The Royal Society was at this time put to serious inconvenience, as more than half of the members failed in paying their weekly money. Wren, who, as might be expected, was one of those who paid most punctually, was re-elected a member of the council, and agreed to serve on a committee for this special matter.
The death of his friend and cousin, Matthew, in the summer of 1672, was a grief to him, as well as a loss to the Royal Society, of which he had been a member from its beginning. On the 20th of November, 1673, Wren received the well-earned honour of knighthood from King Charles at Whitehall. No details of any kind respecting the ceremony are to be found in the chary family record.
S. Bennet Fink, a very graceful and original composition despite the corner into which it was squeezed; and S. Olave’s, Jewry, built of brick and stone with a good pinnacled stone tower, were begun at this period, and finished three years later. S. Dionysius, or, as it was commonly called, S. Dionis, Back Church Street, was one of the first completed; its Ionic eastern façade was in Wren’s most classical style; the pulpit was carved by Grinling Gibbons. Its tower and steeple, according to a frequent custom of Wren’s, were added some years later. S. Dionis has, alas! now been swept away, and its site, where the original church was consecrated in 1288, desecrated.[136] The beautiful little S. Bennet’s has shared the same unholy fate. S. George’s, Botolph Lane, built also in 1674, a handsome stone church with a vaulted roof and good oak fittings, though threatened, still fortunately survives.
GRINLING GIBBONS.
Grinling Gibbons, whom Wren continually employed, was introduced to him by Evelyn, who found the young man in a cottage at Deptford carving a copy of Tintoretto’s beautiful Crucifixion. Evelyn showed Wren the carving and besought him to give some employment to a man of such genius. This he gladly promised, and accordingly, many a little known city church is adorned with carvings so light and so graceful that it is hard to believe that they are cut out of wood.
Some works in stone Gibbons also did for Sir Christopher, but wood appears to have been the material he preferred. In 1674 Wren had the satisfaction of restoring Le Soeur’s[137] beautiful statue of King Charles to its place at Charing Cross. In the Rebellion it had been overthrown by order of the Parliament, who directed that it should be broken up. John Rivet, a brazier in Charing Cross, purchased it, hid it in the vaults of S. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and, to divert suspicion, sold bronze medals and knife-handles, professedly made from its metal. After the Restoration, he produced it intact, and, under Wren’s direction, it was placed on its present pedestal, which was carved by Gibbons, whose handywork is easily recognised in the free, flowing lines of the deeply-cut carving, much as time, aided by London atmosphere, has eaten the very stone away. The poet Waller wrote an epigram[138] on its restoration, which, besides its intrinsic merit, is interesting in connection with the statue:—
That the first Charles does here in triumph ride,
See his son reign where he a martyr dy’d;
And people pay that rev’rence as they pass,