SCHOOLS 



kin within the said two colleges altogether, and that the number should 

 be divided so that in Winchester there should not be more than ten at a 

 time ; that is, he conceded the right to have in any single year the same 

 number of founder's kin as he believed to have been admitted in the whole 

 154 years before. 



The objection to the privileges of founder's kin was not only that it 

 converted a public school into a private inheritance, it also tended to 

 lessen learning, for they had an absolute preference for New College up 

 to the age of twenty-five, and that without competition. When the 

 founder's kin difficulty arose nearly 200 years later at All Souls' College, 

 the Archbishop of Canterbury, acting on the advice of an All Souls' man, 

 Blackstone of the Commentaries, reduced founder's kin to ten. The 

 limitation procured by Warden Bilson saved Winchester as a public 

 school. 



Warden Bilson achieved a rare distinction among wardens in be- 

 coming a well known author. Of his books, The True Difference between 

 Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion, was much quoted at the time 

 of the Civil War, and The Perpetual Government of Christ's Church., in 

 defence of episcopacy, procured him the bishopric of Worcester in 1595, 

 and translation to Winchester two years afterwards. On his promotion 

 the queen provoked a constitutional crisis in the college by trying to 

 treat the wardenship as if it had been an ordinary ecclesiastical benefice, 

 to which, on the promotion of its occupant to a bishopric, she had the 

 right to appoint. Mr. Cotton, one of her chaplains, who lived at 

 Winchester, asked for it, 1 urging that he 'is wished to the same by the 

 town, county and church.' The rival candidates were John Harmar, 

 the headmaster, George Ryves, a fellow of Winchester, and Dr. William 

 Tooker or Tucker. After four months' struggle, with quips and 

 quibbles the queen withdrew in favour of Harmar. 



While from this time forward the provostship of Eton came to be 

 treated as a Crown appointment, the stout opposition of Wykehamists 

 effectually prevented any further attempt on the wardenship of Win- 

 chester in favour of outsiders. 



THE STEWARTS 



The Stewart period at Winchester opened with a characteristic 

 exercise of the prerogative on the part of the monarch from Scotland 

 which none of his Plantagenet or Tudor predecessors had ever thought 

 of attempting. By a privy seal* of i November, 1603, he turned the 

 college, warden and all, out of house and home, in order to make room 

 'for the lodging of our Judges and Sergeants ' so that they might be near 

 the ' Bishop's Pallace there called Wolvesey,' in which he had 

 appointed 'our Courts of Justice to be kept.' The plague in London 

 was the ostensible reason, but the trial of Raleigh was perhaps the real 

 reason for ' appointing the term to be kept at our Citty of Winchester.' 



1 Hist. MSS. Com. <?/>.,< Salisbury MSS.' vi. 207. z Annals, p. 300. 



319 



