It is some satisfaction to know that Benson so disgraced himself as in five years’ time to be dismissed, and narrowly escaped a prosecution by the House of Lords. Pope held him up to deserved scorn in the ‘Dunciad,’ where he also says:
While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends,
but this, one is glad to think, tells rather what might have been Sir Christopher’s state of mind than what it really was.
Wren had had the interest of watching his eldest son’s career in Parliament as member for that borough of Windsor which he had himself represented.
This son’s wife had died, and in 1715 he married again. His second wife was Constance, daughter of Sir Thomas Middleton, and widow of Sir Roger Burgoyne; by this marriage he had another son, named Stephen. On this occasion Sir Christopher bought the estate of Wroxhall Abbey[244] in Warwickshire, which had belonged to the Burgoynes and was heavily encumbered. Sir Christopher is said to have stayed at the Abbey occasionally, and to have designed the kitchen garden wall which is built in semicircles. It was probably when he thus became a Warwickshire Squire that he gave the designs for S. Mary’s Church at Warwick, designs entirely different from those adopted in the present building, which is said to have been designed and built by one Francis Smith, a mason in the town.
LONGITUDE AT SEA.
But the greater part of Wren’s declining years was spent at Hampton Court, from which he went up to London to watch the progress of the works at Westminster Abbey, the surveyorship of which he still kept. A report was spread that the ceiling of the Sheldonian Theatre, in which, as a piece of mechanical construction, Sir Christopher took great pride, was giving way. Careful examination proved this to be a perfectly groundless rumour, and no further annoyance arose to disturb the calm evening of the old man’s life. To be ‘beneficus humano generi,’ as he said, had ever been his aim and wish. He now employed his leisure in looking over old papers on astronomy and mathematics and the method of finding out the longitude at sea. It had been long considered by the general world as impossible to find out as was the secret of perpetual motion, and the attempt at either discovery was treated with equal ridicule. The merchants, and captains of merchant ships were, however, from bitter experience of vessels and crews wrecked or lost, aware of the immense importance of the discovery of the longitude, if it could be made. They presented, in 1714, a petition to Parliament, begging that a reward might be offered ‘for such as shall discover the same.’ This, after due consideration, was done by a Bill, passed rapidly through both Houses, offering a reward of 20,000l.. for the discovery.[245]
The subject was one which greatly occupied Wren, who all his life had been interested in sailors and sea matters. He amused himself by throwing his latest thoughts on the longitude into the form of three cryptographs:[246]
1. OZVCVAYINIXDNCVOCWEDCNMALNABECIRTEWNGRAMHHCCAW.
2. ZEIYEINOIEBIVTXESCIOCPSDEDMNANHSEFPRPIWHDRAEHHXCIF.
3. EZKAVEBIMOXRFCSLCEEDHWMGNNIVEOMREWWERRCSHEPCIP.