‘Your most affectionate humble servant,
‘Chr. Wren.
‘June 14.
‘I have put the watch in a box that it might take noe harm, and wrapt it about with a little leather, and that it might not jog, I was fain to fill up the corners either with a few shavings or wast paper.’
On December 7, 1669, Christopher Wren and Faith Coghill were married in the Temple Church in London. Of their married life there is absolutely no record; they probably lived chiefly in London, as Wren had a house in Scotland Yard, which went with the office of Surveyor-General.
One of Wren’s early works was the rebuilding, on a somewhat larger scale, of the Royal Exchange. ‘Charles II. went to the Exchange with his kettle-drums and trumpets to lay the first stone of the new building of the Exchange on the 23rd of October 1667.’[120] Wren’s own wish had been, as has been said, to make it the nave or centre of the town, in which case he meant to contrive it after the form of a Roman Forum with double porticoes. Thwarted in this, he restored it as much as possible to what it had previously been, replacing the statue of Sir Thomas Gresham, the only thing in the building uninjured by the Fire. It is curious that this restoration should have begun just a hundred years from the time when Queen Elizabeth was feasted by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house, visited the new building, and caused it to be proclaimed ‘the Royal Exchange’ by the sound of the trumpet.
The rebuilding was very quickly performed, though at considerable cost.[121] Readers of the Spectator[122] will remember Addison’s fine description of the Exchange, and ‘the grand scene of business which gave him an infinite variety of solid and substantial entertainments.’
TEMPLE BAR.
Next came Temple Bar, which was begun in 1670, and finished in 1672. It was built of Portland stone, and had in its four niches statues of James I. and Anne of Denmark on the west side, Charles I. and Charles II. on the other.[123] Blackened and defiled as it was, and disfigured by the neighbouring houses, it was one of the picturesque, characteristic buildings of London, now disappearing with alarming rapidity, and had seen many a generation pass in triumph or in sorrow under its archway. The thanksgiving for the Prince of Wales’s recovery (1872) was the last historical spectacle with which Temple Bar was connected. On that occasion the City was moved to wipe off some of the smoke of two hundred years, and to let Temple Bar be seen somewhat as it must have been when the great architect finished it, as the entrance to a city which, in spite of all drawbacks, might be fairly called his creation.