Loyal Dissent

Brief Lives of Westminster School

Patrick Derham, Ian Donaldson, A. C. Grayling, James Campbell, Peter Cox, Nick Clegg

• Publisher: University of Buckingham Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781789551341
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

With origins as far back as the 14th Century, Westminster School is one of the oldest in the country with a long tradition of scholarship - and outstanding results, both in academic and public life.

Over the centuries, Westminster has stood apart from other prominent schools. Firmly grounded between Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, it has remained curiously unswayed by the influence and ethos of figures such as Thomas Arnold and the Victorian public school tradition, combining a distinctive evolution with the retention of much of its unique character.

A great many of the school's former pupils are famous names. At one time, some of those pupils were uncontrolled outside school hours and notoriously unruly about town, but always encouraged to question, challenge and debate - and above all to respect genuine scholarship. They rank among this country's most distinguished thinkers, writers, theologians, scientists, politicians, artists and musicians.

Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Richard Busby, John Locke, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Lord Mansfield, Charles Wesley, Warren Hastings, Jeremy Bentham, Henry Mayhew, A. A. Milne, John Spedan Lewis, Richard Doll and Tony Benn are the individuals the authors recognise as 'loyal dissenters', at once respectful of peers, staff and principles, yet unafraid to forge their own direction.

Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke

James W. P. Campbell

Other chapters in this book focus on single characters: this chapter deals with two contemporaries who knew each other well, shared many of the same interests and worked closely together. Both made outstanding contributions in the apparently separate worlds of architecture and science. Despite this commonality, their experiences of school and, indeed, of life, could hardly have been more different. Both figures show clearly how life is modelled partly by the vagaries of chance and circumstance. But their lives also demonstrate how a combination of hard work and genuine merit can lead to success whatever your background, given the opportunity.

Robert Hooke’s place in a book on Westminster School is without question. He was one of its most brilliant creations and his time there under the formidable Richard Busby was undoubtedly transformative: Westminster made Hooke. Wren’s situation is less clear. As we shall see, although his name is linked to Westminster School, and he almost certainly attended at some point, there are no clear records to support this and it seems likely that he was there for only a short period when circumstances at home were particularly precarious. If that is the case, it seems likely it was also directly under the Royalist Busby’s protection. It was almost certainly no coincidence in this regard that Wren and Hooke were both sons of Royalist clergymen.

Robert Hooke’s background was relatively humble. He was born on July 18^th 1635 in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.¹ His father was a curate who ran the local school. Robert was the youngest of two boys and two girls.² A sickly child, he was not expected to make much of his life and his father vaguely hoped that he might become a watchmaker or limner. He showed considerable artistic ability and was good with his hands, creating a clock as a child that, even though it was made of wood, worked “tolerably well”. He also built himself a toy boat “about a yard long, …[with]… Rigging of Ropes, Pullies, Mast, &C. with a contrivance to make it fire off small guns, as it was sailing across a Haven of pretty breadth.”³ Models of ships and clocks tell us something of Hooke’s character. He was self-motivated, good at making things, demonstrating a keen intelligence, combined with a deeply inquisitive nature, all characteristics he shared with the young Wren.

Christopher Wren’s background was distinctly more privileged than Hooke’s.⁴ His mother had inherited money. His father was a well-connected Oxford don, who had followed the familiar path from academia to the clergy with a couple of livings.⁵ The young Wren was born on October 20^th 1632 (he was nearly three years older than Hooke) in East Knowle in Wiltshire where his father was rector.⁶ Within a couple of years his father had been appointed to replace his brother, Matthew Wren, as Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the Garter. As a boy, Wren was bought up in the Deanery at Windsor Castle, the rectory at East Knowle being used as a second home. He was the only surviving son in a family of girls. He was, like Hooke, a somewhat sickly child. This may explain why he was initially educated at home, although it could simply have been the Dean’s preference. What is certain is that he had a series of remarkable tutors, starting while still at Windsor, with his father and the curate William Shepheard, who acted as the chapter librarian and taught Latin to the choristers. According to John Aubrey, Wren was taught in this period ‘Grammar [Latin] and School-learning’ and this ‘continued all his minority under his father’s eye, and the tuition of his curate Mr William Shepeard’.⁷

Thus both Wren and Hooke had fathers who were experienced at teaching and encouraged their sons to learn. Both boys shared a fascination from an early age with mechanical devices and intellectual ideas, which would never go away, and both were deeply affected by the Civil War.

