A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



tion of 5 an d a rent f 3 I S S - f r tne l an ds and 2J. for the site and 

 buildings. On 18 April, he sold it to Winchester College for 36- 

 The college covenanted that they would before Whitsuntide, 1547 



Transforme find make of the said late Collegiate Church, College or Chappell a 

 Grammar School ; and therein to be dayly tawght the number of persons nowe 

 usually tawght within the said Newe College of Seynt Mary besyds Wynchester 

 afForsead ; and in that case, within the said tyme, to deface the howse of the said 

 College of Seynt Elyzabeth, or the gret parte of the same, or elys within the saide 

 tyme to enrace, pull down, and utterly deface the said Church Collegiat. 



This seems to mean that they were to use the college as school 

 instead of what is now Seventh Chamber. The condition shows that the 

 original school was already overcrowded, and to use St. Elizabeth's as a 

 school would have set free Seventh Chamber for more commoners. It is 

 greatly to be regretted that this step was not taken. Not only should 

 we have had a building of perhaps the most beautiful of all styles of 

 architecture preserved, instead of the ' Glorious Revolution ' building we 

 now enjoy, but the site and grounds of college would have received a 

 great lateral extension, and the school would not have had its develop- 

 ment curtailed for a hundred years and more by lack of playing fields. 

 But the college either shrunk from the expense, or as is more probable 

 were too fossilized in their notions to give up the old school. They 

 preferred to pull down St. Elizabeth's and use its stones for the extension 

 of their own ' Meads ' wall, so that the new part looks much finer and 

 more ancient than the loftier wall built by Wykeham. The alternative 

 of total demolition was not uncommon. It was the practice at the 

 dissolution of the monasteries to deface the buildings and take the lead 

 off the roofs so as to prevent the possibility of the return of the 

 inmates. 



Long before Whitsuntide, 1547, the New College itself was in- 

 cluded in the ' Act for Dissolution of the Colleges,' commonly called the 

 Chantries Act ; 1 or, as it is more exactly headed in the chancery rolls, 

 ' An Act for the Dissolution of Colleges, Chantries, and Free Chapels at 

 the King's pleasure.' Section 6 of the Act, by including ' all colleges as 

 well chargeable as not chargeable ' to first-fruits and tenths, deliberately 

 swept all the colleges in the Universities, together with Winchester and 

 Eton, into the net. Power was given to the king to issue commissions 

 whenever he pleased, and take them ' into the King's Highness, his heirs 

 and successors for ever.' The first thing to be done however was to find 

 out what there was to take, and commissions of * survey ' were therefore 

 issued to every county on 13 February, 1546. Hence the appearance 

 of Winchester College in the first series of chantry certificates. 



Comitatus Southampton' et Berk'. * 



Sir John Wellesborne, Kt., Walter Hendley, Richard Worseley, George Powlet, 

 Richard Powlet, Esquyers, and John Hammond, gentylman, Commyssyoners. 



1 Stat. 37 Henry VIII. c. 4. 



* English School] at the Reformation, pt. ii. p. 58. From Record Office, Chantry Certificates, No. 51. 



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