SCHOOLS 



WINCHESTER COLLEGE 



THE FOUNDATION 



The exact time at which Wykeham began to collect the boys who 

 were afterwards incorporated as Winchester College is not known. He 

 became bishop of Winchester in 1366. In February, 1 1369, his agents 

 acquired the site of New College at Oxford. On i September, 1373,* 

 he was already maintaining a school at Winchester. He then made an 

 agreement with Mr. Richard of Herton, grammarian (gramaticus] , that 

 for ten years he should teach and instruct in the art of grammar the 

 poor scholars whom the bishop maintains and will maintain at his own 

 cost, the bishop undertaking to find another fit person to help him ; in 

 other words, an usher or assistant master. Herton was not to take any 

 other boys to be taught without leave of the bishop. If ill, or during a 

 single visit to the court of Rome, he was allowed leave of absence, find- 

 ing however a substitute. In 1 376, when Wykeham had been convicted 

 (wrongfully) of misfeasance in the chancellorship, and deprived of the 

 temporalities of the bishopric, he 'brake up' 3 his household, 'sending 

 also to Oxford, where upon alms and for God's sake he found seventy 

 scholars, that they should depart and remove every one to their friends, 

 for he could no longer help or find them.' In 1378,* having been re- 

 stored, he again began buying land in Oxford. He obtained a bull 5 of 

 Pope Urban VI., dated i June that year, for the foundation of Winches- 

 ter College ; the erection of colleges being a matter of papal prerogative. 

 The terms of the bull for 'a college of seventy poor scholars, clerks, to 

 live college-wise and study grammar (gramaticalibus) near the city of 

 Winchester,' suggest that the site had already been selected. The bull 

 said that the bishop, 'as he states, has for several (pluribus) years of his 

 life, from the goods given him by God, supplied the necessaries of life to 

 scholars studying grammar in the same city,' and for their better main- 

 tenance had asked for the appropriation of the church of Downton, near 

 Salisbury, in the patronage of the bishop of Winchester. The bishop 

 of Rochester was directed to act on the bull as soon as the endowment 

 of the college had been settled. On 26 November, 1 379,' the charter 

 for New College was executed, and the temporary warden, Richard Tun- 

 worth, gave place to Nicholas Wykeham, the founder's nephew. Next 

 year, 5 March, 1380,' the buildings at New College were begun, and on 

 14 April, 1386, were formally entered. Meanwhile Wykeham put him- 

 self in a position to claim the execution of the bull for Winchester. In 

 1380 he purchased the manors of Meonstoke Ferrand and Meonstoke 

 Ferrers for the endowment. The site of the college, a messuage and 



1 Pat. 3 Ric. II. pt. i,m. 32. 



2 Winton. Epis. Reg., Wykeham, iii. 98. 



' Appendix B to Introduction, Chnmctm Anglitf, Rolls Series 1874, p. bone. ; Moberly, p. 137. 

 4 Wood. Hist., ed. Gutch, iv. 177. 



6 Recited in Licence under it by Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester (printed Annall of Winchester 

 College, by T. F. Kirby, Bursar [Henry Froude, 1892], hereinafter cited as Ann., p. 436). 

 6 Charter as to New College, cf. Moberly, p. 192. 7 Ibid. 193. 



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