SCHOOLS 



Winchester at his birthplace, Higham Ferrers, 

 in 1422-5, a college of a master and 7 fellows, 

 ' with masters in grammar and song for all coming 

 there,' and an almshouse of 1 2 poor men, and en- 

 dowed it with the alien priory of Mersea in 

 Essex ; while he also founded a smaller New 

 College at Oxford in the college of All Souls 

 in 1432, also partly endowed with alien priories 

 bought from the Crown. But perhaps the 

 most striking of the new cluster of educational 

 foundations was that of William Byngham, 

 rector of St. John Zachary, London, in the 

 Domus Dei or God's house at Cambridge. 

 In his petition in 1439 for licence in mortmain 

 for the foundation of a college of a master and 

 24 scholars who were to be trained in grammar, 

 he said that he had found all over the country 

 grammar schools, formerly flourishing, now fallen 

 into abeyance for lack of proper teachers. He 

 therefore established this, the first training college 

 on record in England, anticipating the secondary 

 training colleges recently started by some 470 

 years. Grammar was to be taught, not only 

 because, as in Wykeham's day, it was ' the key 

 to the Scriptures, the gate to the liberal sciences, 

 and to theology, mistress of them all,' but 

 because ' it was necessary in dealing with law 

 and other difficult matters of state, and also the 

 means of mutual communication and conversa- 

 tion between us and strangers and foreigners.' 

 The scholars when trained were to issue from 

 the college to teach schools all over the country. 

 This remarkable experiment came to an un- 

 timely end, at the hands of Henry himself, 

 being remove! to make way for King's College 

 chapel, and eventually absorbed in Christ's 

 College. 



With these examples set him by those who 

 had brought him up as a boy and guided him 

 as a young man, Henry only followed the 

 fashion in founding a school at Eton and a 

 college in connexion with it at Cambridge. The 

 particular form the two took, and the whole 

 conception as well as execution of the design of 

 Eton and King's, is due first and foremost to 

 Archbishop Chicheley and next to the other 

 Wykehamists who managed the domestic affairs 

 of the kingdom at that time, Thomas Bekynton, 

 William Say, Richard Andrews, and Andrew 

 Holes or Hulse. The actual instrument was 

 Bekynton. Admitted a scholar of Winchester 

 in 1403 and of New College in 1405-6, he re- 

 mained a law fellow of New College, student of 

 civil and canon law and doctor of the same till 

 1420, when he became chancellor of the Pro- 

 tector, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and was 

 made Archdeacon of Buckingham in 1422. In 

 1423 he was Dean of Arches and with his deputy, 

 the celebrated writer on canon law, William 

 Lyndwood, assisted in persecuting heretics. In 

 1432 he acted as ambassador to France. In that 

 year Henry VI, then ten years old, appears as 



founder of the University of Caen. In 1433 

 Bekynton was prolocutor of Convocation. As 

 archdeacon of the county in which Eton was 

 situate, as well as royal secretary, he took a leading 

 part in the foundation of the college. The nego- 

 tiations with the pope for the bulls connected with 

 it were conducted by Andrew Hulse, royal proctor 

 at the papal court, a scholar of Winchester 

 1407 and of New College 1414. Hulse was 

 nominated by the king for the see of Coutances 

 on two occasions, but the first nomination mis- 

 carried by the tardiness of the messenger, and the 

 next was on false information of a vacancy which 

 had not occurred, though for the greater part of 

 a year Bekynton wrote to him as his venerable 

 father as if he was actually bishop elect. 6 So 

 poor Hulse never attained any higher dignity 

 than that of canon of Chichester and chancellor 

 of Salisbury Cathedral. One at least of the 

 messengers between them, John Burgh, was ako 

 a Wykehamist. Richard Andrew, Official of 

 the court of Canterbury, Bekynton 's colleague in 

 the commission to appropriate Eton Church, and 

 his subsequent successor as archdeacon and Privy 

 Seal, was also a Wykehamist, and at this very 

 time was the first warden of All Souls College, 

 Oxford. 



In October 1440 the king was only 18 years 

 of age, and he speaks of the foundation as a ' sort 

 of first-fruits of his taking the government on 

 himself.' We may, therefore, surely credit the 

 initiative in the foundation of Eton to Chicheley 

 and Bekynton, just as we may credit to them 

 the foundation of the university of Caen in 

 1432-7, and the university of Bordeaux in 

 1441, of which Henry was also the nominal 

 founder. 



The instructions to the English envoys at the 

 Council of Basle found among Bekynton's letters 

 were probably drawn up by him. One of them 

 specially refers to the alien priories, apparently in 

 contemplation of the use to which they were to 

 be put in connexion with Eton and King's. If 

 proposals were made for the repeal of any of the 

 statutes of the realm, especially those concerning 

 priories or possessions of aliens, the envoys were 

 to say they had no instructions. They could, 

 however, as from themselves, but not as ambassa- 

 dors, nor as representing the king, say that ' ac- 

 cording to the ancient laws of England, if any- 

 one held property on conditions, and failed to 

 fulfil the conditions, the donor could re-enter 

 on the property, and the churches and monasteries 

 of aliens failing to perform the conditions on 

 which they were held, the gifts were ifsa facto 

 revoked and granted to the Crown.' Yet 

 Henry V had intended to grant them ' not to 

 their former abuses, but to pious uses ' and obtained 



' This seems to be the explanation of what puzzled 

 the editor of Bekynton's correspondence, that he, the 

 senior, addressed his junior, Hulse, as 'venerable father.' 



