Winchester had many associations for Wren, to whom the name of Lancelot Andrewes must have been a household word from childhood, and it is pleasant to think that he at this time became acquainted with the saintly Ken. The palace, which was finished as far as the shell in 1685, was never used either by Charles II. or his successors, though Queen Anne made one visit to Winchester, and was so much struck with the situation and the shell of the building as it stood awaiting completion, the marble pillars sent by the Duke of Tuscany for the great staircase lying on the ground, that she resolved to finish it as a jointure house for Prince George, but his death and the cost of the great war made her give up the scheme. Sir Christopher seems to have hoped that George I. might finish it. It is, however, now used as a barrack.
PALACES AT WINCHESTER.
Dr. Morley, Bishop of Winchester, had also engaged Sir Christopher’s assistance; and having pulled down a part of the old episcopal palace, he began to build another; he died when but one wing was erected and left sufficient money to finish it. Bishop Mew, his successor, as the ‘Parentalia’ says, ‘never minded it;’ but it was finished, apparently not under Wren’s auspices, by Sir Jonathan Trelawney. He became Bishop of Winchester in 1707; as Bishop of Bristol he was one of the famous ‘Seven Bishops.’
CHAPTER X.
1681–1686.
CHELSEA COLLEGE—S. JAMES’S, WESTMINSTER—A HARD WINTER—CHICHESTER SPIRE—AN ASTRONOMICAL PROBLEM—A SEAT IN PARLIAMENT—MORE CITY CHURCHES—A CURIOUS CARVING.
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.—Merchant of Venice, act i. scene ii.
Charles II.’s gift of Chelsea College to the Royal Society had proved a gift of greater magnitude than they had been able to deal with, and the building had remained unused since 1669. Nor did their funds allow them to make use of Mr. Howard’s donation of a piece of land, though the ever-ready Sir Christopher produced a design for it of some size, on the principle ‘that a fair building may be easier carried on by contribution with time, than a sordid one.’ At last, in 1681, he proposed the sale of Chelsea College back again to King Charles, and Wren and Evelyn undertook to manage what must have been rather a delicate transaction. During the negotiation Sir Stephen Fox came to Evelyn and proposed that the King should buy it, and build there a hospital for soldiers. The proposal came well from Sir Stephen, who, originally a chorister of Salisbury Cathedral, by the favour and help of Bishop Duppa first, and then by that of the King, and most of all by his own honesty and dexterity, became paymaster to the whole army and acquired an honest and unenvied fortune. The King agreed to the plan, and the matter was arranged by Wren, Evelyn, and Fox, who was a liberal benefactor to the college. The three men went across to Lambeth to their old friend Sancroft and acquainted him with the plan, and received his approval.