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107-729: Nicholas Hawksmoor ( c.  1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh , and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral , Wren's City of London churches , Greenwich Hospital , Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard . Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of

214-455: A Grand Tour , where he might have been influenced by the style of architecture there. Instead he studied engravings especially monuments of ancient Rome and reconstructions of the Temple of Solomon . As he neared the age of 50, Hawksmoor began to produce work for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 1713 he was commissioned to complete King's College, Cambridge : the scheme consisted of

321-588: A Fellows' Building along King's Parade, and opposite the Chapel a monumental range of buildings containing the Great Hall, kitchens and to the south of that the library and Provost's Lodge. Plans and wooden models for the scheme survive, but it proved too expensive and Hawksmoor produced a second scaled down design. But the college that had invested heavily in the South Sea Company lost their money when

428-528: A charge of espionage (which Downes concludes was trumped-up) in September 1688, two months before William invaded England. Vanbrugh remained in prison in France for four and a half years, albeit in reasonable comfort. In 1691 he requested to be moved from Calais to Vincennes , at his own expense, where his treatment deteriorated enough to suffice his writing to Louis XIV , leading to his eventual transfer to

535-614: A convivial London "set of wits" but was also linking up with old friends and co-conspirators. A hero of the cause who had done time in French prison for it, could have been confident of a warm welcome. In 1703, Vanbrugh started buying land and signing backers for the construction of a new theatre, the Queen's Theatre , in Haymarket , designed by himself and managed by Vanbrugh along with Thomas Betterton and his associate William Congreve. It

642-506: A delegation to Hanover to confer the Order of the Garter on Prince George , later to become King George II. Vaughan Hart has shown how Vanbrugh's interest in arms and heraldry found expression in, and gave meaning to, his architecture. In 1719, at St Lawrence's Church, York (since rebuilt), Vanbrugh married Henrietta Maria Yarburgh of Heslington Hall , York, aged 26 to his 55. In spite of

749-564: A drama of sententious morality. Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift , with its reformed rake and sentimental reconciliation scene, can be seen as a forerunner of this drama. Although Vanbrugh continued to work for the stage in many ways, he produced no more original plays. With the change in audience taste away from Restoration comedy, he turned his creative energies from original composition to dramatic adaptation/translation, theatre management, and architecture. The precise reasons and motivations behind Vanbrugh's change in career remain unclear, but

856-563: A long-running conflict between pinchpenny management and disgruntled actors came to a head and the actors walked out. A new comedy staged with the makeshift remainder of the company in January 1696, Colley Cibber 's Love's Last Shift , had a final scene that to Vanbrugh's critical mind demanded a sequel, and even though it was his first play he threw himself into the fray by providing it. Cibber's Love's Last Shift Colley Cibber's notorious tear-jerker Love's Last Shift, Or, Virtue Rewarded

963-606: A major architectural personality, and in the next 20 years he proved himself to be one of the great masters of the English Baroque. His baroque, but somewhat classical and gothic architectural form was derived from his exploration of antiquity , the Renaissance , the English Middle Ages and contemporary Italian baroque . Unlike many of his wealthier contemporaries, Hawksmoor never travelled to Italy on

1070-654: A man?" Only in 1726 after William Benson 's successor Hewett died, was Hawksmoor restored to the secretaryship, though not the clerkship which was given to Filtcroft. In 1696, Hawksmoor was appointed surveyor to the Commissioners of Sewers for Westminster, but was dismissed in 1700, having neglected to attend the Court several days last past. In 1702, Hawksmoor designed the baroque country house of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for Sir William Fermor. This

1177-465: A more particular manner felt by those who had the pleasure of his personal acquaintance, and enjoy'd the happiness of his conversation. Upon his death he left a widow, to whom he bequeathed all his property in Westminster , Highgate , Shenley , and East Drayton , who later married William Theaker; the grandchild of this second marriage ultimately inherited Hawksmoor's properties near Drayton after

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1284-568: A new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break". That new play, The Relapse , did turn out a tremendous success that saved the company, not least by virtue of Colley Cibber again bringing down the house with his second impersonation of Lord Foppington. "This play (the Relapse )", writes Cibber in his autobiography forty years later, "from its new and easy Turn of Wit, had great Success". Vanbrugh's second original comedy, The Provoked Wife , followed soon after, performed by

1391-651: A number of structures for the gardens at Castle Howard . These are: At Blenheim Palace he designed the Woodstock Gate (1723) in the form of a Triumphal arch . He also designed the Ripon Obelisk in Ripon 's market place, erected in 1702, at 80 feet (24 m) in height it was the first large scale obelisk to be erected in Britain. Hawksmoor died on 25 March 1736 in his house at Millbank from " Gout of

1498-479: A play with a big, flamboyant part for himself: the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion. Backed up by Cibber's own uninhibited performance, Sir Novelty delighted the audiences. In the serious part of Love's Last Shift , wifely patience is tried by an out-of-control Restoration rake husband, and the perfect wife is celebrated and rewarded in a climactic finale where the cheating husband kneels to her and expresses

