Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/253

 apart from its magnificent scale and completeness, Wykeham's college marked no deviation from the type represented by Merton and Queen's (, pp. 77 sqq.;, ii. 504; , p. 151). The real novelty in his scheme lay in the exclusive connection he established between New College and his grammar school at Winchester—‘Seinte Marie College of Wynchestre.’ Wykeham obtained a papal bull for the endowment of this school in 1378, and in 1382 bought the site and issued (20 Oct.) his charter of foundation, providing for the education of seventy scholars ‘suffering from want of money and poverty’ in the art of grammar as the portal to the higher studies of his Oxford college, for which they were to be prepared. The first stone of Winchester College was laid on 26 March 1387, and the opening ceremony took place on 28 March 1394 (, p. 129, correcting, p. 333). The 105 persons on the foundation comprised, besides the warden and the seventy scholars, with their schoolmaster and undermaster, priest-fellows, chaplains, clerks, and choristers for the service of the college chapel. Provision was made for ten commoners, ‘sons of noble and powerful persons, special friends of the said college’—the germ of the ‘public school system’ (, p. 96). Apart from this and its grander scale, the chief departure from the pre-existing cases of schools connected with colleges in the universities was that ‘for the first time a school was established as a sovereign and independent corporation, existing by and for itself, self-centred, self-controlled’ (ib. p. 90).

Winchester College was hardly finished when Wykeham took up or resumed (November 1394) the rebuilding of the old Norman nave of his cathedral, the whole cost of which he undertook to defray. According to one of his biographers, the work was ‘happily finished’ before his death (, p. 334). But from Wykeham's will it appears that a year before his death the upper portions of the nave had not yet been touched, and the vaulting contains the arms of Beaufort and Waynflete as well as those of Wykeham (, App. p. xxxiv; Proceedings of Archæological Institute, 1845, p. 58).

During the troublous times of Richard II's minority Wykeham held no office of state, but his experience and character usually secured his inclusion in the committees of the lords with whom the commons demanded conference, and in the various commissions for the reform of the royal household. In 1383 he successfully resisted the claim of the Percys and other border lords to public money for services to which they were bound by the tenure of their lands (, ii. 108). The Duke of Gloucester placed him on the commission of regency in 1386, but he took no active part in the proceedings which earned some of his colleagues the lasting hatred of the young king; and when Richard in 1389 reclaimed his liberty of action, it was Wykeham whom he chose for his chancellor. Accepting the seals with extreme reluctance, he did his best to confirm the hasty king in his resolutions of better government, even at the risk of his displeasure (ib. ii. 181; Ord. Privy Council, i. 12; Rot. Parl. iii. 257). He and his colleagues insisted on protecting themselves against any future pursuit for complicity with the king in setting aside the government established in the Merciless parliament by temporarily resigning their offices in 1390, and securing as private individuals parliamentary endorsement of what they had done (ib. iii. 258). After seeing the new régime well under way, Wykeham laid down his office on 27 Sept. 1391 (Fœdera, vii. 707). He was now sixty-seven years of age, and was probably glad to obtain release from responsibilities that were not of his own seeking.

For the rest of his life Wykeham kept aloof from politics. He was present in the September parliament of 1397, in which Richard avenged himself for the Merciless parliament; but, doubtless finding the king's measures very little to his taste, excused himself from personal attendance at the adjourned session at Shrewsbury (Register, ii. 477). His share in the commission of 1386 was not brought up against him, but Richard extracted from him a loan of 1,000l. (Fœdera, viii. 9). He attended the first parliament of Henry IV and the great council of February 1400, but this was his last appearance in public affairs. His excellent health at last broke down. From May 1401 Thomas Merke [q. v.] and others ordained for him, and he spent the remaining two years of his life in retirement at South Waltham. In January 1403 he availed himself of a papal permission, obtained twelve years before (22 July 1391), to appoint two coadjutors without asking the consent of the archbishop of Canterbury or the chapter of Winchester (Register, ii. 543). Six months later he signed his will, in which he gave instructions for his burial in the chapel on the south side of the nave; this he had recently erected over the altar of the Virgin, at which he had daily paid his devotions during his early days in Winchester (, App. p. xxxiii;, pp. 316,