Editing Christopher Wren (section)

== Marriage to Faith Coghill Wren ==
Wren's career was well established by 1669, and it may have been his appointment as Surveyor of the King's Works early that year that persuaded him that he could finally afford to marry. In 1669, the 37-year-old Wren married his childhood neighbour, the 33-year-old Faith Coghill, daughter of Sir John Coghill of [[Bletchingdon]]. Little is known of Faith, but a love letter from Wren survives, which reads, in part:

{{blockquote|I have sent your Watch at last & envy the felicity of it, that it should be soe near your side & soe often enjoy your Eye.&nbsp;... .but have a care for it, for I have put such a spell into it; that every Beating of the Balance will tell you 'tis the Pulse of my Heart, which labors as much to serve you and more trewly than the Watch; for the Watch I beleeve will sometimes lie, and sometimes be idle & unwilling&nbsp;... but as for me you may be confident I shall never&nbsp;...<ref>{{harvnb|Tinniswood|2001|p=184}} (Some time earlier, Faith had dropped her wristwatch into a pool of water. It had been sent to Wren in London for it to be repaired. This letter was part of a package.)</ref>}}

This brief marriage produced two children: Gilbert, born October 1672, who suffered from convulsions and died at about 18 months old, and [[Christopher Wren the Younger|Christopher]], born February 1675. The younger Christopher was trained by his father to be an architect. It was this Christopher that supervised the topping out ceremony of St Paul's in 1710 and wrote the famous ''Parentalia, or, Memoirs of the family of the Wrens''. Faith Wren died of [[smallpox]] on 3 September 1675. She was buried in the [[chancel]] of [[St Martin-in-the-Fields]] beside the infant Gilbert. A few days later Wren's mother-in-law, Lady Coghill, arrived to take the infant Christopher back with her to Oxfordshire to raise.{{cn|date=January 2025}}