A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



seem a very tempting morsel. That it would not have been long spared 

 is likely by the example of the colleges of Fleshy, Hastings, a royal 

 chapel ; Tong, which was not saved by its grammar school ; and St. 

 Edmund's College, Salisbury, which even its title as one of the earliest 

 of university colleges, did not preserve. These were all taken in the last 

 few months of 1546. But in January, 1547, Henry VIII. died. The 

 powers of the Act were only for his life, and by his death the college 

 was saved. 



Edward VI. 's parliament met in November, 1 547, and very soon 

 passed a new Chantries Act, under which, according to the preamble, 

 the chantries and colleges were to be converted ' to good and Godly 

 uses, or in erecting of Grammar Schools,' and ' the further augmenting of 

 the Universities.' After such a preamble the colleges in the universities 

 could hardly be destroyed, and accordingly a special clause was put in to 

 exempt the colleges, hostels and halls of the universities and chantries 

 therein : the new chapel of St. George the Martyr in the castle of 

 Windsor, 'St. Mary's College of Winchester of the foundation of Bishop 

 Wickham, and the college of Eaton.' 



Mr. B. Wilson, writing the history of Sedbergh School, Yorkshire, 1 

 complained of the ' shameful partiality ' with which Winchester and 

 Eton were specially exempted. It certainly was a strange way of im- 

 proving grammar schools to rob them of all the lands they possessed, 

 as this Act did in the case of some 250 grammar schools. 2 In the case 

 of Sedbergh, founded by Roger Lupton, a provost of Eton, it must have 

 seemed peculiarly hard that while his chantry at Eton, wholly super- 

 stitious, was preserved, his chantry at Sedbergh, where the priest's main 

 duty was to teach a school, was destroyed. But the partiality was not so 

 scandalous as it seems at first sight. Winchester and Eton were not 

 saved on their merits so much as because they were regarded as part of 

 the universities. Winchester was really inseparable from New College, 

 Oxford ; Eton from New College, Cambridge, as King's was sometimes 

 called. With the university colleges they were exempted from subsidies 

 in 1496, when nearly all other ecclesiastical foundations were made 

 subject to them. With the university colleges they were as we have 

 seen exempted from tenths and first-fruits in 1536. Magdalen College 

 School and Wainfleet School were saved for the same reason, though 

 without express mention, as they actually received their endowment from 

 the college. Winchester and Eton, though nominally independent as re- 

 gards estates, were really more intimately connected with the universities 

 than Wainfleet. The plainest statement that they were regarded as part 

 of the universities is contained in a letter from the privy council to the 

 commissioners for church goods for Hampshire in 1553.* 



Forasmuch as it is fit that New Colledge of Winchester within the same county, 

 being a member of th'University of Oxon., should have and enjoy such liberties as 

 the said University doth, His Majesty is pleased that the said college shall have and 



1 Sedbergh School Register, p. 3 (Richard Jackson, Leeds, 1895). 



* EngRsh Schools at the Reformation, p. 91. 8 dnnals, 24.1. 



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