Matthew Wren (writer)
Matthew Wren (20 August 1629 – 14 June 1672) was an English politician and writer. He is now known as an opponent of
monarchist who made qualified use of the ideas of Thomas Hobbes.[1]
Life
He was the eldest child of the Royalist Bishop of Ely
Sir Christopher Wren. He was educated at both Peterhouse, Cambridge and the University of Oxford, graduating M.A. at Oxford on 9 September 1661.[2][3]
He was secretary to
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.[3]
He was one of the council of the Royal Society named in Charles II's original charter, dated 15 July 1662,[4] and was a prominent member of the Society.[3]
He was a prominent investor in The African Company and therefore both a beneficiary and supporter of the transatlantic slave trade.[5]
Works
He wrote:
- Considerations on Mr. Harrington's ... Oceana, 1657, 12mo (anon.)
- Monarchy Asserted. In Vindication of the Considerations, 1659 8vo, 2nd edit. 1660, 8vo, to which Harrington replied in his Politicaster, London, 1659, 8vo.
possessive individualism of C. B. Macpherson.[6] Francis D. Wormuth writes that Wren reversed the relation between politics and economics found in Harrington.[7] According to I. Bernard Cohen, Wren may have been the first, in Monarchy Asserted, to apply the term 'revolution' to the English Revolution.[8] The book was dedicated to John Wilkins, and Wren's introduction explained that the anonymous Considerations had been taken by Harrington to come from the whole group of Oxford experimentalists around Wilkins (to which Wren belonged, as did his more famous cousin Christopher Wren).[9]
References
- ^ Andrew Pyle (editor), Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), article on Wren, pp. 920-1.
- ^ "Wren, Matthew (WRN642M)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885โ1900.
- ^ Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 1667, p. 55.
- OCLC 879306121.
- John Greville Agard Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (1985), p. 61.
- ^ Wormuth, Francis D. (1949). The origins of modern constitutionalism. Harper & Bros.
- ^ I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science (1985), p. 477.
- ^ Margery Purver, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation (1967), p. 114.
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Wren, Matthew". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885โ1900.
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