geometry and arithmetic, and when he was a young scholar at the University of Oxford was a very necessary and kind friend.”
Amongst the manuscripts in the heirloom Parentalia is a letter in Latin, dated “E Musæo meo, Calendis Januarii, 1641,” from Wren to his father, beautifully written, and expressing filial gratitude in a high degree, and below is a Latin verse with its English translation. At the foot the delighted father has written, “Scripto hoc, Ao ætatis suæ Decimo ab octobris 20o elapso.” It was certainly a remarkable accomplishment for a boy of nine.
Also amongst the Parentalia MSS. is a versified paraphrase of the first to the fourteenth verses of the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel. The penmanship of this is also admirable, and Wren maintained this merit of legibility until the end of his life.
Wren went in due course to Westminster, and worked under the redoubtable Dr. Busby. His father’s choice of the school was doubtless due to the vehemently loyalist attitude of the great headmaster, but it may also have been influenced by the fact that Busby, though a notable classic, did not frown upon mathematical and scientific studies. Christopher was a Town Boy, and never entered the College proper. Possibly it was at Westminster that Wren first met Robert Hooke, with whom he was to be so closely associated in after life, though this guess is a little doubtful, for Hooke was older by three years; but he was also a Town Boy, and boarded in Busby’s house, going but little into school. John Sargeaunt thought that Hooke studied mathematics apart, and that this liberty was probably shared by young Christopher. It is likely that owing to Christopher’s delicate health he left Westminster early and pursued his studies under the eye of Sir Charles Scarborough, a young but famous physician who had developed a marked genius for mathematics and science. If Wren had remained at Westminster, he would almost certainly have proceeded in the ordinary course, like most Westminster boys, either to Christ Church, Oxford, or Trinity College, Cambridge: the choice of Wadham was no doubt dictated by his friendship with the Warden. Evidently, however, Wren retained an affection for his old school, because he took much trouble over the design of a new dormitory which led to a great deal of wrangling, and the work of building was postponed again and again. When, ultimately, the policy of rebuilding was settled in 1721, Wren was ninety, and no longer in practice. His design, therefore, was put aside, and the Earl of Burlington produced what purported to be a new one, but was, in fact, Wren’s, with some slight modifications. The existing building, in fact, which looks out on the quiet Abbey Garden, may be regarded as a work of Wren, though technically the amateur Burlington was responsible for it.
If we are to believe Elmes, it was not until 1647, when Christopher was in his fifteenth year, that he became acquainted with Sir Charles Scarborough, but it seems more reasonable to ascribe to the Scarborough period, following Wren’s retirement from Westminster, a manuscript letter in Latin verse to his father, dated September 13, 1645, dedicating to him an instrument called Suum Panorganum Astronomicum, and a tract De Ortu Fluminum. On that assumption Christopher left Westminster before he had completed his thirteenth year.
There is very little to show that Wren was much interested in the graphic arts, but on the sheet in the heirloom Parentalia which contains the Latin letter is an ink sketch of a woman holding up a dial-shaped object, which is possibly the Panorganum.
Possibly, however, this may be the sketch for a design on the ceiling of a room which he did when he was sixteen. It included “two figures, representing Astronomy and Geometry and their Attributes, artfully drawn with his pen.” I cannot affirm that the lady in the heirloom copy is a piece of his “artful” drawing, but it is likely.