The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Volume 4) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1831 Excerpt: ... The family of the Wrens, according to tradition of Danish origin, had been long and honourably distinguished in England, before it produced this great architect. "The ancestors of our family," says Wren, dean of Windsor, "over the paternal coat of arms, had for the crest a Wren, proper, holding in his foot a trefoil, with this motto. 'Turbinibus superest, ccelo duce praescius.' This emblem, together with the motto and coat, stood in the south window of that lodging which stands at the northwest corner of the inner cloyster of Windsor College, in the year 1643, having stood there from April, 1527, when Geoffry Wren died, after he had been canon of the said chapel twelve years, founder of the seventh stall: privy councillor to the two kings Henry the Seventh and Eighth." "Another of the same family, having gained," as my authority says, " much honour and estate," by his valour against the Scots, wrote under his coat of arms, "Ducente deo fortuna secuta est." The dean himself, a man of learning and peace, took the words " Si recte intus ne labora;" and the last and most illustrious of all their line chose with mathematical tact, "Numero, pondere, et mensura." h % At their earliest appearance we find the Wrens seated at Binchester, on the banks of the Were, and afterwards at Billy-hall, and Sherborne-house, all in the county of Durham; but the branch from which our artist sprung had settled in Warwickshire before the end of the fifteenth century. His grandfather was a younger son of the Warwickshire house, Francis Wren, citizen and mercer of London in the time of James I. This mercer's two sons distinguished themselves very considerably during the stormy days of the civil war, and the commonwealth. The elder, Matthew, Lord Bishop of Ely, incurring the hatred of...