The young Wren’s comfortable upbringing in Windsor was brought to an abrupt halt when in May 1643 the Parliamentarians took over the Castle and the family was thrown out of their home. Wren was 11 years old and suddenly life must have seemed very precarious.⁸ The family appears to have moved briefly back to East Knowle. They then moved in with Wren’s brother-in-law, William Holder who was rector of Bletchingdon. Holder had started teaching Wren in Windsor as early as 1643.⁹ He treated Wren as if he were his own child and ‘gave him his first instructions in geometry and arithmetic’.¹⁰ Wren proved an excellent mathematician. He was fascinated by sundials, building a number of them including one that reflected light from a window onto the ceiling and was richly decorated.¹¹ Among other things, he made for his father a panorganum astronomicon (pasteboard model of the solar system), built a ‘pneumatick engine’ and drew pictures of a sign language for the deaf.¹²

The idea that Wren went to Westminster is based on the statement in his biography Parentalia that ‘for some short Time before his Admission to University he was placed under Dr Busby at Westminster School’.¹³ There is no reason to doubt this, but the timing is unclear.¹⁴ Wren’s father was arrested in May 1645, released on 29 August and rearrested in 1646, this time spending five months in prison in Bristol and Longford Castle before being finally released in July 1646.¹⁵ Oxford surrendered to Parliament and the first Civil War ended in June 1646. It is probably during this time of particular danger and turmoil in 1645-46 that Wren was sent to Westminster to continue his education in relative safety.¹⁶ If this is the case, the time at the school was short-lived (possibly less than a year) and this may explain why no trace is to be found in the school records. He was not formally enrolled and does not appear on the lists of King’s Scholars. Presuming this timing is correct, he must have left the school by the end of 1646, when he is known to have passed into the care of the surgeon John Scarborough.¹⁷

John Scarborough provided the last phase of Wren’s education before he went to University. Scarborough was by then in his forties. He had been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge and a good friend of both Holder (Wren’s brother-in-law) and Seth Ward under whom he studied mathematics. Ejected from Cambridge by the Parliamentarians, he had moved to Oxford and had been persuaded by William Harvey to become his assistant, receiving a medical doctorate with his help. Wren probably started as Scarborough’s assistant in Oxford in 1646, moving with him in 1648 to London where Scarborough became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Anatomy Reader to the Barber-Surgeons. In London, Scarborough “lived magnificently, his Table being always accessible to the distressed Royalists and yet more to the Scholars ejected out of either of the Universities for adhering to the King’s Cause”.¹⁸ He was in the perfect position to tutor Wren on mathematics and introduce him to the very latest ideas on anatomy, perhaps even getting the young man to assist him with lectures and dissections.¹⁹

Scarborough was at the centre of a group of men who met in London in the mid-1640s to discuss scientific theories and conduct experiments. This group was centred on John Wilkins. Wilkins became Warden of Wadham College, Oxford and through him young Wren came to enter Wadham in late 1649 or early 1650.²⁰ With his Royalist connections Wren was barred from scholarships and occupied the position of fellow-commoner instead. University was however to provide him with a place of safety and it was in Oxford that he first encountered Hooke.

The Civil War arrived a little later in the Isle of Wight but no le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• Ben Jonson
• George Herbert
• Richard Busby
• John Locke
• Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke
• William Murray
• Charles Wesley
• Warren Hastings
• Jeremy Bentham
• Henry Mayhew
• A.A. Milne
• John Spedan Lewis
• Richard Doll
• Tony Benn