Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/205

 NEW COLLEGE

" College of St. Marie of Wynchester, in Oxenford," which has celebrated its semi-millennial year, and which was founded by William of Wykeham in 1379, has been called" New College" for five centuries, because, as Ingram, in his "Memorials," states, it formed a New Era in academical annals. There are in Oxford six colleges of more ancient date, but these, when New was new, were little more than Halls. Merton was a marked step forward in the modern University system, as it exists in Oxford to-day; but its Founder left the system in a state of transition, which the New College, with its wealth and grandeur of architecture, and its mode of imparting knowledge, brought to a state of what was considered culmination at the end of the Fourteenth Century. And, as it was the first to force its members to go to Mass daily, it was the parent of what now is called Compulsory, or Required, Chapel.

New College was good to the poor and to the needy. The kitchen-book for 1398 shows that "of a Sunday came two Friars Minors to dine with the Fellows, also the Farmer of Heyford; and two 171