SCHOOLS 



New College registers l know neither Patney nor Wayneflete. It seems 

 certain from Thomas Chandler's picture of famous Wykehamists, where 

 Wayneflete is shown with his mitre on, not lifted off his head, as is the 

 case with the other prelates except Wykeham (who we know was not at 

 the university at all), to show their doctors' caps, that Wayneflete was 

 not a doctor, and therefore in all probability was not at the university. 

 The New College admissions are most carefully kept, and it must be 

 accepted as practically certain that Wayneflete was not a New College 

 scholar. But if Wayneflete was Patney it is curious that Wayneflete is 

 not mentioned by Chandler specifically as a Wykehamist. A passage 

 was quoted by Richard Chandler in his Life of Wayneflete from Thomas 

 Chandler's Life of Wykeham which he refers to William Waynflete. 

 * There is also springing from the root of such a foundation, like a 

 flourishing shoot, which now by the help and assistance of Thomas, most 

 beneficent lord, most choice prelate of this church of Wells, has grown 

 as it were into a mighty cedar, William, dean of the Chapel Royal and 

 of S. Paul's Church. Him, like a precious stone of the foundation, or a 

 tree planted by the waterside, we have known as an illustrious doctor of 

 sacred theology, we have experience of him as a benefactor, which we 

 hope will be enlarged in the future.' 2 The person thus referred to was 

 not however William Wayneflete, who was never dean of St. Paul's, but 

 William Say, a much younger man, admitted scholar in 1425, only four 

 years before Wayneflete became headmaster, which was in 1429. Unless 

 therefore Wayneflete was Patney or was a commoner at Winchester 

 and at New College he was not a member of either college. 



Of Wayneflete as headmaster no more is known than the dates of his 

 coming in 1430 and going in 1441. 8 That he must have been successful 

 his twelve years' term of office, followed by his selection by Henry VI. 

 for his Wykehamical adviser as the first headmaster of Eton, sufficiently 

 testify. To Eton he took with him, as the tale used to be told, half the 

 Winchester scholars or thirty-five. The Winchester Scholars' register 

 has however only six scholars noted as having gone, ' recessit ad 

 collegium Regale de Eton,' three of whom were the same year ad- 

 mitted among the first fellows of King's College, Cambridge, which 

 bore the same relation to Eton that New College, Oxford, bore to 

 Winchester. 4 Two fellows of New College also went to be fellows 



1 The writer of the article on ' Wayneflete ' in the Dictionary of National Biography argues that 

 it is certain that Wayneflete was at New College, because he made New College men eligible for the 

 wardenship and fellowships of Magdalen. But his headmastership at Winchester would be enough 

 to account for that. The New College men were his pupils. He was directly imitating Wykeham. 



* The passage is on f. 51 of Chandler's MS. at New College. In my History I had not verified 

 Chandler II.'s quotation and so asserted positively that Chandler I. established that Wayneflete was a 

 Wykehamist. That assertion must now be recanted. 



8 These have hitherto been wrongly given as 1429 and 1442, owing probably to confusion over 

 the year of the king and the year of our Lord. Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte also speaks of Eton School 

 beginning in 1442. But it seems certain, from the date of Wayneflete's departure from Winchester, 

 that it may add another year to its age and date itself from Michaelmas, 1441. Its charter was given in 

 October, 1440. The earliest account roll is for 1443 when Westbury was headmaster. 



* The names of the six were John Langporte of Twyford, close to Winchester, admitted 1432 ; 

 Robert Dommetge or Dommett of Hinton, Hants, admitted 1435 ; Richard Cove of Burnham, 



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