1605-438: A practising architect, Vanbrugh designed and worked on numerous buildings. More often than not his work was a rebuild or remodel, such as that of Kimbolton Castle , where Vanbrugh had to follow the instructions of his patron. Consequently these houses, which often claim Vanbrugh as their architect, do not best display his own architectural concepts and ideas. In the summer of 1699 as part of his architectural education Vanbrugh made

1712-634: A result, an immensely long, fully Palladian, range was added in parallel, leaving the older house intact but hidden by the newer addition from the landscape park. John Vanbrugh Sir John Vanbrugh ( / ˈ v æ n b r ə / ; 24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald , perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard . He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies , The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He

1819-667: A tour of northern England, writing to Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester , (he was still an Earl at the time) on Christmas Day of that year: 'I have seen most of the great houses in the North, as Ld Nottings (sic): Duke of Leeds Chattesworth (sic) &C.' This itinerary likely included many of the great Elizabethan houses, including: Burghley House , Wollaton Hall , Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle , whose use of towers, complex skylines, bow widows and other features would be reinterpreted in Vanbrugh's own buildings. Though Vanbrugh

1926-482: A tutor. Architectural historian Kerry Downes is sceptical of earlier historians' claims of a lower middle-class background, and writes that a 19th-century suggestion that Giles Vanbrugh was a sugar-baker has been misunderstood. " Sugar-baker " implies wealth, as the term refers not to a maker of sweets but to the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from Barbados . Sugar refining would normally have been combined with sugar trading, which

2033-413: Is another example. Castle Howard is a flamboyant assembly of restless masses dominated by a cylindrical domed tower. Blenheim Palace is the largest secular monument of English Baroque architecture, where windows, gateways , porticos and colonnades are richly combined. Vanbrugh's final work was Seaton Delaval Hall (1718), a mansion of more modest scale yet remarkable for the audacity of its style. It

2140-480: Is best known in connection with stately houses, the parlous state of London's 18th-century streets did not escape his attention. It was reported in the London Journal of 16 March 1722–23: "We are informed that Sir John Vanbrugh, in his scheme for new paving the cities of London and Westminster, among other things, proposes a tax on all gentlemen's coaches, to stop all channels in the street, and to carry all

2247-566: Is best known today as an early 18th-century social gathering point for culturally and politically prominent Whigs, including many artists and writers ( William Congreve , Joseph Addison , Godfrey Kneller ) and politicians (the Duke of Marlborough , Charles Seymour , the Earl of Burlington , Thomas Pelham-Holles , Sir Robert Walpole and Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham who gave Vanbrugh several architectural commissions at Stowe ). Politically,

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2354-579: Is hard to gauge, in April 1691 he was transferred to Château de Vincennes in the months he spent as a prisoner there he would have got to know the architect Louis Le Vau 's grand classical work (1656–61) in the château well. On his release from prison (he was at the Bastille by then) on 22 November 1692 he spent a short time in Paris, there he would have seen much recent architecture including Les Invalides ,

2461-530: Is not surprising, given the social expectations of his day, that by descent his credentials for his offices there were sound. His forebears, both Flemish/Dutch and English, were armigerous , and their coats of arms can be traced in three out of four cases, revealing that Vanbrugh was of gentle descent (Jacobson, of Antwerp and London [the family of his paternal grandmother Maria daughter of Peter brother to Philip Jacobson, jeweller and financier to successive English kings, James I , and Charles I , and monied backer of

2568-648: Is primarily embodied in the works of Christopher Wren , Nicholas Hawksmoor , John Vanbrugh , and James Gibbs , although a handful of lesser architects such as Thomas Archer also produced buildings of significance. In domestic architecture and interior decor, Baroque qualities can sometimes be seen in the late phase of the Restoration style , the William and Mary style , the Queen Anne style , and early Georgian architecture . Sir Christopher Wren presided over

2675-584: The Bastille in February 1692. This raised the profile of his case once more, finally prompting his release in November of the same year, in an exchange of political prisoners. His life is sharply bisected by this prison experience, which he entered at age 24 and emerged from at 29, after having spent, as Downes puts it, half his adult life in captivity. It seems to have left him with a lasting distaste for

2782-540: The Collège des Quatre-Nations and the east wing of the Louvre Palace . His inexperience was compensated for by his unerring eye for perspective and detail and his close working relationship with Nicholas Hawksmoor . Hawksmoor, a former clerk of Sir Christopher Wren , was to be Vanbrugh's collaborator in many of his most ambitious projects, including Castle Howard and Blenheim. During his almost thirty years as

2889-561: The Dictionary of National Biography ). In 1681 records name a 'John Vanbrugg' working for William Matthews, Giles Vanbrugh's cousin. It was not unusual for a merchant's son to follow in his father's trade and seek similar work in business, making use of family ties and connections. However, Robert Williams proved in an article in the Times Literary Supplement ("Vanbrugh's Lost Years", 3 September 1999) that Vanbrugh

2996-810: The Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection, show that he was still learning the techniques of his new profession at the age of 22. His first official post was as Deputy Surveyor to Wren at Winchester Palace from 1683 until February 1685. Hawksmoor's signature appears on a brickmaker's contract for Winchester Palace in November 1684. Wren was paying him 2 shillings a day in 1685 as assistant in his office in Whitehall . From about 1684 to about 1700, Hawksmoor worked with Christopher Wren on projects including Chelsea Hospital , St Paul's Cathedral , Hampton Court Palace and Greenwich Hospital . Thanks to Wren's influence as Surveyor-General, Hawksmoor

