PART II. that of Navarre. It was intended to promote all the recognised CHAP. III. branches of learning. The society was to consist of a warden and seventy fellows, of whom fifty were to be students in arts or divinity, two being permitted to study medicine and two astronomy. The remaining twenty were to be trained for the law,―ten as civilians, ten as canonists. All were to be in priest's orders within a fixed period, except where reasonable impediment could be shewn to exist. There were moreover to be ten conduct chaplains, three clerks of the chapel, and sixteen choristers. By rubric 58, one of the chaplains was required to learn grammar and to be able to write, in order to assist the treasurer in transcribing Latin evidence. New College the model for foundations. 'From this princely and accomplished man,' says his of latest biographer, 'not only Henry VI at Eton and King's, subsequent but subsequent founders derived the form of their institution. The annexation of a college in the university to a dependent school, was followed by Wolsey in his foundation of Cardinal College and Ipswich School; by Sir Thomas White at St. John's College and Merchant Taylors' School; and by Queen Elizabeth at Westminster and Christ Church'. Chicheley and Waynflete almost literally copied his statutes. The institution of college disputations, external to the public exercises of the university, in the presence of deans and moderators; the cotemporaneous erection of a private chapel; the appropriation of fellowships for the encouragement of students in neglected branches of learning, were among the more prominent signs of that which must be viewed more as a creation of a new system, than as the revival of literature in its decline"." a Second stage in collegiate appropriation of the alien pri The next foundation that claims our attention discloses further advance in the direction marked out by William of movements: Wykeham; from the simple conversion, by purchase, of revenues of monastic property into college property, we arrive at the ories. stage of direct and forcible appropriation. The alien priories were the first to suffer, the wars with France affording a plausible pretext for the seizure of wealth which went mainly 1 And, it may be added, at Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 Walcott, William of Wykeham and his Colleges, pp. 276, 277. CHAP. III. to enrich the foreigner. 'These priories,' says Gough, 'were PART IL cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to count of the foreign monasteries: for when manors or tithes were given to Gough's ac Alien Pri ories. Sequestrations of their different monarchs. foreign convents, the monks, either to increase their own rule, or rather to have faithful stewards of their revenues, built a small convent here for the reception of such a number as they thought proper, and constituted priors over them. Within these cells there was the same distinction as in those priories which were cells subordinate to some great abbey; some of these were conventual, and, having priors of their own choosing, thereby became entire societies within themselves, and received the revenues belonging to their several houses for their own use and benefit, paying only the ancient apport, acknowledgment, or obvention (at first the surplusage), to the foreign house; but others depended entirely on the foreign houses, who appointed and removed their priors at pleasure. These transmitted all their revenues to the foreign head houses; for which reason their estates were generally seized to carry on the wars between England and France, and restored to them again on return of peace. These alien priories were most of them founded by such as had foreign abbeys founded by themselves or by some of their family'.' The first seizure appears to have taken place in 1285, on estates under the outbreak of war between France and England; and in 1337 Edward III confiscated the estates of the alien priories, and let them out, with their tenements and even the priories themselves, for a term of 23 years; but on the establishment of peace they were restored to their original owners. Other sequestrations were made in the reign of Richard II, and under Henry IV, in the parliament of 1402, it was enacted that all alien priories should be suppressed'; the Privy Council indeed actually received evidence in his reign, concerning the different foundations, with the view of carrying the enactment into effect: but the final blow did not come 1 Some Account of the Alien Priories and of such Lands as they are known to have possessed in England and Wales. Lond. 1779. Pref. to Vol. I. This important fact is omitted by Gough in his brief sketch, where I PART II. until the war with France in the reign of Henry V; when in CHAP. III. the year 1414, in prospect of that great struggle, no less than 122 priories were confiscated under the direction of archbishop Chicheley, and their revenues, for the time, absorbed in the royal exchequer. From this extensive confiscation were derived the revenues of that princely foundation, which, thirty years later, rose under the auspices of Henry VI at Cambridge. of ETON and KING'S Cambridge, It is asserted that it had been the original intention of Foundations Henry v to appropriate the whole of the revenues to the COLLEGE endowment of one great college at Oxford; his son however COLLEGE, determined that there should be two colleges, and that of these one should be at Eton and the other at Cambridge'. In turning to trace the origin of one of our greatest colleges and of our greatest public school, we are accordingly confronted by the names of those yet more ancient institutions, which superstition or philanthropy had reared on the plains of Normandy when the universities themselves had no existence. From the venerable abbey of Bec was wrested whence the priory of Okeburne, the wealthiest cell in England'; a manor at Tyldeshyde in Cornwall and another at Felsted in Essex, represented the alienated wealth of the abbey at Caen; the monastery of St. Peter de Conches forfeited many a broad acre in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Norfolk; estates in Lincolnshire, once owned by the abbey of St. Nicholas in Angers, and others that had enriched the priory of Brysett in Suffolk,-a cell to the priory of Nobiliac near Limoges,-numerous reversions from estates of minor impor 1 Only those priories were spared which had already shaken off their dependence upon the continental houses and, by electing their own head, had become independent monasteries. 