Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/60

40 an imitation of that of Winchester, and whole passages of its original statute were taken from those drawn up by the great Bishop William of Wykeham for his college. Each of these two schools were intended to be connected with a college at one or other of the Universities. Winchester was the natural approach to New College at Oxford, established by Bishop William of Wykeham, and Eton was designed in the same way to feed King's College, Cambridge, also founded by King Henry.

The intention of the royal founder was not merely to have a school for secular learning. He had the further design to make Eton a nursery of piety and sound religion. He first converted the parish church of the place into a collegiate establishment and richly endowed it. In this College of priests he ordained that there should be celebrated the perpetual worship of Almighty God in the Divine offices, and directed that daily intercession be made for his soul, as its founder. Joined to this collegiate body he placed a school, in which seventy scholars were to be taught for the priesthood, free of all cost. He hoped that this school would attract also many of the