author of a Life of Wykeham, published in 1597, taught classics, French and geometry by a learned Frenchman on the site of Winchester College, is a guess due to Wykeham’s extant letters being in French and to the assumption that he was an architect. After some unspecified secular employment, Wykeham became “under-notary (vice tabellio) to a certain squire, constable of Winchester Castle,” probably Robert of Popham, sheriff of Hampshire, appointed constable on the 25th of April 1340, not as commonly asserted Sir John Scures, the lord of Wykeham, who was not a squire but a knight, and had held the office from 1321, though, from Scures being named as second of his benefactors, Wykeham perhaps owed this appointment to his influence. “Two or three years afterwards, namely after he was twenty,” Wykeham “was transferred to the king’s court,” i.e. c. 1343. Wykeham has been credited (Gent. Mag. lxxxv. 189) with the living of Irstead, Norfolk, of the king’s gift on the 12th of July 1349. But apart from the fact that this Wykeham is described in the grant as “chaplain,” the probate of his will on the 8th of March 1376–1377 (Norwich Reg. Heydon, f. 139) shows that he was a different person (H. Chitty in Notes and Queries, 10th ser. iv. 130). Our Wykeham first appears in the public records in 1350 as keeper of the manor of Rochford, Hants, during the minority of the heir, William Botreaux.
On the 12th of October 1352 Henry Sturmy of Elvetham, sheriff and escheator of Hants, and frequently a justice in eyre for the forests of Hants and Wilts, at Winchester, describes William of Wykeham as “my clerk” in a power of attorney dated at Winchester, to deliver seisin of lands in Meonstoke Ferrand, Hants, which he had sold to William of Edyndon, bishop of Winchester (Win. Coll. Lib. H. 249). On the 10th of November (not December as Lowth, Life of Wykeham, 14) Edyndon, by a letter dated at London, appointed William of Wykeham, clerk (not “my clerk” as Kirby, Archaeol. 57, ii. 292, where the deed is also misdated 1353), his attorney to take seisin of lands in Meonstoke Tour, Hants, which he had bought from Alice de Roche, daughter of William of Tour (ibid. f. 250). These lands were afterwards bought by Wykeham and given to Winchester College. On the 14th of April 1353 (Claus. 29 E. III. m. 29 d) Wykeham served as attorney of John of Foxle, of Bramshill, Hants, son of Thomas of Foxle, constable of Windsor Castle, in acknowledging payment of a debt due from John of Palton, sheriff of Somerset and of Hants. On the 15th of April 1356 schedules touching the New Forest and other forests in Hants and Wilts were delivered out of the Tower of London to William of Wykeham to take to the justices in eyre (Claus. 30 E. III. m. 19 d). In the same year on the 24th of August Peteratte-Wode and William of Wykeham, clerk, were appointed keepers of the rolls and writs in the eyre for the forests of Hants and Wilts, of which Henry Sturmy was one of the justices. On the 10th of May 1356 Wykeham first appears in the direct employment of the king, being appointed clerk of the king’s works in the manors of Henley and Yeshampsted (Easthampstead) to pay all outgoings and expenses, including wages of masons and carpenters and other workmen, the purchase of stone, timber and other materials, and their carriage, under the view of one controller in Henley and two in Easthampstead. On the 8th of June Walter Nuthirst and Wykeham were made commissioners to keep the statute of labourers and servants in the liberty of the Free Chapel (St George’s), Windsor. On the 30th of October 1356 Wykeham was appointed during pleasure surveyor (supervisor) of the king’s works in the castle of Windsor, for the same purposes as at Henley, with power to take workmen everywhere, except in the fee of the church or those employed in the king’s works at Westminster, the Tower of Dartford, at the same wages as Robert of Bernham, probably Burnham, Bucks, who had been appointed in 1353, used to have, viz. 1s. a day and 3s. a week for his clerk. He was to do this under supervision of Richard of Teynton, John le Peyntour (the painter) and another. From this appointment it has been inferred that Wykeham was the architect of the “Round Table” at Windsor, which has been confused with the Round Tower, and a story which is first told by Archbishop Parker, writing