DEATH OF MRS. M. WREN—KING CHARLES MURDERED—A MONOTONOUS WALK—INVENTIONS—A DREAM—ALL SOULS’ FELLOWSHIP—BEGINNINGS OF ROYAL SOCIETY—ASTRONOMY—AN OFFER OF RELEASE—THE CYCLOID—CROMWELL’S FUNERAL—LETTERS FROM LONDON.

La Royauté seule, depuis vingt ans, n’avait pas été mise à l’épreuve; seule elle avait encore à faire des promesses auxquelles on n’eut pas été trompé.... On y revenait enfin, après tant d’agitations comme au toit paternel qu’a fait quitter l’espérance et où ramène la fatigue.—Monk, par M. Guizot, p. 69.

A heavy sorrow fell upon the imprisoned Bishop of Ely at the close of 1646. His wife was worn out by grief for the loss of her children and anxiety for her husband, for whom Laud’s fate seemed but too probable, and the Bishop’s diary records that on ‘December 8, 1646, Ad Christum evolavit pia anima conjugis E. mediâ post 5vum matutinam.’[51] The diary contains no remark, no murmur, though this loss left Bishop Wren very desolate and full of anxiety for his seven surviving children, of whom the eldest, Matthew, was but seventeen. Upon such troubles as these prison life must have pressed heavily, and if Bishop Wren’s captivity was half as strict as was that of Dr. John Barwick, who was consigned to the Tower in 1650,[52] it was a sufficient hardship. Every rumour which reached his ears from the tumultuous world outside must have added to his grief. The King’s affairs grew more desperate, and the shadow of Cromwell loomed larger and larger. Probably the Bishop did not expect a long captivity. It must have come to his ears that in the proposed treaty of Newport (1648), ‘the persons only who were to expect no pardon were the Princes Rupert and Maurice; James, Earl of Derby; John, Earl of Bristol; William, Earl of Newcastle; Francis, Lord Cottington; George, Lord Digby; Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,’ and some fifty others.[53]

Condemned thus without a trial, without a chance of his vindication being known, the Bishop betook himself to prayer, and to writing a commentary on the Holy Scriptures, a task for which, as a fine Hebrew, Greek and Latin scholar, he was well qualified. In this work he found solace and support, and quietly waited until the tyranny should be overpast.

There is no need to recall in detail the thickcoming sorrows of that time; it is but too easy to guess how doubly galling imprisonment must have been to Bishop Wren when the royalists who were at liberty were straining every nerve, exhausting every device to save if possible their beloved King from his fate. In vain—at length came the fatal January 30 (1649), and King Charles, attended by Bishop Juxon, walked to the scaffold and uttered his final words, ‘I have a good cause and a gracious God on my side; I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.’ There was one of the King’s loyal subjects who, we may well believe, envied Bishop Juxon his privilege of attendance on his master to the last—Bishop Wren, who had been with him in bright early days, had attended him when Prince of Wales, on his romantic journey to Spain, and, when the weight of the corruptible crown first came upon the prince’s head, had accompanied him on the journey to Scotland for his coronation at Scone, who ever since then had been so trusted by him.

No word of his own grief, of his unavailing longing to see his King once more, and once more kiss his hand, is expressed in the brief record in his diary. It is simply ‘A sanguinibus, O Deus!’

A MONOTONOUS WALK.

Horror at the crime, at the stain of innocent blood which now defiled his country, seems to have swallowed up all expression of personal feeling. By degrees the rigour of his imprisonment appears to have been a little relaxed, and by the connivance of his gaoler he obtained the opportunity, rarely granted to prisoners, of walking upon the leads of one of the towers. Thither he daily went for his exercise, and, says the writer of the ‘Parentalia,’

‘by a just computation, he walked round the world. The earth being affirmed to be 216,000 miles in compass (at a calculation of sixty miles to a degree);[54] if it were possible to make a path round the earth, an able footman going constantly twenty-four miles a day, would compass it in 900 days, and so on in proportion of time and miles.’