2 Henry's intent, says Wood, 'was to have built a college in the castle of Oxford wherein the seven sciences should have been taught, and thereunto to have annected all the alien priories in England, and withal to have reformed the statutes of the university; but being prevented by death, his son King Henry vi be- 3 Gough says, 'Some of the lands in endowed. CHAP. III. tance and various hostels in the town, completed the long PART II. roll of the revenues of 'The King's College of Our Lady and St. Nicholas" at Cambridge. Statutes of King's College. The first sioners. nation. The history of the new foundation affords another illustration of the way in which Ultramontanist theories were at this time successfully contending for the predominance in our universities, and the principle asserted in the Barnwell Process receiving further extension. The commissioners originally appointed to prepare the statutes were William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln, William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury, William Lyndewode, keeper of the privy seal, John Somerseth, chancellor of the exchequer, and John Langton, chancellor of the university; but in the year 1443 Their resig- this commission was superseded, the king himself undertaking to provide the rule of the foundation. There seems to be good reason for supposing that, in some way or other, the proposed scheme had failed to command the commissioners' approval, for it was at their own request that the work was confided to other hands; they themselves being, as they pleaded, fully occupied with other business, negotiis et occupationibus impediti. But it is difficult to believe that the design of so important a foundation could have failed to be a matter of lively interest to the bishop of a neighbouring diocese and to a chancellor of the university; and indeed we know that Langton had been the first to suggest the creation of the new college to the royal mind. At the same time that the king undertook to provide for the preparation of the new statutes, William Millington, the rector of the original foundation, had been retained in his post under the name of provost; but when the new statutes had received the royal sanction, he found himself unable to give a conscientious assent to their provisions and was accordingly It will be desirable to point William Refuses his new statutes. 1 The birthday of king Henry being on the feast of St. Nicholas. 2 Cole says, 'the true reason of his removal seems to proceed from himself and a point of conscience, he having taken the oaths to the chancellor of the university before he was made provost, and which the new drawn statutes exempted him from; besides he was not thoroughly satisfied that the scholars should all come from Eton School.' Mr Williams, who has carefully investigated the whole evidence concerning the first out the character of those innovations with respect to which CHAP. III. his difficulties arose. PART II. borrowed of New The elaborate nature of the code now given to the foundation corresponds to the grandeur of its endowments, and presents a striking contrast to the statutes of the colleges founded at Cambridge in the preceding century. It is however entirely devoid of originality, being little more than a transcript of the statutes which William of Wykeham, after no less than four revisions, left to be the rule of New The statutes College'; but the minuteness of detail, the small discre- from those tionary power vested in the governing body, the anxiety College. shewn to guard against all possible innovations, must be regarded as constituting a distinct era in the history of the theory of our own collegiate discipline. The Latinity, it is worthy of remark, is more correct, and copious to a fault; and there is also to be noted an increased power of expression which makes it difficult not to infer that a greater advance must have been going on in classical studies during the preceding years, than writers on the period have been inclined to suppose. provost of his college, endorses this account, and observes, that the founder had nothing to do with his ejection, and was extremely sorry for it, is confirmed by a fact which Mr Searle has brought to my notice, viz. that in 1448, only two years after his removal, he was appointed, in conjunction with others, to draw up statutes for Queens' College; and that this appointment was twice renewed.' See Notices of William Millington, First Provost of King's College, by George Williams, B.D., Fellow of King's College, Communications of Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1 287. Cf. Documents, III 4. 1 Messrs Heywood and Wright attribute them to Chedworth (see Pref. to King's College Statutes, p. vii). Mr Williams, who is followed by Cooper (Memorials, 1 182), says My own belief is that the provost of Eton (Wainfleet) was the framer of the existing code, or, I should rather say, that he it was who adapted the statutes of the two foundations of William of Wykeham to the two kin- |