of October the site was conveyed, and on the 20th of October 1382 “Sancte Marie collegium” or in vulgar tongue “Seinte Marie College of Wynchestre by Wynchestre” was founded for a warden and “70 pore and needy scholars studying and becoming proficient in grammatical or the art and science of grammar.” The first stone of the buildings was laid on the 26th of March 1388, and they were entered on by the scholars on the 28th of March 1394, not, as supposed at the quincentenary celebration in 1893, in 1393. While the new buildings were being erected, the college remained in the parish of “St John the Baptist on the Hill” of St Giles, supplying scholars to New College then as since. A reference to this in a letter of Wykeham’s of the 8th of April 1388 has given rise to the creation of an imaginary college of St John the Baptist at Winchester by the Rev. W. Hunt (Dic. Nat. Biog. sub. “Chicheley”). The foundation was on the model of Merton and Queen’s colleges at Oxford, to which grammar schools were attached by their founders, while fellows of Merton were the first wardens of both of Wykeham’s colleges. Both were double the size of Merton, and the same size as the Navarre college of the queen of France and Navarre, founded at Paris in 1304, which also contained a school. But each of Wykeham’s colleges contained as many members as the French queen’s. The severance of the school which was to feed the college exclusively, placing it not at Oxford, but at Winchester, and constituting it a separate college, was a new departure of great importance in the history of education. Ten fellows and 16 choristers were added in 1394 to the 70 scholars, the choristers attending the school like the scholars, and being generally, during the first three centuries of the foundation, promoted to be scholars. The original statutes have not come down to us. Those which governed the colleges until 1857 were made in 1400. They state that the colleges were provided to repair the ravages caused by the Black Deaths in the ranks of the clergy, and for the benefit of those whose parents could not without help maintain them at the universities, and the names of the boys appointed by Wykeham and in his time show that “poor and indigent” meant the younger sons of the gentry, and the sons of yeomen, citizens of Winchester or London, and the middle classes generally, who needed the help of exhibitions.
The time which elapsed between the foundation and completion of the colleges may be attributed to Wykeham’s preoccupation with politics in the disturbed state of affairs, due to the papal schism begun in 1379, in which England adhered to Urban VI. and France to Clement VII., to the rising of the Commons in 1381, and the wars with France, Scotland and Spain during John of Gaunt’s ascendancy. Then followed the constitutional revolution of the lords appellant in 1388. When Richard II. took power on himself, on the 3rd of May 1389, he at once made Wykeham chancellor, with Brantingham of Exeter again as treasurer. Wykeham’s business capacity is shown perhaps by the first record of the minutes of the privy council being kept during his term of office, and his promulgation in 1390 of general orders as to its business. At least one occasion is recorded in the minutes on which Wykeham, on behalf of the council, took a firm stand against Richard II. and that in spite of the king’s leaving the council in a rage. Peace was made with France in August. On the meeting of parliament in January 1390 Wykeham resigned the great seal; and asked for an inquiry into the conduct of the privy council, and on being assured that all was well resumed it. He now showed that he had not by his charities wronged his relations by settling on his great nephew and heir Thomas Wykeham, whom he had educated at Winchester and New College, Broughton Castle and estates, still held by his descendants in the female line, the family of Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes (peerage of Saye and Sele). In July 1391 he obtained a papal bull enabling him to appoint at pleasure coadjutors to do his episcopal business.
On the 27th of September 1391, Wykeham finally resigned the chancellorship. For three years after there are no minutes of the Council. On the 24th of November 1394 Wykeham lent the king the sum of £1000 (some £30,000 of our money), which same sum or another £1000 he promised on the 21st of February 1395 to repay by midsummer, and did so (Pat. 18, Rich. II. pt. ii. m. 23, 41). The murder of the duke of Gloucester, Richard’s uncle, in 1397, was followed next year by the assumption of absolute power by Richard. Wykeham was clearly against these proceedings. He excused himself from convocation in 1397, and from the subservient parliament at Shrewsbury in 1398. The extraordinary comings and goings of strangers to Winchester College, just opposite the gates of the bishop’s palace at Wolvesey in 1399, suggest that he took part in the revolution of Henry IV. He appeared in the privy council four times at the beginning of Henry’s reign (Proc. P.C. i. 100). On the 23rd of July 1400 he lent Henry IV. £500 for his journey towards Scotland, and in 1402 another £500, while a general loan for the war with France and Scotland on the 1st of April 1403 was headed by Wykeham with £1000, the bishop of Durham lending 1000 marks (£666, 13s. 4d.), and no one else more than £500. Meanwhile on the 29th of September 1394 he had begun the recasting of the nave of the cathedral with William Wynford, the architect of the college, as chief mason, and Simon Membury, an old Wykehamist, as clerk of the works. On the 24th of July 1403, he made his will, giving large bequests amounting to some £10,000 (£300,000 of our money), to friends and relations and every kind of religious house. On the 16th of August 1404, he signed an agreement with the prior and convent for three monks to sing daily three masses in his beautiful chantry chapel in the nave of the cathedral, while the boys of the almonry, the cathedral choir-boys, were to say their evening prayers there for his soul. He died on the 27th of September 1404, aged eighty.
His effigy in the cathedral chantry and a bust on the groining of the muniment tower at Winchester college are no doubt authentic portraits. The pictures at Winchester and New College are late 16th-century productions. Three autograph letters of his, all in French, and of the years 1364–1366, are preserved, one at the British Museum, one at the Record Office, a third at New College, Oxford. A fourth letter imputed to Wykeham at the British Museum is shown alike by its contents and its handwriting not to be his.
See Thomas Martin, Wilhelmi Wicami (1597); R. Lowth, Life of Wykeham (1736); Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, William of Wykeham and his Colleges (1852); T. F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester College (1892); G. H. Moberly, Life of Wykeham (1887); A. F. Leach, History of Winchester College (1899); and the Calendars of Patent and Close Rolls. Edward III. and Richard II. (A. F. L.)
WILLIAMS, JOHN (1582–1650), English archbishop and lord keeper, son of Edmund Williams of Conway, a Welsh gentleman of property, was born in March 1582 and educated at St John’s College, Cambridge. He was ordained about 1605, and in 1610 he preached before King James I., whose favour he quickly gained by his love of compromise. The result was the rapid promotion of Williams in the church; he obtained several livings besides prebends at Hereford, Lincoln and Peterborough. In 1617 he became chaplain to the king, in 1619 dean of Salisbury, and in the following year dean of Westminster. On the fall of Bacon in 1621 Williams, who had meantime ingratiated himself with the duke of Buckingham, was appointed lord keeper, and was at the same time made bishop of Lincoln, retaining also the deanery of Westminster. As a political adviser of the king
