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Rh countess of Huntingdon. Next year, 1363, he was made a canon of the collegiate church in Hastings Castle on the 3rd of February, and of the royal chapel of St Stephen's, Westminster, then newly founded, or re-founded, on the 21st of April. He obtained the archdeaconry of Northampton on the 26th of April, and resigned it on the 12th of June, having been promoted to that of Lincoln, the richest of all his preferment's, on the 23rd of May. On the 31st of October he was made a canon of York, and on the 15th of December provost of the fourteen prebends of Combe in Wells cathedral, while at some date unknown he obtained also prebends in Bridgenorth collegiate church and St Patrick's, Dublin, and the rectory of Menheniot in Cornwall. On the 5th of May 1364 he became privy seal, and in June is addressed by the new pope, Urban V., as king's secretary. On the 14th of March 1365 he was given 20s. a day from the exchequer “notwithstanding that he is living in the household.” He was so much the king's factotum that Froissart (i. 249) says “a priest called Sir William de Wican reigned in England … by him everything was done and without him they did nothing.” In fact, as privy seal he was practically prime minister, as Thomas Cromwell was afterwards to Henry VIII. On the 7th of October 1366, William Edingdon, the treasurer of England and bishop of Winchester, died; on the 13th of October Wykeham was recommended by the king to the chapter of monks of St Swithun's cathedral priory and elected bishop.

A long story has been made out of Pope Urban V.'s delay in the recognition of Wykeham, which has been conjectured to have been because of his nationalist proclivities. But little more than the ordinary delays took place. On the 1st of December the king, “for a large sum of money paid down,” gave Wykeham, not only the custody of the temporalities of the see, but all the profits from the day of Edingdon's death. On the 11th the pope granted him the administration of the spiritualities. The papal court was then moving from Avignon to Rome, and on the 14th of July 1367 the bull of “provision” issued at Viterbo. Wykeham was in no hurry himself, as it was not till the 10th of October 1367 that he was consecrated, nor till the 9th of July 1368, after the war parliament which met on the 3rd of June had been dissolved on the 10th of June, that he was enthroned. Meanwhile he had been made chancellor on the 17th of September 1367—thus at the age of forty-three he held the richest ecclesiastical, and the best-paid civil, office in the kingdom at the same time. The war in France was disastrous, how far through Wykeham's fault we have no means of knowing. When parliament again met in 1371, the blame was laid on the clerical ministers, under the influence of Wycliffe. He had been born in the same year as Wykeham, and like him had profited by papal provisions to prebends in 1361, but had since led an attack on papal and clerical abuses. Parliament demanded that laymen only should be chancellor, treasurer, privy seal and chamberlain of the exchequer. On the 8th of March 1372 Wykeham resigned the chancellorship, and Bishop Brantingham of Exeter the treasurership, and laymen were appointed in their places, though Sir Robert Thorp, who became chancellor, was master of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge, and as much a cleric as Wykeham had been when he was dean of St Martin-le-Grand and surveyor of Windsor Castle.

As soon as he became bishop Wykeham had begun his career as founder. In 1367 (Pat. 41 E. III. pt. 2, m. 5) he purchased the estates of Sir John of Boarhunt, near Southwick, with which he endowed a chantry in Southwick Priory for his parents. Next year he began buying lands in Upsomborne, Hants, which he gave to Winchester College, and in Oxford, which he gave to New College. On the 1st of September 1373 he entered into an agreement (Episc. Reg. iii. 98) with Master Richard of Herton “gramaticus” for ten years faithfully to teach and instruct the poor scholars, whom the bishop maintained at his own cost, in the art of grammar, and to provide an usher to help him. Meanwhile the war with France was even more unsuccessful under the lay ministry and John of Gaunt. In the parliament of 1373 Wykeham was name, d by the Commons as one of the eight peers to treat with them on the state of the realm. In the parliament

which met on the 12th of February 1376, Lord Latimer and Alice Perrers, the king's mistress, a lady of good birth, and not (as the mendacious St Albans chronicler alleged) the ugly but persuasive daughter of a tiler, were impeached, and Wykeham took a leading part against Latimer, even to the extent of opposing his being allowed counsel. At the dissolution of parliament a council of nine, of whom Wykeham was one, was appointed to assist the king. But on the 8th of June the Black Prince died. Alice Perrers returned. John of Gaunt called a council on the 16th of October to impeach Wykeham on articles which alleged misapplication of the revenues, oppressive fines on the leaders of the free companies, taking bribes for the release of the royal French prisoners, especially of the duke of Bourbon, who helped to make him bishop, failing to send relief to Ponthieu and making illegal profits by buying up crown debts cheap. He was condemned on one only, that of halving a fine of £80 paid by Sir John Grey of Rotherfield for licence to alienate lands, and tampering with the rolls of chancery to conceal the transaction. Wykeham's answer was that he had reduced the fine because it was too large, and that he had received nothing for doing so. Skipwith, a judge of the common pleas, cited a statute under which for any erasure in the rolls to the deceit of the king 100 marks fine was imposed for every penny, and so Wykeham owed 960,000 marks. Wykeham was convicted, and on the 17th of November his revenues were seized and bestowed on the 18th of March 1377 on the young prince Richard, and he was ordered not to come within 20 m. of the king. He “brake up household … sending also to Oxford, whear upon almose and for God's sake he found 70 scollers, that they should depart to their frendis for he could no longer help or finde them” (Chron. Angliae, lxxx.). But when convocation met in 1377 the bishops refused to proceed to business without Wykeham, and he was fetched back from Waverley Abbey. He was exempted, however, from the general pardon issued on the occasion of Edward III.'s jubilee. But on the 13th of June the prince restored his temporalities, on condition of his maintaining three galleys with 50 men-at-arms and 50 archers for three months, or providing the wages of 300 men. The St Albans monk says that this was obtained by a bribe to Alice Perrers. Meonstoke Perrers, part of the endowment of Winchester College, was certainly bought on the 12th of June 1380 from Sir William Windsor, her husband, whose name seems to be derived from Windsor, near Southampton water. As Hampshire people they may have helped Wykeham. But as Wykeham was of the party of the Black Prince and his widow Joan of Kent, no dea ex machina was needed.

On the 21st of June 1377 Edward III. died. Wykeham was present at the coronation of Richard II. on the 19th of July, and on the 31st of July full pardons were granted him under the privy seal, which at the request of Richard's first parliament were ratified under the great seal on the 4th of December 1377. Wykeham at once took an active part in the financial affairs of the new king, giving security for his debts and himself lending 500 marks, afterwards secured on the customs (Pat. 4 Rich. II. pt. i. m. 4). He then set to work to buy endowments for Winchester and New Colleges. On the 30th of June he obtained licence in mortmain and on the 26th of November issued his charter of foundation of “Seynt Marie College of Wynchestre in Oxenford” for a warden and 70 scholars to study theology, canon and civil law and arts, who were temporarily housed in various old halls. On the 5th of March 1380 the first stone was laid of the present buildings, which were entered on by the college on the 14th of April 1386. The foundation of Winchester was begun with a bull of Pope Urban VI. on the 1st of June 1378, enabling Wykeham to found “a certain college he proposed to establish for 70 poor scholars, clerks, who should live college-wise and study in grammatical near the city of Winchester,” and appropriate to it Downton rectory, one of the richest livings belonging to his bishopric. The bull says that the bishop “had, as he asserts, for several years administered the necessaries of life to scholars studying grammar in the same city.” On the 6th of October 1382 the crown licence in mortmain was issued, on the 10th-13th