By the Rev. Canon Moberly. 135 
A list of those who were the heads of the hospital during this 
time will be found in the Appendix.! Their official titles varied. 
Nicholas Laking, the first head under Bingham’s foundation, was 
called ‘‘custos,” or warden. But Bridport, calling himself ‘ warden,” 
put in a “prior” to rule the hospital: and this arrangement con- 
tinued under Bishop Wyley, in whose time (1266) we hear of 
* Brother Adam, the prior” of the hospital. But in 1281 John 
Burnes is again “custos”; Bishop Wykehampton seems to have 
given up his claim to that title. And only once again do we find 
the head of the hospital called “ prior”: and that is in the time of 
the old Bishop Longespee, a younger son of Earl William of 
Pembroke and the Countess Ela the first benefactress of the hospital, 
who thus must have again adopted for himself the “ wardenship ” 
of St. Nicholas’. After this the bishops again repudiated the title ; 
for we find the immediate head always called “ warden,” and ap- 
pointed by the bishop. The episcopal records of institutions begin 
with the fourteenth century: so that thenceforward we have an 
unbroken list of wardens, or masters. But “ warden”? is the title 
‘by which they are consistently known till the beginning of the 
sixteenth century. 
We have also a list, though very fragmentary indeed, of the 
wardens of the Valley College.? John Holtby was the first: the . 
second bore the name of Thomas Bridport, and so was some relative, 
or at least a fellow-townsman, of Bishop Giles, Once (1337) we 
find the same man (Jobn Kirkby, Archdeacon of Dorset) warden of 
doth institutions. Before this, in 1325, the chapter had voted that 
the scholars of the Valley College should go “ to Oxford, or to some 
proper place of study”: none were to remain and inhabit the 
‘building but the two stewards, two chaplains, cook, and butler. It 
looks as if the chapter had become jealous of Bridport’s college : 
-and were determined that the office of warden should thenceforth 
be a sinecure. At this time it was, perhaps, that the Salisbury 
scholars acquired tenements in School Street, Oxford, “and par- 
_ ticularly in two halls that joined together, one called for the most 
. ; 1 Appendix D. 
2 Appendix E. 
VoL. XXV.—NO, LXXIV. L 
