SCHOOLS 



But the benefits of the school were not confined to the intending 

 clerics, the scholars or the few select gentlemen's sons who boarded with 

 them. Beyond these there were, almost certainly from the first and with 

 the founder's knowledge, other boys attending the school, boarding in 

 other places for the purpose. There are preserved among the college 

 archives some documents relating to St. Elizabeth's College, a foundation 

 of nearly i oo years before, over against the gates of Wolvesey, and so called 

 the Old College, in comparison with St. Mary's College, the New Col- 

 lege, which was next door to it. Among them is an Account Roll of its 

 steward for the year 2 Henry IV., 1400-1, which shows the receipt of 

 the considerable sum of '55^ 4^. from divers commoners (commensali- 

 bus) this year.' Later accounts of the same college in the year 14612 

 contain the same item of ' cash from commoners,' but show only one 

 commoner, William Norton, who is described as ' attending school ' 

 (scolatizantis) 'in the New College.' He paid 31 s. %d. or lod. a 

 week for thirty-eight weeks. A later account, for 1463-4, shows nine to 

 twelve boys commoning in St. Elizabeth's, and the last extant account, 

 for 14689, shows 20 1 5-r. jd. ' received from Mr. John Bourchenyer 

 and other commoners at the table in the inn ' (bospitium ; the provost also 

 filled the office of senescballtts bospitii}, ' and schooling in the college.' 

 Further evidence is forthcoming in a mandate from Wykeham's successor 

 in the bishopric, Beaufort, addressed to John Morys, warden of ' our ' 

 college of Winchester, 10 April, 1412. After reciting that the statutes 

 provided for seventy children at the cost of the college, and ten outsiders 

 (extraneos), sons of friends of the college, the Visitor went on to say that 

 he was informed that the master continually instructed and taught from 

 eighty to one hundred outsiders beyond the statutable number, ' contrary 

 to the pious founder's intention.' On the ground that one man was not 

 enough to teach so many, he therefore forbade the warden, under pain 

 of canonical fulminations, to admit any more than the statutable number. 

 But the saving clause is added : ' Nor allow them to be admitted without 

 your special license in that behalf.' The saving clause kept an open door 

 for the admission of such select personages as Mr. Thomas Bourchier, a 

 son of the Earl of Essex and Eu, and others whose names have unfor- 

 tunately perished in the provost's ' papers,' to which the accounts of St. 

 Elizabeth's College refer for the names of its commoners. The fact that 

 at Eton, which was expressly modelled on Winchester, the statutes from 

 the first provided for the admission of all coming from any part of 

 England as well as the scholars, is also strong evidence that Beaufort's 

 mandate did not exclude, and was not probably intended to exclude other 

 commoners, or oppidans as they were called both at Eton and Win- 

 chester in the seventeenth century, or town boys as they were and still 

 are called at Westminster. We know unfortunately next to nothing of 

 this class of town day-boys. But we have presumptive evidence of their 

 existence up to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In 1561 a 

 new master was appointed to Southampton Grammar School, succeeding 

 Robert Knaplock, the first on the new foundation of the school, with a 

 ii 273 35 