3103-646: The Second Virginia Company and the East India Company ]; Carleton of Imber Court ; Croft of Croft Castle ). After growing up in a large household in Chester (12 children of his mother's second marriage survived infancy), the question of how Vanbrugh spent the years from age 18 to 22 (after he left school) was long unanswered, with the baseless suggestion sometimes made that he had been studying architecture in France (stated as fact in

3210-575: The "bubble" burst in 1720. As a result, Hawksmoor's scheme was never executed; instead, the college was developed later in the 18th century by James Gibbs and early in the 19th century by William Wilkins . In the 1690s, Hawksmoor gave proposals for the library of the Queen's College, Oxford. However like many of his proposals for both universities, such as All Souls College , the Radcliffe Library , Brasenose College , Magdalen College Oxford,

3317-739: The Club promoted the Whig objectives of a strong Parliament , a limited monarchy, resistance to France, and primarily the Protestant succession to the throne. Yet the Kit-Cats always presented their club as more a matter of dining and conviviality, and this reputation has been successfully relayed to posterity. Downes suggests, however, that the Club's origins go back to before the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and that its political importance

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3424-521: The College, however. The pageantry of state occasions appealed to his theatrical sense, his duties were not difficult, and he appears to have performed them well. In the opinion of a modern herald and historian, although the appointment was "incongruous", he was "possibly the most distinguished man who has ever worn a herald's tabard ." In May 1706 Lord Halifax and Vanbrugh – representing the octogenarian Garter King of Arms , Sir Henry St George – led

3531-452: The French political system but also with a taste for the comic dramatists and the architecture of France. The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs and is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars (see McCormick). After being released from the Bastille, he had to spend three months in Paris, free to move around but unable to leave

3638-509: The King's Works had initially been the architect of choice, charging more than the Lord had thought reasonable. Vanbrugh's charm, and Talman's lack thereof, may have been enough to convince the patron to change his architect. However, it remains unknown how Vanbrugh, totally untrained and inexperienced, persuaded Earl Carlisle to grant the responsibility of architect to him. The design process began in

3745-574: The London stage. Vanbrugh's London career was diverse and varied, comprising playwriting, architectural design, and attempts to combine these two overarching interests. His overlapping achievements and business ventures were sometimes confusing even to Vanbrugh himself. A committed Whig, Vanbrugh was a member of the Kit-Cat Club  – and particularly popular for "his colossal geniality, his great good humour, his easy-going temperament". The Club

3852-833: The Oxford Arms in Ludgate Street , City of London, a lodge belonging to the Premier Grand Lodge of England . In 1711, parliament passed an Act for the building of Fifty New Churches in the Cities of London and Westminster or the Suburbs thereof , which established a commission which included Christopher Wren , John Vanbrugh , Thomas Archer and a number of churchmen. The commission appointed Hawksmoor and William Dickinson as its surveyors. As supervising architects they were not necessarily expected to design all

3959-529: The Reigns of King William and Queen Anne, he was Clerk of their Majesties Works at Kensington, and at Whitehall, St. Jame's and Westminster. In the reign of King George I, he was first Surveyor of all the new Churches, and Surveyor of Westminster-Abbey, from the death of Sir Christopher Wren. He was chiefly concern'd in designing and building a great number of magnificent Nobleman's Houses, and particularly (with Sir John Vanbrugh) those of Blenheim and Castle-Howard, at

4066-422: The abused wife was especially famous as a tragic actress, and for her power of "moving the passions", i.e., moving an audience to pity and tears. Barry and the younger Bracegirdle had often worked together as a tragic/comic heroine pair to bring audiences the typically tragic/comic rollercoaster experience of Restoration plays. Vanbrugh takes advantage of this schema and these actresses to deepen audience sympathy for

4173-412: The active force behind the Glorious Revolution itself. Secret groups tend to be poorly documented, and this sketch of the pre-history of the Club cannot be proved. But as we have seen, young Vanbrugh was indeed in 1688 part of a secret network working for William's invasion. If the roots of the Club go back that far, it is tempting to speculate that Vanbrugh in joining the club was not merely becoming one of

4280-399: The actors' company, making himself sole owner. He was now bound to pay salaries to the actors and, as it turned out, to manage the theatre, a notorious tightrope act for which he had no experience. The often repeated rumour that the acoustics of the building Vanbrugh had designed were bad is exaggerated (see Milhous ), but the more practical Congreve had become anxious to extricate himself from

4387-406: The age difference, this was by all accounts a happy marriage, which produced two sons. Unlike that of the rake heroes and fops of his plays, Vanbrugh's personal life was without scandal. Vanbrugh died "of an asthma " on 26 March 1726, in the modest town house designed by him in 1703 out of the ruins of Whitehall Palace and satirised by Swift as "the goose pie ". His married life, however,

