A man of science and invention

Abstract Architect, mathematician, and astronomer, was born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on 20 October 1632, the only surviving son of Christopher Wren DD (1589–1658), at that time rector of East Knoyle and later dean of Windsor, and his wife, Mary, the daughter of Richard Cox of Fonthill, Wiltshire. His paternal grandfather, Francis Wren (1553–1624), was a London mercer, but the family came from Durham and, they believed, origin- ally from Denmark. A previous child, born on 22 November 1631 and baptized Christopher, had died the same day; the antiquary John Aubrey’s confusion of the two persisted occasionally intolate twentieth-century literature.