‘I have given another way to the rail and baluster, which will admit of a vase that will stand properly upon the pilaster.[208]
‘Sir, I wish you success and health and long life, with all the affection that is due from,
‘Your obliged, faithful friend, and humble servant,
‘Christopher Wren.
‘P.S. A little deal box, with a drawing in it, is sent by Thomas Moore, Oxford carrier.’
In the same year the Church of S. Andrew by the Wardrobe[209] was finished; recent alterations in the city have benefited this building; it now stands well above a flight of steps, with its square tower, and the red brick which contrives to be red and not black, and stone dressings.
Two years later Wren rebuilt All Hallows, Lombard Street, on an ancient foundation: outside it is one of his plainest and most solid churches, inside he spent upon it much rich work and curious carving both in stone and wood.
S. Michael Royal, College Hill, belongs to this same date, and was built under Wren’s directions by Edward Strong, his master-mason. It is a well-lit, handsome church with a tower at one corner, and contains an altar-piece of singular beauty, carved by Grinling Gibbons in ‘right wainscot oak.’ The old church was founded and made a collegiate church of S. Spiritus and S. Mary by no less a person than Sir Richard Whittington, three times Lord Mayor of London (1397, 1406, 1419), whose fame, with that of his cat, survives in the well-known story. He founded also another college, known as the Whittington College, and endowed it with a divinity lecture ‘for ever.’ Edward VI., however, suppressed both the colleges and the lecture, though the Whittington College was allowed partially to survive as almshouses for poor men. Whittington[210] was buried in this church, but his monument perished in the Fire.
In the following year Wren added a well-proportioned, peculiar steeple, the gift of the parishioners, to the little stone Church of S. Vedast[211] in Foster Lane, a church to which a painful interest now attaches from the recent persecution and imprisonment of its rector, the Rev. T. P. Dale.
The church was decorated, as was Wren’s custom, with fret-work, carving, and stucco, but is not otherwise remarkable.