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4494-415: The age, and Vanbrugh tailored The Provoked Wife to their specialities. While The Relapse had been robustly phrased to be suitable for amateurs and minor acting talents, he could count on versatile professionals like Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, and the rising young star Anne Bracegirdle to do justice to characters of depth and nuance. The Provoked Wife is a comedy, but Elizabeth Barry who played

4601-447: The appendix, Moore revealed that he had met and spoken with Sinclair on numerous occasions while developing the core ideas of the book. The argument includes the idea that the locations of the churches form a pentagram with ritual significance. Berman, Richard Andrew (2010). The Architects of Eighteenth Century English Freemasonry, 1720 – 1740 (PhD thesis). University of Exeter . hdl : 10036/2999 . English Baroque It

4708-607: The building eventually went to James Gibbs , due to Hawksmoor's untimely death. He designed the Clarendon Building at Oxford ; the Codrington Library and new buildings at All Souls College, Oxford ; parts of Worcester College, Oxford with Sir George Clarke ; the High Street screen at The Queen's College, Oxford and six new churches in London. Hawksmoor was initiated into freemasonry in 1730 at

4815-449: The business in 1708 to Owen Swiny ., though without ever collecting much of the putative price. He had put a lot of money, his own and borrowed, into the theatre company, which he was never to recover. It was noted as remarkable by contemporaries that he continued to pay the actors' salaries fully and promptly while they were working for him, just as he always paid the workmen he had hired for construction work; shirking such responsibilities

4922-660: The churches themselves. Dickinson left his post in 1713 and was replaced by James Gibbs . Gibbs was removed in 1716 and replaced by John James . James and Hawksmoor remained in office until the commission was wound up in 1733. The declining enthusiasm of the Commission, and the expense of the buildings, meant that only twelve churches were completed, six designed by Hawksmoor, and two by James in collaboration with Hawksmoor. The two collaborations were St Luke Old Street (1727–33) and St John Horsleydown (1727–33), to which Hawksmoor's contribution seems to have been largely confined to

5029-475: The commission by 1733, they were still being paid "for carrying on and finishing the works under their care" until James's death. After the death of Wren in 1723, Hawksmoor was appointed Surveyor to Westminster Abbey . Parliament had voted £100 for the repair and completion of the Abbey in 1698. The west towers of the Abbey were designed by Hawksmoor but not completed until after his death. Hawksmoor also designed

5136-532: The country, and with every opportunity to see an architecture "unparalleled in England for scale, ostentation, richness, taste and sophistication". He was allowed to return to England in April 1693; once he returned to England he joined the Navy and took part in an unsuccessful naval attack against the French at Brest . At some point in the mid-1690s, it is not known exactly when, he exchanged army life for London and

5243-589: The death of the architect's widow. Hawksmoor's architecture has influenced several poets and authors of the twentieth century. His church St Mary Woolnoth is mentioned in T. S. Eliot 's poem The Waste Land (1922). Algernon Stitch lived in a "superb creation by Nicholas Hawksmoor" in London in the novel Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938). Hawksmoor is the subject of a poem by Iain Sinclair called 'Nicholas Hawksmoor: His Churches' which appeared in Sinclair's collection of poems Lud Heat (1975). Sinclair promoted

5350-400: The decidedly Protestant and sometimes radical milieu out of which Vanbrugh's own political opinions came. They also gave him a very wide social network that would play a role in all sections of his career: architectural, ceremonial, dramatic, military, political, and social. Taken in this context, though he has sometimes been viewed as an odd or unqualified appointee to the College of Arms, it

5457-511: The decision was sudden enough even to be remarked upon by commentators of his time: Jonathan Swift , in this quote, suggests that Vanbrugh had no previous training in, nor studied architecture, but applied himself to the discipline whole-heartedly. As an architect (or surveyor, as the term then was) Vanbrugh is thought to have had no formal training (see " Early life " above). To what extent Vanbrugh's exposure to contemporary French architecture during years of imprisonment in France affected him

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5564-520: The demanding Duchess of Marlborough, and Castle Howard for Charles Howard, later the 3rd Earl of Carlisle. In July 1721, John Vanbrugh made Hawksmoor his deputy as Comptroller of the Works. There is no doubt that Hawksmoor brought to the brilliant amateur the professional grounding he had received from Wren, but it is also arguable that Wren's architectural development was from the persuasion of his formal pupil, Hawksmoor. By 1700 Hawksmoor had emerged as

5671-424: The depth of his repentance. Love's Last Shift has not been staged again since the early 18th century and is read only by the most dedicated scholars, who sometimes express distaste for its businesslike combination of four explicit acts of sex and rakishness with one of sententious reform (see Hume ). If Cibber indeed was deliberately attempting to appeal simultaneously to rakish and respectable Londoners, it worked:

5778-521: The design and model of Dr. Ratcliff 's Library there, his design of a new Parliament-House, after the thought of Sir Christopher Wren; and, to mention no more, his noble Design for repairing the West-End of Westminster-Abbey, will all stand monuments to his great capacity, inexhaustible fancy, and solid judgement. He was perfectly skill'd in the History of Architecture, and could give exact account of all

