SCHOOLS 



The second son, Thomas, who had been admitted at New College in 

 1390 and left in 1394, and had, no doubt, been first a founder's kin at 

 Winchester, was endowed by Wykeham with the manor of Otterbourne 

 near Winchester, and with Broughton Castle near Oxford. He had a 

 daughter, who married one Wilkesey, but their son took the name of 

 Wykeham, and this son's daughter married a Fiennes, Lord Saye and 

 Sele, and took the castle and estates of Broughton with the name of 

 Wykeham, to him. His descendant, Wykeham-Fiennes, Lord Saye and 

 Sele, still holds Broughton. One of this Saye and Sele's younger sons, 

 Richard ' Fynes,' a spelling which gives the pronunciation better than the 

 modern spelling, claimed, and was admitted as founder's kin in 1465. 

 He was in the fifth degree, according to common law, which determines 

 the inheritance of real, and the sixth according to civil law, which 

 determines the distribution of personal, property. No later member of 

 the family claimed it, nor were any founder's kin admitted to college for 

 a period of seventy-two years, from 1476 to 1548. It was perhaps 

 owing to the privilege having been so sparingly used by the Wykehams, 

 that when in 1569 the son of the then Lord Saye and Sele applied for 

 admission as founder's kin, the college welcomed him, without scruti- 

 nising too closely whether he was or was not a step too late in the 

 pedigree, the strict canon law being then discredited, especially as he 

 was the heir-apparent to a peerage. 



But it was an unfortunate precedent. It opened the hatches to a 

 flood of founder's kin, and the prospect rose before the college of their 

 descendants in geometrical progression thronging in, not subject to any 

 test of fitness, and threatening to convert it from a national institution 

 into the private possession of a few families. 



For the number of persons who could claim was enormous. The 

 founder's aunt, Alice, had no less than thirteen daughters, and they all, 

 or nearly all, had families. The grandchildren of one daughter, Edith 

 Ringborne, in the fourth degree, were admitted in 1449 and 1454. 

 The representative of another daughter, John Maryle, appeared in 

 1427, and of yet another, Bartholomew Bolney, in 1415. Then there 

 were the descendants of the founder's uncle, Henry, who has been 

 written down as an Aas, probably representing the modern Ash, one of 

 whom, already in the fourth or fifth degree, was admitted as founder's 

 kin in 1413. Finally, there were representatives of Wykeham's mother's 

 family, Strattons of Stratton, one of whom, John Benyt of Botley, was 

 given a chance of succession in the entail of the manor of Otterbourne by 

 Wykeham in 1400. 



Yet with all the possible developments of these various lines, only 

 thirty-seven founder's kin were admitted during the whole ninety years 

 from 1386 to 1476. The reason, probably, was that as a rule enforce- 

 ment of the right meant dedication to the Church and to celibacy, 

 and those who accepted it did not, of course, leave children to take on 

 the title. Moreover, the absolute cessation after 1476 of any admissions 

 of founder's kin points to some legal decision or advice, that the right 



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