with Henry that when Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Henry’s uncle, died on the nth of April 1447, the same day Henry wrote to the chapter of Winchester, the prior and monks of St Swithin’s cathedral, to elect Waynflete as his successor. On the 12th of April he was given the custody of the temporalities, on the 15th of April he was elected, and on the 10th of May provided to the
see by a papal bull. On the 13th of July 1447 he was consecrated in Eton church, when the warden and fellows and others of his old college gave him a horse at a cost of £6, 13s. 4d., and 13s. 4d. to the boys. Subsequent visits to Winchester inspired Henry
with the idea of rebuilding Eton church on cathedral dimensions. Waynflete was assigned as the principal executor of his “will” for that purpose, and if there was any variance between the executors, he was to determine it. From 1448 to 1450 £3336 or some £100,000 of our money was spent on the church, of which
Waynflete with the marquis of Suffolk and the bishop of Salisbury contributed £700 or £21,000. The troubles which began in 1450 put a stop to the work.
Waynflete, as bishop, lost no time in following the example of Wykcham and his royal patron in becoming a college founder. On the 6th of May 1448 he obtained licence in mortmain and on the 20th of August founded at Oxford “for the extirpation of heresies and errors, the increase of the clerical order and the adornment of holy mother church, a perpetual hall, called Seint Marie Maudeleyn Halle, for study in the sciences of sacred theology and philosophy,” to consist of a president and 50 scholars. Its site was not that of the present college, but of two earlier halls called Boston and Hare, where the new schools now are. Thirteen M.A.’s and seven bachelors, besides the president, John Hornley, B.D., were named in the charter. The dedication to Mary Magdalen was no doubt derived from the hospital at Winchester of which the founder had been master. On St Wolstan’s Day, the 19th of January 1448-1449, Waynflete was enthroned in Winchester cathedral in the presence of the king; and, probably partly for his sake, parliament was held there in June and July 1449, when the king frequently attended the college chapel, Waynflete officiating (Win. Coll. Reg. Vet.). When Jack Cade’s rebellion occurred in 1450 Waynflete was employed with Archbishop Stafford, the chancellor, to negotiate with the rebels at St Margaret’s church, Southwark, close to Winchester House. A full pardon was promised, but on the 1st of August Waynflete was one of the special commissioners to try the rebels. On the 7th of May 1451 Waynflete, from “le peynted chambre” in his manor house at Southwark, asserting that his bishopric was canonically obtained and that he laboured under no disqualification, but feared some grievous attempt against himself and his see, appealed to the protection of the pope. It is suggested (Dict. Nat. Biog.) that this was due to some disturbances at Winchester (Proc. P.C. vi. 108), where one of Cade’s quarters was sent after his execution. But it is more likely, as suggested by Richard Chandler (Life of Waynflete, 1811), that it was some Yorkist attack on him in progress in the papal court, to meet which he appointed next day 19 proctors to act for him. In the result nothing disturbed his peaceable possession of the see. With the archbishop of Canterbury he received Henry VI. on a pilgrimage to St Thomas à Becket on the 2nd of August 1451. When in November the duke of York encamped near Dartford, Waynflete with three others was sent from the king’s camp at Blackheath to propose terms, which were accepted. Edward, prince of Wales, was born on the 13th bf October 1453 and baptized by Waynflete the next day. This year Waynflete acquired the reversion of the manor of Stanswick, Berks, from Lady Danvers (Chandler, p. 87) for Magdalen Hall. The king became insane in 1454. On the death of the chancellor, John Kemp, archbishop of Canterbury, during the sitting of parliament, presided over by the duke of York, commissioners, headed by Waynflete, were sent to Henry, to ask him to name a new chancellor, apparently intending that Waynflete should be named. But no answer could be extracted from the king, and after some delay Lord Salisbury took the seals. During York’s regency, both before and after the battle of St Albans, Waynflete took an active part in the proceedings of the privy council. With a view to an ampler site for his college, Waynflete obtained on the 5th of July 1456 a grant of the Hospital of St John the Baptist outside the east gate at Oxford and on they 15th of July licence to found a college there. Having obtained a papal bull, he founded it by deed of the 12th of June 1458, converting the hospital into a college with a president and six fellows, to which college two days later Magdalen Hall surrendered itself and its possessions, its members being incorporated into “the New College of St Mary Magdalen.”