5885-483: The eponymous Hawksmoor is a twentieth-century detective charged with investigating a series of murders perpetrated on Dyer's (Hawksmoor's) churches. Both Sinclair and Ackroyd's ideas in turn were further developed by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell in their graphic novel , From Hell , which speculated that Jack the Ripper used Hawksmoor's buildings as part of ritual magic , with his victims as human sacrifice . In

5992-458: The fact that Vanbrugh in January 1686 took up an officer's commission in his distant relative the Earl of Huntingdon's foot regiment. Since commissions were in the gift of the commanding officer, Vanbrugh's entry as an officer shows that he did have the kind of family network that was then essential to a young man starting out in life. Even so in August 1686 he left this position when the regiment

6099-552: The family and connexions of each of his four grandparents: Vanbrugh, Jacobs or Jacobson, Carleton, and Croft, summing up the characteristics of each line and concluding that, far from being of lower middle class origins, Vanbrugh was descended from Anglo-Flemish or Netherlandish Protestant merchants who settled in London in the 16th and 17th centuries, minor courtiers, and country gentry. The complex web of kinship Downes' research shows that Vanbrugh had ties to many of England's leading mercantile, gentry, and noble families. These ties reveal

6206-402: The famous buildings, both Antient and Modern, in every part of the world; to which his excellent memory, that never fail'd him to the very last, greatly contributed. Nor was architecture the only science he was master of. He was bred a scholar. and knew as well the learned as the modern tongues. He was a very skilful mathematician, geographer, and geometrician; and in drawing, which he practised to

6313-484: The favour and esteem of his great master and predecessor, Sir Christopher Wren, under whom, during his life, and for himself since his death, he was concerned in the erecting more Publick Edifices, than any one life, among the moderns at least, can boast of. In King Charles II's reign, he was employ'd under Sir Christopher Wren, in the stately buildings at Winchester; as he was likewise in all the other publick structures, Palaces &c, erected by that great Man, under whom he

6420-415: The fifth act. Vanbrugh laughed at these charges and published a joking reply, where he accused the clergyman Collier of being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real irreligion. However, rising public opinion was already on Collier's side. The intellectual and sexually explicit Restoration comedy style was becoming less and less acceptable to audiences and was soon to be replaced by

6527-533: The flat characters from Love's Last Shift a dimension that at least some critics are willing to consider psychological (see Hume ). In a trickster subplot, Vanbrugh provides the more traditional Restoration attraction of an overly well-dressed and exquisite fop, Lord Foppington, a brilliant re-creation of Cibber's Sir Novelty Fashion in Love's Last Shift (Sir Novelty has simply in The Relapse bought himself

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6634-474: The genesis of the English Baroque manner, which differed from the continental models by clarity of design, a less restless taste in carving and embellishment and a greater concern for historic precedent in classicism . Following the Great Fire of London, Wren rebuilt fifty-three churches, where Baroque aesthetics are apparent primarily in dynamic structure and multiple changing views. His most ambitious work

6741-436: The greater part of Castle Howard was inhabited and completed by 1709, the finishing touches were to continue for much of Vanbrugh's lifetime. The west wing was finally completed after Vanbrugh's death, to an altered design. The acclaim of the work at Castle Howard led to Vanbrugh's most famous commission, architect for Blenheim Palace. Regarding the commission, William Talman, an already established architect and Comptroller of

6848-432: The large cast required by The Relapse . Members of that cast had to be kept from defecting to the rival actors' cooperative, had to be "seduced" (as the legal term was) back when they did defect, and had to be blandished into attending rehearsals which dragged out into ten months and brought the company to the threshold of bankruptcy. "They have no company at all", reported a contemporary letter on 19 November 1696 "and unless

6955-427: The last, though greatly afflicted with Chiragra, few excelled him. In his private life he was a tender husband, a loving father, a sincere friend, and a most agreeable companion; nor could the most poignant pains of Gout, which he for many years laboured under, ever ruffle or discompose his evenness of temper. And as his memory must always be dear to his Country, so the loss of so great and valuable man in sensibly, and in

7062-467: The latter of which he was at his Death, carrying on a Mausoleum in the most elegant and grand Stile, not to mention many others: But one of the most surprising of his undertakings, was the repairing of Beverley Minster , where the stone wall on the north-side was near three Foot out of the perpendicular, which he mov'd at once to its upright by means of a machine of his own invention. In short his numerous Publick Works at Oxford, perfected in his lifetime, and

7169-478: The library was not executed. Hawksmoor conceived grand rebuilding schemes for central Oxford , most of which were not realised. Surviving drawings from c.1713 propose the rebuilding of the central core of the academic area of Oxford as a Forum Universitatis . The concept for a domed circular library sitting within an open square for the Radcliffe Camera was initially Hawksmoor's, but the commission for

7276-538: The main entrance block to the flanking wings, its centre crowned by a great domed tower complete with cupola , is very much in the school of classic European baroque. It combined aspects of design that had only appeared occasionally, if at all, in English architecture: John Webb's Greenwich Palace, Wren's unexecuted design for Greenwich, which like Castle Howard was dominated by a domed centre block, and of course Talman's Chatsworth. A possible inspiration for Castle Howard

