Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS The precise date of Christopher Wren's birth is a matter of dispute, but most authorities agree in setting aside his baptismal entry dated 1631 as inaccurate, and accepting October 20, 1632, as the day on which a second son was born to Christopher Wren, Rector of East Knoyle, in the county of Wilts. Two years earlier in the register another son's birth is recorded, but since to both alike there was given their father's name in baptism, it would seem certain that the elder died in infancy. There is no mention of any other son, nor, with one notable exception, is anything known of five daughters except their names.1 It is curious that we should search the pages of registers and ParentaKa in vain for any information respectingthe death of the mother of the family (a Cox of Font- hill Abbey), but she cannot have survived to see her son through early childhood, since we read of his sister Susan, but five years his senior, that she stood for him in the place of a mother. 1 Three are known to have married : Anne (1634-67), the Rev. 11 Brunsall; Catherine, Richard Fulburne, of New Windsor; and Susan, the Rev. W. Holder. - The chief Bource of information for the biographers of Sir Christopher Wren is the capriciously selected, carelessly compiled record known as Parentalia, collected by the great architect's son Christopher, and published by his grandson Stephen in 1750. It is divided into three parts, which deal respectively with Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely ; Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor; and the subject of this book. An heirloom copy, interleaved with many original manuscripts, kc., is in the possession of Sir Christopher Wren's lineal descendant, Mr. Pigott. Of the old rectory in which Christopher Wren spent those first years, the...