It is curious how all political colouring disappears from the record after the period of the Restoration. Yet Sir Christopher, his cousins, and the very Mr. Wren who writes the book were all in Parliament, and that in more or less critical times. Such accidental hints as there are point, I think, to Sir Christopher as adhering, though very quietly, to the politics of his ancestors; and assuredly neither he nor his descendants had any cause to love the house of Hanover!
Wren was a steady Churchman, bred up in that school of Andrewes, of Laud, and of Matthew Wren, which, if it was anti-Puritan, was equally and emphatically anti-Roman. For this reason, if for no other, after the trial of the Seven Bishops had shaken the confidence of every Churchman in the country, Wren may have acquiesced in a settlement which appeared to promise protection to the Church without finally excluding the Stuart line. The ‘Parentalia,’ published five years after the last Jacobite rising in 1745, preserves, as has been said, a political silence which may be that of discretion or of disappointment.
One word should be said as to Gresham College, where Wren held his first professorship. It was founded in 1579 by the will of Queen Elizabeth’s great merchant Sir Thomas Gresham. The college was no other than his own house in Bishopsgate, forming a quadrangle round a large garden. The seven professors, each of whom gave a lecture a day in term time, had a salary of 50l. a year and were lodged in the house. Gresham College escaped the Fire, and gave lodgings at that time to the Lord Mayor and the aldermen, who had been less fortunate. In 1768 it was pulled down by Act of Parliament, to give a site to the new Excise Office, and the original collegiate scheme was destroyed, though the lectures are still given in a lecture hall.
Little is known of Wren in his Masonic capacity. He is said to have been a member and a master of the ‘Old Lodge of S. Paul,;’ now known as the ‘Lodge of Antiquity.;’ All the records of the Lodge belonging to that time have unfortunately been lost, so that they cannot be consulted with reference to this matter.
The question has been raised whether Wren was a Freemason or not. On this point the ‘Parentalia’ makes no explicit statement, though it appears to imply Wren’s connection with the Order.
The Duke of Sussex caused a plate to be engraved in 1827 and affixed to the mallet which Sir Christopher was said to have presented to the Lodge, with this inscription:—‘A. L. 5831. A.D. 1827. To commemorate that this, being the same mallet with which His Majesty King Charles II. levelled the foundation stone of S. Paul’s Cathedral, A. L. 5677, A.D. 1673. Was presented to the Old Lodge of S. Paul, now the Lodge of Antiquity, acting by immemorial constitution, by Brother Sir Christopher Wren, R.W.D.G.M., Worshipful Master of this Lodge and Architect of that Edifice.’
The statement respecting King Charles’s presence is probably an erroneous one. The Lodge possesses also three gilt wooden candlesticks in the form of columns, inscribed ‘Ex dono Chr. Wren Eq. A. L. 5680.’
Where quotations have been made directly from the Wren MS., from the ‘Parentalia,’ or from Evelyn’s Diary, the spelling and stopping of the originals have been faithfully reproduced. For the rest, the writer can only hope that these pages may serve as a contribution towards that full and worthy biography of the great architect which may yet, she trusts, be written before London is finally robbed of the Churches with which Wren’s genius endowed her.
August 1, 1881.