7383-472: The major outbreak of the plague in London in 1665, or the Great Fire of 1666. It is possible that he attended The King's School in Chester, though no records of his being a scholar there survive. Another candidate would have been the school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch , founded by Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon . It was also not uncommon for boys to be sent to study at school away from home, or with

7490-424: The next, providing a natural progression of thoughts and style. Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle , a fellow member of the Kit-Cat Club , commissioned Vanbrugh in 1699 to design his mansion , often described as England's first truly baroque building. The baroque style at Castle Howard is the most European that Vanbrugh ever used. Castle Howard, with its immense corridors in segmental colonnades leading from

7597-568: The play was a great box-office hit. Sequel: The Relapse Vanbrugh's witty sequel The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger , offered to the United Company six weeks later, questions the justice of women's position in marriage at this time. He sends new sexual temptations in the way of not only the reformed husband but also the patient wife, and allows them to react in more credible and less predictable ways than in their original context, lending

7704-573: The plot, that a wife trapped in an abusive marriage might consider either leaving it or taking a lover, outraged some sections of Restoration society. In 1698, Vanbrugh's argumentative and sexually frank plays were singled out for special attention by Jeremy Collier in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage , particularly for their failure to impose exemplary morality by appropriate rewards and punishments in

7811-425: The poetic interpretation of the architect's singular style of architectural composition that Hawksmoor's churches formed a pattern consistent with the forms of Theistic Satanism though there is no documentary or historic evidence for this. This idea was, however, embellished by Peter Ackroyd in his novel Hawksmoor (1985): the historical Hawksmoor is refigured as the fictional Devil-worshipper Nicholas Dyer, while

7918-560: The project, and Vanbrugh was left spreading himself extremely thin, running a theatre and simultaneously overseeing the building of Blenheim, a project which after June 1705 often took him out of town. Unsurprisingly under these circumstances, Vanbrugh's management of the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket showed "numerous signs of confusion, inefficiency, missed opportunities, and bad judgment". Having burned his fingers on theatre management, Vanbrugh too extricated himself, expensively, by selling

8025-424: The rebel actors' company. This play is different in tone from the largely farcical The Relapse , and adapted to the greater acting skills of the rebels. Vanbrugh had good reason to offer his second play to the new company, which had got off to a brilliant start by premièring Congreve's Love for Love , the greatest London box-office success for years. The actors' cooperative boasted the established star performers of

8132-589: The stomach". He had suffered poor health for the last twenty years of his life and was often confined to bed hardly able to sign his name. His will instructed that he be buried at the church of St Botolph Shenley, Hertfordshire , Shenleybury, which has been deconsecrated so the tomb now sits in a private garden. The inscription, cut by Andrews Jelfe a mason who worked regularly on his buildings reads: P M S L Hic J[acet] NICHOLAUS HAWKSMOOR Armr ARCHITECTUS obijt vicesimo quin[t]o die [Martii] Anno Domini 1736 Aetatis 75 Hawksmoor's only child

8239-439: The summer of 1699, before the end of the year the model for Castle Howard was under construction, stone was being quarried and foundations discussed. It appears that the early drawings of the design for Castle Howard were made by Nicholas Hawksmoor , and in 1700 he was formally introduced by Vanbrugh into the project as draughtsman and clerk of works. Designs varied and evolved until 1702, the pair working together. In July 1700

8346-506: The title of "Lord Foppington" through the corrupt system of Royal title sales). Critics of Restoration comedy are unanimous in declaring Lord Foppington "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée ), by virtue of being not merely laughably affected, but also "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume ). The Relapse , however, came very close to not being performed at all. The United Company had lost all its senior performers, and had great difficulty in finding and keeping actors of sufficient skills for

8453-717: The towers with their extraordinary steeples. The six churches wholly designed by Hawksmoor were St Alfege's Church, Greenwich ; St George's Church, Bloomsbury ; Christ Church, Spitalfields ; St George in the East , Wapping ; St Mary Woolnoth ; and St Anne's Limehouse . They are his best-known independent works of architecture, and compare in their complexity of interpenetrating internal spaces with contemporaneous work in Italy by Francesco Borromini . Their spires are essentially Gothic outlines executed in innovative and imaginative Classical detail. Although Hawksmoor and John James terminated

8560-662: The twentieth century. Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton or Ragnall , Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall , Dunham and a house and land at Great Drayton. It is not known where he received his schooling, but it was probably in more than basic literacy. George Vertue , whose family had property in Hawksmoor's part of Nottinghamshire, wrote in 1731 that he

8667-425: The unhappily married Lady Brute, even as she fires off her witty ripostes. In the intimate conversational dialogue between Lady Brute and her niece Bellinda (Bracegirdle), and especially in the star part of Sir John Brute the brutish husband (Betterton), which was hailed as one of the peaks of Thomas Betterton's remarkable career, The Provoked Wife is something as unusual as a Restoration problem play . The premise of

8774-495: The untrained and untried Vanbrugh astonishingly managed to out-charm and out-clubman the professional but less socially adept Talman and to persuade the Earl of Carlisle to give the great opportunity to him instead. Seizing it, Vanbrugh instigated European baroque's metamorphosis into a subtle, almost understated version that became known as English baroque. Four of Vanbrugh's designs act as milestones for evaluating this process: Work on each of these projects overlapped with that on

