It would seem that the Bishop, finding his life was for the time spared, and having a steady conviction that the evil days would pass, had determined to keep himself ready in body, as in soul, for what work the future might bring. A prison life leaves little to be recorded; the days wore away in the Tower, divided between devotion, study, and that unchanging monotonous walk which at least gave the prisoner a distant glimpse of the world from which he was excluded.
He was allowed the Bible and paper and ink, but no other books. It is the testimony of one who has studied Bishop Wren’s manuscript—
‘He wrote in an exquisite hand, in very fair Latin, a commentary on much of Holy Scripture enough to fill an oak box of no mean dimensions. This box he committed to the care of Dr. Beaumont, master of S. Peter’s College.[55] Had the Puritans read the MS. they would have found some antidote to their poison.’
Two sermons and some treatises were also written during his captivity. Probably suspicion attached to anything that he did, for it is said to have been all written by stealth.
His nephew’s life differed as widely from his own as did their characters. Christopher was at Oxford, deep in the experiments of the ‘New learning,’ and in the inventions which it suggested to his ready brain and dexterous fingers.
DIPLOGRAPHIC PEN.
One invention which he was at the time proud of was that of a—
‘diplographic instrument for writing with two pens,’ whose uses he thus describes; ‘by the help of this instrument, every ordinary penman may at all times be suddenly fitted to write two several copies of any deeds and evidences, from the shortest to the longest length of lines, in the very same compass of time, and with as much ease and beauty, without any dividing or ruling; as, without the help of the instrument, he could have despatched but one.’
So successful was this instrument, that he obtained a patent for it for seventeen years. In the same year an exact duplicate of this invention was brought from France, and another patent taken out for the same number of years, by Mr. William Petty,[56] who claimed to be the inventor.
Wren was indignant at the notion that he had copied another person’s idea, and gives good reasons for his belief that his own instrument had been described to Petty by a friend of his. Three years later Wren wrote of it as ‘an obvious Thing, a cast-off Toy;’ ending, ‘Indeed though I care not for having a Successor in Invention, yet it behoves me to vindicate myself from the Aspersion of having a Predecessor.’