CHAPTER I. 1585-1636. ANCESTRY OF THE WRENS-MATTHEW WREN-TRAVELS TO SPAIN WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES-INTERVIEW AT WINCHESTER HOUSEBISHOP ANDREWES' PROPHECY-WREN MADE MASTER OF PETERHOUSE-BISHOP OF HEREFORD-CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DOREOFFICE OF RECONCILIATION-FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS AND THE NORWICH WEAVERS-RESULT OF A LECTURER'S' DEPARTURE. 91 B CHAPTER I. THE name of Christopher Wren is no doubt familiar to the great majority of English people, and to Londoners especially; but it is to many of them little more than a name with which is connected S. Paul's Cathedral and a now, alas! diminished number of City churches. Yet the great architect's ninety-one years of life were passed among some of the most stirring times of our history, in which his family played no inconsiderable part, and he himself was not only the best architect of his day, but was also the foremost in many other sciences. A singularly patient and farseeing intellect aiding a strong religious faith enabled him 'to keep the even tenour of his way' through a life of incessant labour and considerable temptation. It has been truly said, 'It seems almost like a defect in such a biography as that of Wren, that it presents nothing of that picturesque struggle, in the rise from a lower to a higher condition, which has so commonly attended the conquest of genius over difficulty.'1 Far otherwise, the Wren family was an old one, tracing its descent from the Danes; one of the house 1 Warwickshire Worthies, p. 845. Article by C. Wren Hoskyns, Esq., M.P. |