thirty years afterwards (Antiq. Brit. Eccles. ed. 1729, p. 385), relates that Wykeham nearly got into trouble for inscribing on it, “This made Wickam,” which he only escaped by explaining that it did not mean that Wykeham made the tower, but that the tower was the making of Wykeham. But Wykeham had nothing to do with building either the Round Tower or the Round Table. The Round Tower, called the High Tower in Wykeham’s day, is the Norman Keep. It was being refitted for apartments for the king and queen a little before Wykeham’s time, and his first accounts include the last items for its internal decoration, including 2S stained glass windows. The Round Table, a building 200 ft. in diameter for the knights of the Round Table, who preceded the knights of the Garter, had been built in 1344 (Chron. Angl. “Rolls” ser. No. 61, p. 17) when Wykeham had nothing to do with Windsor. The inscription, “This made Wykeham,” did exist on a small square tower in the Middle Bailey formerly known as Wykeham Tower, now entirely rebuilt with the inscription recopied and known as Winchester Tower. But it could hardly be of sufficient importance to cause Wykeham to play the sphinx, and the story is apparently due to the Elizabethan love of quips. All that was built during the five years, 1356 to 1361, when Wykeham was clerk of the works, were the new royal apartments, two long halls and some chambers in the upper ward, quite unconnected with and east of the Round Tower, and a gateway or two leading to them, the order for building which was given on the 1st of August 1351 (Pipe Roll 30 Ed. III.). The accounts of Robert of Bernham, Wykeham’s predecessor, who was a canon of St George’s Chapel (Le Neve’s Fasti, iii. 378), are extant, and from the payments of 1s. a day to Mr John Sponle, mason and orderer or setter-out (ordinator) of the king’s works, and Geoffrey of Carlton “appareller” of the carpentry work, it is clear that they, and not Bernham, were the architects and builders. Canon Bernham was only the paymaster and overlooker to see that men and materials were provided and to pay for them. While in 1353–1354 £1440 and in 1355–1356 £747 was expended under the supervision of Robert of Bernham, in 1357–1358 £867 was spent by Wykeham, including Winchester Tower. In 1358–1359 the expenditure rose to £1254, while between the 6th of June 1360 and the 12th of April 1361 it amounted to £2817. The chief items were a new Great Gate with two flanking towers, a belfry for St George’s Chapel and houses in the Lower Bailey, probably for the canons, and in the Upper Bailey, probably for the royal household. On the 1st of November 1361 Wykeham was succeeded as clerk of the works by William of Mulsho, another canon of Windsor, who afterwards succeeded him also as dean of St Martin-le-Grand. Under Wykeham, William of Wynford, who appears in 1360 as “appareller” under Sponle, in 1361 became chief mason and ordinator, and he was probably what we should call the architect of the Great Gate, the rest of which was built under Wykeham’s supervision. For wherever we find Wykeham building afterwards, we find Wynford as chief mason. When Wykeham was provost of Wells, Wynford was retained as architect on the 1st of February 1364–1365 at a fee of 40s. a year and 6d. a day when in Wells (Wells, Lib. Abb. f. 253). He was architect to Abingdon Abbey (at a fee of £3, 6s. 8d. and a furred robe) in 1375–1376 when the existing Outer Gate of the abbey was built (Abingdon Obed. Acc. Camd. Soc, 1892). He was chief mason for Wykeham’s works at Winchester Cathedral and for Winchester College, where his portrait may be seen in the east window of the chapel, and where his contract with the clerk of the works, an ex-scholar of the college, for the building of the outer gate, is still preserved.
The ascription to Wykeham of the invention of the Perpendicular style of medieval architecture is now an abandoned theory. In so far as he gave vogue to that style the credit must be given to William of Wynford, not to William of Wykeham. At all events he had very little to do with building Windsor Castle. How far he really was responsible for the other great castle attributed to him, that of Queenborough Castle in the Isle of Sheppey, cannot be tested, as the building accounts for it are only partially extant. The account from the 1st of