8881-404: The water off by drains and common sewers under ground." Vanbrugh's chosen style was the baroque , which had been spreading across Europe during the 17th century, promoted by, among others, Bernini and Le Vau . The first baroque country house built in England was Chatsworth House , designed by William Talman three years before Castle Howard. In the contest for the commission of Castle Howard,

8988-683: Was St Paul's Cathedral (1675–1711), which bears comparison with the most effulgent domed churches of Italy and France. In this majestic edifice, the Palladian tradition of Inigo Jones is fused with contemporary baroque sensibility in masterly equilibrium. Less influential were straightforward attempts to graft the Berniniesque vision onto British church architecture (e.g., by Thomas Archer in St. John's, Smith Square , (1728) and St Paul's, Deptford . The first fully Baroque English country house

9095-494: Was knighted in 1714. Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig , he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne. He was imprisoned by the French as a political prisoner . In his career as a playwright, he offended many sections of Restoration and 18th century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of women's rights in marriage. He

9202-556: Was a daughter, Elizabeth, whose second husband, Nathanial Blackerby, wrote the obituary of his father-in-law. His obituary appeared in Read's Weekly Journal , no. 603. 27 March 1736: Thursday morning died, at this house on Mill-Bank, Westminster, in a very advanced age, the learned and ingenious Nicholas Hawksmoor, Esq, one of the greatest Architects this or the preceding Century has produc'd. His early skill in, and Genius for this noble science recommended him, when about 18 years of age, to

9309-522: Was a lucrative business. Downes' example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool , estimated to bring in £ 40,000 a year in trade from Barbados, throws a new light on Vanbrugh's social background, one rather different from the picture of a backstreet Chester sweetshop as painted by Leigh Hunt in 1840 and reflected in many later accounts. To dispel the myth of Vanbrugh's humble origins, Downes took pains to explore Vanbrugh's background, closely examining

9416-559: Was also Vaux-le-Vicomte in France. The interiors are extremely dramatic, the Great Hall rising 80 feet (24 m) into the cupola. Scagliola , and Corinthian columns abound, and galleries linked by soaring arches give the impression of an opera stage-set – doubtless the intention of the architect. Castle Howard was acclaimed a success. This fantastical building, unparalleled in England, with its facades and roofs decorated by pilasters, statuary, and flowing ornamental carving, ensured that baroque became an overnight success. While

9523-597: Was assisting, from the Beginning [factually wrong, Hawksmoor was 14 years old then] to the Finishing of that grand and noble Edifice the cathedral of St. Paul's, and of all the churches rebuilt after the Fire of London. At the building of Chelsea-College he was Deputy-Surveyor, and Clerk of Works, under Sir Christopher Wren. At Greenwich-Hospital he was, from the Beginning 'till a short time before his death, Clerk of Works. In

9630-399: Was at Seaton Delaval that Vanbrugh, a skillful playwright, achieved the peak of Restoration drama, once again highlighting a parallel between Baroque architecture and contemporary theatre. Despite his efforts, Baroque was never truly to the English taste and well before his death in 1724 the style had lost currency in Britain. In the late 17th and early 18th century, the English Baroque style

9737-456: Was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jeremy Collier 's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage . In his architectural career, he created what came to be known as English Baroque . His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred conservative opinions on the subject. Born in London and baptised on 24 January 1664, Vanbrugh

9844-562: Was built to a design by William Talman at Chatsworth , commenced in 1687. The culmination of Baroque architectural forms comes with Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor . Each achieved a fully developed and highly individual architectural expression, and they were known to work alongside each other, including at Castle Howard (1699), the Orangery at Kensington Palace and Blenheim Palace (1705). Appuldurcombe House , Isle of Wight , now in ruins, but conserved by English Heritage ,

9951-456: Was close to being standard practice in early 18th century England. Vanbrugh himself never seems to have pursued those who owed him money, and throughout his life his finances can at best be described as precarious. Vanbrugh's introduction and advancement in the College of Arms remain controversial. On 21 June 1703 the obsolete office of Carlisle Herald was revived for Vanbrugh. This appointment

10058-526: Was followed by a promotion to the post of Clarenceux King of Arms in March 1704. In 1725 he sold this office to Knox Ward, and he told a friend he had "got leave to dispose in earnest, of a place I got in jest". His colleagues' opposition to an ill-gotten appointment ought to have been directed to Lord Carlisle, who as Deputy Earl Marshal , arranged both appointments and against whose wishes they were powerless. Vanbrugh went on to make more friends than enemies at

10165-582: Was in India for part of this period, working for the East India Company at their trading post in Surat , Gujarat where his uncle, Edward Pearce, had been Governor. However, Vanbrugh never mentioned this experience in writing. Scholars debate whether evidence of his exposure to Indian architecture can be detected in any of his architectural designs. The picture of a well-connected youth is reinforced by

