SCHOOLS 



sworn servant specially appointed by the college for the purpose. Mar- 

 garet the laundress appears nevertheless in 1417* as dining and supping 

 in hall with the servants. 



It was because the college was an ecclesiastical foundation that 

 Richard II. by charter, 28 September, 1395,* 'for the increase of 

 divine worship and the catholic faith,' freed the college from tenths, aids 

 or exactions when the clergy (clerus) of England granted them to the 

 king or the pope imposed them for his own benefit. If the college had 

 not been clerical no such exemption would have been required. 



In later days it was held by the lay courts that though the University 

 colleges might be composed of clerical or ecclesiastical persons they were 

 not clerical or ecclesiastical foundations and were subject to the cognizance 

 of the lay courts. Such a decision was convenient and beneficial. But 

 it was in defiance of all law and history, and could not have been even 

 conceived in 1382, nor yet in 1535, when the colleges at Oxford, Win- 

 chester and Eton were included as ordinary ecclesiastical foundations in 

 the great survey known as the Valor Ecc/esiasficus. 



The great length of the statutes is largely due to the elaborate and 

 complicated oaths which were prescribed for the various members of the 

 college. Oaths were a potent safeguard. Breach of an oath fixed the 

 swearer with the guilt of perjury, and enabled him to be instantly excom- 

 municated. Wykeham gave the reason for his precautions in 'End and 

 Conclusion of all the Statutes,' in which he said that after long study he 

 had nowhere found the rules of founders observed according to those 

 founders' intentions, and had therefore hesitated whether he would not 

 distribute his property among the poor himself instead of putting it in 

 trust in perpetuity ; but in his intense desire to help poor scholars he 

 hopes he may rely on them, when learned men, to keep his statutes 

 according to their plain grammatical construction. 



WYKEHAM'S MODELS 



That Wykeham chose to found a college seems to have been largely 

 due to the influence of Merton College, Oxford, which was his model 

 throughout. 



When Wykeham first began to set about his preparations for found- 

 ing New College in 1369 the people he employed to buy the land were 

 two fellows of Merton, John of Buckingham, canon of York, and John 

 Rouceby, clerk. He with John of Campden, another fellow, and 

 bursar of Merton, witnessed the agreement by Wykeham with the 

 master of his Winchester school in 1373, and together with the war- 

 den of Merton, John of Bloxham, then archdeacon of Winchester, wit- 

 nessed the foundation charter of Winchester College in 1382, in which 

 Thomas of Cranley, another fellow of Merton, was named the first 

 warden, just as Richard Tunworth, another fellow of Merton, had 

 been first warden of Wykeham's scholars at Oxford in 1376 before 

 their formal incorporation in New College. 



1 History, p. 141. * Ann., 4.52. 



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