Excerpt from Memoirs of the Life and Works of Sir Christopher Wren, With a Brief View of the Progress of Architecture in England, From the Beginning of the Reign of Charles the First to the End of the Seventeenth Century The refined and elegant taste of the young king, caused by his excellent education, by his association with accomplished com panions, and by his recent travels into France and Spain, where he became acquainted with Rubens and his gorgeous works, had rendered him a fit monarch for a people in a more settled and decided state of manners, religion, and policy, than he found his English subjects, particularly the leading parties of the metropolis. But the rigid puritanism of the more violent of the reformers, both in religion and in government, counteracted the tasteful propensities and resolves of the sovereign, as well as the less public Spirited intention of his policy. Hence, that love of art, the most graceful laurel in the coronal of a patriot king, which distinguished the accomplished and unfortunate Charles, and his polished but proud and intemperate friend, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, aided as they were by the richer and more respectable portion of the ancient families, many of whom were Roman catholics by religion, became odious to the mass of their newly-proselyted protestant fellow-subjects. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.