A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



followed by his death and Jack Cade's rising. 

 The effect was promptly seen in the works. In 

 14501, under a new master of the works, in- 

 stead of eighty-four masons only twenty-two 

 were employed; in 1452-3 the number rose to 

 forty, but next year, the year of the first attack 

 of Henry's insanity, they fell to twenty-two again. 



From 1458 to 1460 no more than thirty-three 

 workmen in all were employed. The great 

 church was only built as far as the choir door, 

 and then remained, and remains, unfinished. 



On Wayneflete's promotion, John Clerk, the 

 vice-provost, was made provost, being elected by 

 the fellows 2 August I447. 43a But he died in 

 October of the same year, and William West- 

 bury, the head master, succeeded him, being 

 appointed by patent 8 December 1447. He was, 

 oddly enough, for some 300 years, the only head 

 master to become provost, though for the last 

 150 years the provostry has been regarded as a 

 retiring pension for the head master. Hitherto 

 the provost had hired a house in London to live 

 in during his frequent visits there in attendance 

 on the king or for college business, paying in 

 1444-5 5 f r the year as rent to John Goffe, 

 mercer, and afterwards 2 a year to the Abbot of 

 Chertsey. By patent, 30 October 1448, the king 

 conferred on the college for this purpose the 

 Leper Hospital of St. James, now St. James's 

 Palace. This hospital had an endowment of 

 some hundreds of acres of land in Westminster 

 and the suburbs ; and though part was taken in 

 exchange by Henry VIII when he made it a 

 palace, the bulk was retained by the college, and 

 part of it, some 140 acres, has just been sold for 

 j8o,ooo for a garden city at Hampstead. 



Westbury was succeeded as head master by 

 Richard Hopton, a fellow of Oriel, and probably 

 an Eton exhibitioner there. He did not take 

 holy orders till four years later, I February 

 1451, on the title of the college. After six years 

 he retired on an Eton fellowship, 2 March 1453. 

 In May 1457 ne supplicated as B.D. for a D.D. 

 degree at Oxford. He gave up his fellowship in 

 1479, but was re-elected in 1486, and died and 

 was buried in Eton Chapel 19 January 1496-7. 

 Two lines of his epitaph ** seem to claim that 

 he was equally eminent in music as in grammar : 

 ' He sweated to weave his true sons in the threads 

 of grammar, and honey flowed in his deep notes.' 



Mr. Thomas Forster, or Foster, scholar of Win- 

 chester 1434, and of New College 1439, suc- 

 ceeded Hopton as head master in May 1453. He 

 had William Chapman as usher. In that year the 

 endowment was further increased by the grant 

 of Cowick Priory, and the last Act of Parlia- 



** B.M. Sloane MSS. 4840, fol. zz8. 



44 Grammaticis solidos fills intexere gnatos Sudavit ; 

 gravibus mella fluere notis.' Another possible inter- 

 pretation, however, is that ' the honey of learning 

 flowed by means of heavy blows,' and this is equally 

 in accordance with Eton traditions. 



ment obtained. New statutes seem to have been 

 made that year, ji being paid for writing 

 the book of statutes and the correction of 

 another book of statutes, the ' velom ' for the 

 book costing 6s. 8d. t and its binding is. 8d. 

 The queen sent two special messengers to the 

 college to inform them of the birth of the 

 prince, destined to prove fatal to the peace of 

 the kingdom and the prosperity of the college. 

 It was perhaps in commemoration of this event 

 that the king gave an image of St. Nicholas to 

 the college. In this year there first appear in the 

 accounts considerable payments to the head 

 master for the 'exhibition of the scholars' on 

 certain feast days, ,10 being spent for the pur- 

 pose on St. John's day, at Christmas, 12 on 



19 April, 6 in September, which was for a 

 nutting expedition, and 11 on 8 November, 

 which was apparently connected with the boy- 

 bishop celebrations. Smaller sums were paid 

 for the choristers on the same days. So that it 

 was not all learning even in those laborious days. 



By Michaelmas 1454 Clement Smythe of 

 Southwark, scholar of Winchester 1439, scholar 

 of New College 1444, and fellow 1446, had 

 succeeded Forster in the head-mastership. He 

 only took his M.A. degree after his election, on 



20 April 1453, under a dispensation that Mr. 

 Chyld, another fellow of New College, probably 

 the ex-usher of Eton, might read for him, i.e. 

 give the two years' lectures statutably required 

 of every new or regent master. Smythe was 

 only twenty-seven years old at the time. But 

 at Eton, as everywhere until the end of the 

 1 7th century, the schoolmasters were, when 

 elected, almost invariably young men who had 

 just taken their degrees, schools not being regarded 

 as abiding places, but as stepping-stones to higher 

 preferment. Clement Smythe had for usher 

 Thomas Avery. Smythe held office for five years, 

 in turn retiring on an Eton fellowship 1 5 February 

 1458, and acting as bursar in 1459-60. 



In 1457 there came as master John Peyntour, 

 the first Etonian to become head master of his 

 old school. Of Daventry, Northants, he 

 headed the roll to King's in 1448," and is pro- 

 bably the same person who became B.A. at 

 Oxford in 1455. A note in an old Eton list 

 describes him as ' an excellent limner ' ; but it 

 may be doubted whether that is not merely an 

 inference from his name. It is not known whether 

 he held office for ten years until Clement Smythe's 

 return ; or whether for a time, from 1463 to 

 Lady Day 1467, the school did not absolutely 

 cease during the storm which overtook Eton and 

 the kingdom. 



The reign of the royal founder came to an 

 end with his defeat at the battle of Mortimer's 



46 In Alumni Eton. 1447. But the years given in 

 that book are mostly one year too early, through mis- 

 calculation of the year of our Lord from the year of 

 the king. 



166 