10272-434: Was intended for the use of an actors' cooperative (see The Provoked Wife below) and hoped to improve the chances of legitimate theatre in London. Theatre was under threat from more colourful types of entertainment such as opera, juggling , pantomime (introduced by John Rich ), animal acts, travelling dance troupes, and famous visiting Italian singers. They also hoped to make a profit, and Vanbrugh optimistically bought up

10379-442: Was mostly spent at Greenwich (then not considered part of London at all) in the house on Maze Hill now known as Vanbrugh Castle , a miniature Scottish tower house designed by Vanbrugh in the earliest stages of his career. A Grade I listed building, and formerly a RAF Boys' School, it is today divided into private apartments. Vanbrugh arrived in London at a time of scandal and internal drama at London's only theatre company, as

10486-434: Was much greater before it went public in 1700, in calmer and more Whiggish times. Downes proposes a role for an early Kit-Cat grouping in the armed invasion by William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution. Horace Walpole , son of Kit-Cat Sir Robert Walpole, claims that the respectable middle-aged Club members generally mentioned as "a set of wits" were originally "in reality the patriots that saved Britain", in other words were

10593-440: Was named Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace (1689) and Deputy Surveyor of Works at Greenwich (1705). In 1718, when Wren was superseded by the new, amateur Surveyor, William Benson , Hawksmoor was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother. "Poor Hawksmoor," wrote Vanbrugh in 1721. "What a Barbarous Age have his fine, ingenious Parts fallen into. What wou'd Monsr: Colbert in France have given for such

10700-502: Was often associated with Toryism and Continental Europe by the increasingly dominant Whig aristocracy. The contemporary mood soon shifted toward the more sober stripped-back orthodoxy of British Palladianism popularised in the second and third volumes of Colen Campbell 's influential and widely circulated Vitruvius Britannicus . (Campbell's first volume, by contrast, had embraced the Baroque). Baroque aesthetics , whose influence

10807-917: Was ordered to help garrison Guernsey . In spite of the distant noble relatives and the lucrative sugar trade , Vanbrugh never seemed to possess any capital for business ventures (such as the Haymarket Theatre ), but always had to rely on loans and backers. The fact that Giles Vanbrugh had twelve children to support and set up in life may go some way towards explaining the debts that were to plague John all his life. Some of Vanbrugh's kinsmen – as he addressed them in his letters: Vanbrugh's younger brothers, Charles MP and Philip , Governor of Newfoundland Colony , were naval commanders. Vanbrugh's own first and second cousins included Sir Humphrey Ferrers (1652–1678), Sir Herbert Croft Bt (1652–1720) , Sir Roger Cave Bt (1655–1703) and Cave's sister, wife of Sir Orlando Bridgeman Bt (1650–1701) . From 1686, Vanbrugh

10914-552: Was so potent in mid-17th century France , made little impact in England during the Protectorate and the first Restoration years . A remarkable testimony to the rapid change in taste is found at Wentworth Woodhouse , where Thomas Watson-Wentworth and his son Thomas Watson-Wentworth, 1st Marquess of Rockingham replaced a Jacobean house with a substantial Baroque one in the 1720s, only to find fellow Whigs unimpressed. As

11021-711: Was taken as a youth to act as clerk by "Justice Mellust in Yorkshire, where Mr Gouge senior did some fretwork ceilings afterwards Mr. Haukesmore [ sic ] came to London, became clerk to Sr. Christopher Wren & thence became an Architect". Wren , hearing of his "early skill and genius" for architecture, took him on as his clerk at about the age of 18. A surviving early sketch-book contains sketches and notes, some dated 1680 and 1683, of buildings in Nottingham , Coventry , Warwick , Bath , Bristol, Oxford and Northampton . These somewhat amateur drawings, now in

11128-561: Was the fourth child (of 19), and eldest surviving son, of Giles Vanbrugh, a London cloth-merchant of Flemish descent (as evident in the name, contracted from "Van Brugh") and Protestant background, and his wife Elizabeth, widow of Thomas Barker (by whom Vanbrugh's mother had the first of her twenty children, Vanbrugh's elder half-sister, Elizabeth), and daughter of Sir Dudley Carleton , of Imber Court , Thames Ditton , Surrey. He grew up in Chester , where his family had been driven by either

11235-584: Was the only country house for which he was the sole architect, though he extensively remodelled Ockham House , now mostly destroyed, for the Lord Chief Justice King. Easton Neston was not completed as he intended, the symmetrical flanking wings and entrance colonnade remaining unexecuted. He then worked for a time with Sir John Vanbrugh , assisting him on the building Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough , where he took charge from 1705, after Vanbrugh's final break with

11342-488: Was working undercover, playing a role in bringing about the armed invasion by William of Orange , the deposition of James II , and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He thus demonstrates an intense early identification with the Whig cause of parliamentary democracy , with which he was to remain affiliated all his life. Returning from bringing William messages at The Hague , Vanbrugh was arrested at Calais on

11449-483: Was written and staged in the eye of a theatrical storm. London's only and mismanaged theatre company, known as the United Company, had split in two in March 1695 when the senior actors began operating their own acting cooperative, and the next season was one of cutthroat rivalry between the two companies. Cibber, an inconspicuous young actor still employed by the parent company, seized this moment of unique demand for new plays and launched his career on two fronts by writing

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