Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/358

Alnwick difficult and important work of reviewing the whole body of statutes, dating originally from the foundation of the cathedral by Remigius shortly after the conquest, and reducing the confused mass of conflicting uses and customs which had grown up into an orderly and harmonious code, entitled the ‘Novum Registrum.’ This laborious work was finished by the Michaelmas of the following year, 1440. Its result was less happy. The dean obstinately refused to accept a new code of statutes, tending, as he asserted, to derogate from the dignity of his office. The bishop as resolutely insisted on his acceptance of them. The strife waxed warmer and warmer; one commission of inquiry succeeded another; inhibition followed inhibition; but all to no purpose. Two years after the date of the last inhibition—17 March 1447—Alnwick died, 5 Dec. 1449, leaving Dean Mackworth, who survived him two years, practically master of the situation. ‘Alnwick's register reveals some impatience and infirmities of temper, which was indeed sorely tried. But his “Laudum” and “Novum Registrum” are worthy monuments of his zeal, industry, and learning’ (, Twelve Addresses, 1873, pp. 1–40; Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Acts; Quarterly Review, ‘Cathedral Life,’ No. 269).

To pass to another important work in which he was largely concerned, which is still bearing good fruit after the lapse of more than four centuries, Alnwick, both in his capacity of the king's spiritual adviser, and as bishop of the diocese in which the royal school was situated, took an influential part in Henry VI's foundations of Eton School and King's College, Cambridge, which, following the model first laid down by William of Wykeham in his allied foundations of Winchester School and New College, Oxford, he had resolved upon at the commencement of his personal rule ‘as the first pledge of his devotion to God’ (‘primas nostræ in Deum devotionis arrhas,’ Henry VI's letter to Pope Eugenius IV, 13 May 1443, apud Correspondence, i. 231). Alnwick entered warmly into his royal patron's scheme, and applauded his goodness towards ‘our holy mother the church of England, which in these last days the sons of Belial would have destroyed,’ had it not been for the royal protection vouchsafed to it. To facilitate the completion of the plan, Alnwick appointed commissaries to act on his behalf (29 Sept. 1440) (including Ayscough, bishop of Salisbury, in whose diocese Windsor was then situated, Lyndwood the canonist, keeper of the privy seal, and Bekynton,the king's secretary, archdeacon of Bucks), in converting the parish church of Eton into a collegiate church to be governed by a provost and fellows ( Corresp. ii. 274 ff.). The charter of foundation bears date 11 Oct. 1440. Three years later (13 Nov. 1443), when Bekynton, as a reward for his services in the establishment of the college, had been elevated to the see of Bath and Wells, his consecration was performed by Bishop Alnwick at Eton (, Episcopal Succession, p. 67).

Bishop Alnwick had a fondness for architectural works. He is commemorated in the roll of benefactors to the university of Cambridge as having contributed to the southern wing (‘pars meridionalis’) of the schools, including the law schools and the old library above, facing the magnificent chapel of his royal master. During his tenure of the see of Norwich he commenced the alteration of the west front of the cathedral by the erection of the great portal, the design being completed by his executors after his death, in accordance with the terms of his will, by a new large west window (‘unam magnam fenestram ad decoracionem et illuminacionem ejusdem ecclesiæ’). During his episcopate the cloisters of that cathedral were also completed, and the chief gateway of the bishop's palace, afterwards finished by Bishop Lyhart, was begun. At Lincoln his architectural taste was exhibited in large additions to the episcopal palace, where he erected an extensive eastern wing, including a chapel with a dining parlour under it (both now destroyed), and a noble gateway tower, recently restored by Bishop Wordsworth. The west windows of the minster, usually attributed to him on the authority of an erroneous statement of Leland (Collectan. i. 95), are more than fifty years earlier. Enough, however, remains which is certainly his to warrant the description of his epitaph, ‘pretiosarum domuum ædificator.’ Alnwick died on 5 Dec. 1449, and was buried hard by the west door of Lincoln Cathedral, with a lengthy epitaph, preserved by Sanderson, recording his career and many virtues, and apostrophising the vanity of human life. By his will, proved at Lambeth on 10 Dec. 1449, he bequeathed 10l. for the walls of his native town, and the same sum for the restoration of its church. The year before his death he had been appointed one of the feoffees of ‘a charity founded in the church of St. Michael Alnwick’ (Pat. Roll. 26 Hen. VI, p. 2, m. 8).

[Godwin's De Præsulibus, ed. Richardson; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 18, 467; Jones's Fasti Eccl. Sarisbur. p. 161; Bekynton's Correspondence (Rolls Ser.), i. 231, ii. 279, 287–90; Goulburn's Ancient Sculptures of Norwich Cathedral, 464–6; Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatum, 