He then asks them for their warrant for the payment of the arrears, amounting to more than 1,300l., which were due to him, and says he will ever be ready in the future, to give his advice and assistance in anything about the said Cathedral. Archbishop Tenison and Bishop Compton laid Wren’s petition before the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Northey, who pronounced ‘that Sir Christopher Wren’s case was very hard, but that the terms of the Act were so positive that it could not be overridden, but the Commissioners ought in justice to find some remedy.’
Wren then addressed the House of Commons in a petition in which he repeats that his ‘measures for completing the Cathedral are wholly over-ruled and frustrated.’
A REMEDY FOUND.
The House considered the matter, and cut the knot by declaring the Cathedral to be finished, and directing the payment of all the arrears of the architect’s salary.
Their prompt decision gratified Sir Christopher, who contrasts it with the conduct of the Commission, ‘which was such as gave him reason enough to think that they intended him none of the suspended salary if it had been left in their power to defeat him of it.’
The attacks on Jennings, whom Wren firmly defended, fell to the ground: they probably had as little foundation as the ‘Screw Plot,’ by which at a Thanksgiving, by one man’s moving a few of the bolts and screws, the whole dome was to fall in.[238] The bell-founder Phelps, who had removed the faulty bell put up by Wightman under the direction of the Commissioners, also triumphed: he offered to give a bond to the Dean and Chapter to recast the bell at his own expense if, after a year’s trial, they were dissatisfied with it: as this offer was never claimed, Wren justly says that they were either content with the bell or else showed great neglect. Until the last few years it was the only bell possessed by the Cathedral.
To perfect S. Paul’s some things had still to be done, and, rather than these should suffer, Wren was willing still to undergo the slights and annoyances of the other S. Paul’s Commissioners, amongst whose names one wishes that of Sir Isaac Newton did not appear, without clear evidence that he stood by his early patron and friend. One hopes it may have been so, certainly he was not a frequent attendant at the meetings.
DECORATION OF S. PAUL’S.
Within the Cathedral there was some important work to do. Gibbons’ carving had to be completed, and the beautiful iron-work gates on either side of the choir had yet to be set up. For this work Wren employed a M. Tijou, at that time a famous worker in iron, though no account of him is to be obtained at the present day. Possibly he was one of the French refugees. Wren saw both the carving and the gates successfully finished. But for the east end of the Cathedral he had a magnificent design which is unfulfilled to this day. He intended to inlay the columns of the apse with rich marble, to use a considerable amount of colour and gilding, and to place over the Altar a hemispherical canopy supported on four writhed pillars of the richest Greek marbles, with proper decorations of architecture and sculpture: he had prepared his model and the needful drawings, Bishop Compton had even received some specimens of marble from a Levant merchant in Holland, but unluckily the colours and the class of marble were not what Wren desired, and the plan waited for a better opportunity, which, in Wren’s lifetime, never came. Thus, of all this grand design, the only trace is the painting of the apsidal pillars, in imitation of lapis lazuli, which was meant as a temporary experiment, and the model of the canopy in the possession of the Dean and Chapter. Hardly anything could be done which would more enhance the interior beauty of S. Paul’s than the erection of this canopy.
Besides the adornment of the east end of the Cathedral there was also that of the dome to be accomplished. The decoration of S. Paul’s is so vexed a question that one almost fears to touch upon it, but the statement in the ‘Parentalia’ is explicit.