Meanwhile Waynflete himself had been advanced to the highest office in the state, the chancellorship, the seals being delivered to him by the king in the priory of Coventry in the presence of the duke of York, apparently as a person acceptable to both parties. On the 27th of October 1457 he took part in the trial and condemnation for heresy of Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, who had been ordained sub-deacon and deacon on the same day and by the same bishop as Waynflete himself. Only Pecock’s books and not the heretic were burnt. As the heresy consisted chiefly in defending the clergy on grounds of reason instead of authority, the proceeding does not show any great enlightenment on Waynflete’s part. It must have been at this time that an addition was made by Waynflete to the Eton college statutes, compelling the fellows to forswear the heresies of John Wycliffe and Pecock. Waynflete presided as chancellor at the parliament at Coventry in November 1459, which, after the Yorkist catastrophe at Ludlow, at tainted the Yorkist leaders. It was no doubt because of this that, three days before the Yorkist attack at Northampton, he delivered the great seal to the king in his tent near Delapre abbey, a nunnery by Northampton, on the 7th of July 1460 (Rot. Claus. 38 Hen. VI. m. 5 d). It was taken with Henry and handed to the Yorkist, George Neville, bishop of Exeter, brother of the kingmaker, earl of Warwick, in London on 25th July following. Whether, as alleged by some, Waynflete fled and hid himself during the period covered by the battle of Wakefield and Edward’s first parliament, in 1461, is very doubtful. A testimonial to his fidelity written by Henry to the pope on the 8th of November 1460 (Chandler, 346) was written while Henry was in Yorkist hands. The fact 100 that complaints laid before Edward IV. himself in August 1461 of wrongful exaction of manorial rights from the tenants of the episcopal manor of East Meon, Hants, were decided in the bishop’s favour in parliament in the December following (Rot. Parl. v. 475) also suggests that he was not regarded as an enemy to the Yorkists, though a personal favourite of Henry’s. A general charter of confirmation to him and his successors of the property and rights of the bishopric of Winchester on the 1st of July 1462 (Pat. 2 Ed. IV.) points in the same direction. It is certain that he took an active part in the restoration of Eton College, which Edward annexed to St George’s, Windsor, in 1463, depriving it of a large part of its possessions. In the earliest Audit Rolls after the restoration of the college in 1467 there are many entries of visits of Provost Westbury to “the lord of Winchester,” which in January 1468–1469 were for “beginning the work of the church” “and providing money for them.” Why a pardon was granted to Waynflete on the 1st of February 1469 (Pat. 8 Ed. IV. pt. iii. m. 16) does not appear. On the restoration of Henry VI. on the 28th of September 1470 Waynflete welcomed him on his release from the Tower, which necessitated a new pardon, granted a month after Edward’s reinstatement on the 30th of May 1471 (Pat. xi. Ed. IV. pat. i. m. 24), and a loan to the king of 2000 marks (£1333, 6s. 8d.), or some £40,000 of our money. In the years 1471–1472 to 1474 Waynflete was largely engaged in completing the church, now called chapel, at Eton, his glazier supplying the windows, and he contracted on the 15th of August 1475 for the rood-loft to be made on one side “like to the rode lofte in Bishop Wykcham’s college at Winchester,” and on the other like that “of the college of St Thomas of Acres in London.” In 1479 he built the ante-chapel at the west-end, as it now stands, of stone from Headington, Oxford.
In 1474 Waynflete, being the principal executor of Sir John Fastolf, who died in 1459, leaving a much-contested will, procured the conversion of his bequest for a collegiate church of
