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 Castle, and about 1347 passed into the royal service (ib. p. 324). Though not even in minor orders he was made king's chaplain, and presented in 1349 to the rectory of Irstead, Norfolk. In May 1356 he received the appointment of clerk of the royal works at Henley and Easthampstead, and shortly after (30 Oct.) became one of the surveyors of the works at Windsor (ib. p. 21). He also paid for the keep of the king's dogs and sold his draught horses. Three years later Edward III appointed him joint surveyor of Windsor Forest and chief warden and surveyor of the royal castles of Windsor, Leeds, Dover, and Hadleigh. He superintended the erection of the new royal apartments east of the great keep at Windsor, and of the new castle in the isle of Sheppey called Queenborough after Queen Philippa (ib. pp. 316, 325; Chron. Angliæ, p. 41). But the assumption that he was the architect either of these buildings or of those he afterwards undertook on his own account seems baseless (, Church of St. Mary, p. 117; Trans. R.I.B.A. vol. iii. 1887; cf. Proceeding of Archæological Institute, 1845, pp. 56 sqq.). He usually employed William de Winford in that capacity (, pp. 80, 120; Cal. Patent Rolls, Ric. II, ii. 372;, p. 108).

From 1361 Wykeham was joint warden of the forests south of Trent and took a growing share in state business. He witnessed the ratification of the treaty of Brétigny at Calais in October 1360, became keeper of the privy seal (5 May 1364), secretary to the king, and one of the commissioners appointed (May 1365) to come to an understanding with Scotland. Such was his influence with the king that his enemies afterwards described him as having been at this period ‘chief of the privy council and governor of the great council’ (, p. 104). ‘Everything was done through him, and without him nothing was done’ (, viii. 101). In consideration of his ‘excessive labours and expenses’ on the king's private business he received an extra allowance of a pound a day.

But church preferment was the usual and cheaper way of rewarding the labours of so valuable a royal servant. Wykeham came to be a mighty pluralist. The king gave him the rich living of Pulham in the diocese of Ely in 1357, a prebend at Lichfield in 1359, and the deanery of St. Martin-le-Grand (whose chapel and cloister he rebuilt) in 1360. The clerical mortality of the plague year 1361 brought him a whole shower of prebends, at St. Paul's, Hereford, Salisbury, St. David's, Beverley, Bromyard, Wherwell, Abergwili, and Lllanddewi Brewi in that year, and at Lincoln, York, Wells, and Hastings in 1362 (, p. 47). He now took orders, being ordained acolyte on 5 Dec. 1361, and priest on 12 June following. Twelve months after (23 May 1363) he became archdeacon of Lincoln. He also held (by dispensation) the Cornish living of Menheniot, and prebends at Dublin and Bridgenorth. The pluralities return ordered in 1365 showed him in enjoyment of benefices to the annual value of 873l. 6s. 8d. (, p. 33). He resigned Menheniot as strictly incompatible with another cure of souls, and the prebend at Bridgenorth (, p. 313). His acceptance of Pulham, part of the confiscated temporalities of Bishop Lisle of Ely, involved him in a prosecution in the papal court, and his presentation by the crown to the Lichfield prebend of Flixton during a vacancy of the see was stoutly resisted by the administrator and the dean and chapter. The king's persistence triumphed in each case, but in 1361 Wykeham quietly resigned Pulham, and exchanged the canonry at Lichfield for a less contentious one at Southwell. Nevertheless it has been urged that these episodes were remembered against him at Avignon when he was proposed for a bishopric. On the other hand, we find the pope making use of Wykeham's influence with the king in 1363 and 1364, and Edward's exculpation of his minister to Urban in a letter of 1366 need only have reference to the recent arrest of a papal chamberlain (Fœdera, vi. 420, 443;, p. 60). When, therefore, the see of Winchester fell vacant in October of that year, and the monks at the king's instance unanimously elected Wykeham, the pope did not withhold his consent on personal grounds, but because he had already reserved the bishopric for his own disposition (, App. p. vi). If Urban had any objection to Wykeham personally, he concealed it very successfully, for on hearing that the king ‘pro quadam magna pecuniæ summa’ had made the bishop-elect guardian of the temporalities of the see, he himself at once (11 Dec.) invested him with its administration in spirituals and temporals (ib.) Influence was brought to bear upon Urban through the Duke of Bourbon, one of the hostages for the treaty of Brétigny, who was granted an extension of his leave of absence for which the pope had interceded (Fœdera, vi. 540; Chron. Angliæ, p. lxxvi;, vii. 101). His mediation had at all events no immediate result, and a letter of Wykeham's, preserved at New College, raises a