But it is necessary to consider other evidence. R. B. Gardiner, in Registers of Wadham College, notes that Wren’s caution money as Fellow Commoner was received on June 25, 1649 or 1650. Sir Thomas G. Jackson gives 1649 as the year when Wren entered the college as Fellow Commoner. Wilkins did not become Warden, in place of Dr. Pitt, expelled by the Parliamentary Visitors, until April 13, 1648, when his name was entered in the Buttery Book. On May 5, 1648, Wilkins had a dispensation for twelve months from the full performance of his duties in consequence of his attendance on the Prince Elector, whose Chaplain he was. It was not impossible that Wren should have gone to Wadham at fourteen—the profligate Rochester matriculated at twelve and was M.A. before he was fourteen—but it is unlikely. Wren was exceedingly delicate as a boy, there was no Wilkins at Wadham to attract him there when he was fourteen or for two years after, and he was, even in 1649, the first Fellow Commoner entered during Wilkins’ wardenship. If Wilkins took the year’s leave granted him, and if June 25, 1649, be taken as the correct date for the payment of Wren’s caution money, he went there a month after the Warden settled down in his post.
If Wren had proceeded direct to Oxford at fourteen from being under Busby at Westminster, he would almost certainly have gone to Christ Church, not to Wadham. Moreover, it is certain that during his sixteenth year, and perhaps later, he was very busy with mathematics and science under Sir Charles Scarborough in London.
It is just conceivable that he entered at Wadham soon after Oxford surrendered to the Parliament in 1646, and that he did not come into residence until 1649 or 1650, but no document has ever suggested that, and the theory can be dismissed. It is the opinion of Mr. Wells, the reigning Warden, that if Wren only matriculated in 1650 he could not have proceeded to his B.A. in 1651, as in fact he did. But the year 1649, accepted by Sir Thomas Jackson, is feasible on the basis of Wren’s notable precocity and the then readiness of the University not to insist on three years, as is seen by Rochester’s case.
It is, however, fair to add that the entry of Wren’s £5 in the Wadham book is undated, but it comes at the foot of a page headed 1650, on which the preceding entry is dated June 25, and the three previous names are registered by Gardiner as 1650. It may be, however, that as the Wren entry is undated, it was added later. On the other hand, if he had gone to Oxford in 1646 he could scarcely have occupied the then unheard-of time of five years before taking his B.A., March 18, 1650-51.
I attach no importance to the MS. prepared by Wren’s son Christopher, or, indeed, to any of his documents, and prefer to rest on the College records. Miss Phillimore followed the MS., but Miss Milman, without setting down any evidence, assumed that Wren spent three years in London between Dr. Busby and Oxford. I think she did wisely, and on all the evidence, obscure and conflicting as it is, I accept 1649 as the year when Wren began his Oxford career.
The rest of the dates can be cleared off shortly. He became M.A. December 11, 1653, having been elected a Probationer Fellow of All Souls in November of the same year, and was made D.C.L. at All Souls on September 12, 1661.
Wren was fortunate in the influence of the Warden of Wadham, which was so powerful during the formation of Wren’s character that it is necessary to form some picture of the man. John Wilkins reigned beneficently over the college from 1648 to 1659, and was described by Aubrey as “no great-read man, but one of much and deepe thinking; and a prudent man as well as ingeniose.” As the late Dr. Wright Henderson, the biographer of Wilkins, wrote of him, “his greatness fell short of genius, for it was the effect of ordinary qualities, rarely combined and tempered into one character; but more effective for useful work in the world than genius without sanity.” Soon after the Civil War broke out, Wilkins was living in London as the chaplain of Charles Lewis, Prince Elector Palatine, with whom Christopher renewed a childish acquaintance. Mr. Wright Henderson thinks that Wilkins became the leader, as he was certainly the friend, of the group of students of natural philosophy who afterwards formed the Royal Society. It seems obvious that Wren was entered at Wadham in order that he might be under Wilkins. It is certain that he became the Warden’s favourite pupil.
It is evident from the amazing “Catalogue of New Theories, Inventions, Experiments, and Mechanick Improvements,” exhibited by Mr. Wren at the “First Assemblies at Wadham College in Oxford for Advancement of Natural and Experimental Knowledge” which is printed in Parentalia that Wren took all knowledge for his province. There are fifty-three items, ranging from such solemnities as the “Hypothesis of the Moon’s Libration, in Solid” and “To find whether the earth moves” through the uncertainties of “Probable Ways for making Fresh Water at Sea,” and the largeness of “Divers Improvements in the Art of Husbandry” down to the pleasant simplicity of “A Way of Imbroidery for Beds, Hangings, cheap and fair.”
We are reminded of the association between architecture and military engineering during the height of the Italian Renaissance, by “To build in the Sea, Forts, Moles, etc.” and “Secure and Speedier Ways of attacking Forts than by Approaches and Galleries.” Sanmicheli had invented the pentagonal bastion: Inigo Jones had fortified Basing House against the Parliament’s attack, and had been one of the defenders. We would give much to learn something of Wren’s invention for “Ways of Submarine Navigation.” If he had developed “Easier Ways of Whale-fishing,” it would have given material for another chapter in Moby Dick. Eheu fugaces! There is a hint of the coming gramophone in “A speaking Organ, articulating Sounds,” and “Divers new Musical Instruments” helps to explain Wren’s devotion to his daughter Jane, whose monument in the crypt of St. Paul’s—she died at the age of twenty-six—shows her in Francis Bird’s rather heavy-handed sculpture as seated at an organ.
The technique of writing always interested Wren, so it is natural to find in the catalogue “To write in the Dark” and “To write Double by an Instrument,” the latter a dodge he developed to the point of patenting it.