peached for treason the members of the old commission, or council, appointed during the government of the Duke of Gloucester; a most unworthy proceeding, considering that eight years had been suffered to pass over since the period of their holding office. Some of the lords of this commission were beheaded, and others banished; but, in a speech from the throne, Richard declared the Bishop of Winchester, with some other prelates and nobles, excepted from these measures, as being "wholly innocent of the evil intentions of their colleagues."

Wykeham, whose personal loyalty to one whom he regarded as the son and grandson of his two greatest benefactors remained constant and unshaken, could not give his sanction to the violent and illegal acts with which the king now sought to secure his power. The servile parliament which met at Shrewsbury in 1398 was not ashamed to give the sanction of law to all his proceedings. It was chiefly composed of men whose devotion to the royal cause had been gained by sharing among them the estates of the attainted nobles; but the Bishop of Winchester did not sit in that assembly, he sent his procurators to excuse his absence on account of his failing health and many infirmities. He appeared in his place, however, in the last parliament of Richard II. in 1399, and was present when that unhappy monarch solemnly resigned his crown; he likewise attended a few days later, when the lords were assembled in solemn council by command of the new king, Henry of Lancaster; but he would take no part in the vote of the 27th of October, by which the late sovereign was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. On this occasion he even refused to be present; nor did he from that time forth appear in person in any of the parliaments summoned by authority of Henry IV. The only occasion of his joining in any act of the state during that king's reign, was when the sudden apprehension of a Scottish invasion obliged Henry to summon an extraordinary council to furnish him with supplies without application to parliament. The prelates and clergy came forward with noble generosity; and the Bishop of Winchester, who refused his support to the unconstitutional act of his legitimate sovereign, and had absented

himself from every other council and assembly called by the authority of the usurper, gave his hearty and loyal assistance to the government at this crisis, when the safety and honour of his country demanded a sacrifice of all private or party feeling.

From these notices of Wykeham's career as a public minister, we cannot fail to conclude that it must have been marked by an extraordinary consistency and moderation. To be of all parties, and yet of no party; to be associated in almost every public act of one of the most distracted reigns of English history, and yet to thread his way amid all the mazes of state intrigue, following only what he deemed the cause of justice, and the maintenance of peace; to hold himself separated from the rancour and bitterness of the strife around him, and to be honoured and trusted by each successive government,-this surely is the picture of no common statesman. It argues the single eye and stedfast truthfulness of heart which looks to God only in every act of life, and bespeaks that grand and heroic integrity which was the special grace of William of Wykeham. Statesman as he was, the evasions of state policy were unknown to him. His words have been preserved in answer to one who reproached him for not assisting one of his friends in a cause he deemed unjust: "If I pleased men, I should not be the servant of God." Nor, with all his love of peace, would he even withhold a rebuke where it was deserved. When one of the fellows of his own college had preached a sermon glossing over the sins of the times, and, it may be, seeking popularity by something of a sacrifice of truth, he called him into his presence, and sternly reproached him with his human respect: "Mind you not," he said, "that in God's eyes it is assuredly a dreadful sin to praise the wicked, and to speak good of the covetous whom God abhorreth ?"

Lowth remarks the fact, so seldom to be recorded of a minister of state, that at the same time that he advanced in royal favour, he grew in the esteem of the people. Indeed, close as was his personal friendship with his royal master, he was preeminently a popular minister; "he was ever favourable to, and beloved by, the people of the realm,

and constantly preserved them from subsidies, exactions, and other oppressions." This popularity was augmented by the charm of that singular openness and simplicity of manner which had distinguished him from a child. "His words were never evasive," says the same writer; "he was easy of access, cheerful and open in conversation, and ready in his answers to all;" "moreover," he adds, "his actions ever kept pace with his professions."

We shall now be able to continue the far more interesting narrative of his episcopal career, and to trace the history of those great foundations of charity which have been the principal means of preserving his name for the veneration even of these latter days.

CHAPTER III.

OUR LADY'S COLLEGES.

WE have already seen that the first steps towards the foundation of his two colleges had been taken by Wykeham very shortly after his accession to his see. The purchases of ground for the building of the Oxford college were begun to be made so early as 1369; and about the same time that his preparatory grammar-school was opened at Winchester, under the mastership of Richard de Herton, a society was formed at Oxford, consisting of a warden and seventy fellows, who were called "The Poor Scholars of the Venerable Lord William, Bishop of Winchester," for whom he provided lodging and maintenance, giving them rules and directions for their behaviour and course of studies. These preparatory establishments were formed six or seven years before the actual opening of the colleges, whilst the buildings were in course of erection, and the statutes for their government were being leisurely and thoughtfully. brought to perfection; an admirable arrangement, by which, to use the words of Dr. Lowth, "the life and soul might be ready to inform and animate the body of his colleges, so soon as they could be finished, that so the whole system might be at once completed in every part." * Ms., Win. Coll.

In 1379, being now in possession of the ground for the site of his Oxford college, he obtained the royal license of foundation, and a Papal bull to the same effect. The charter of foundation was issued in the November of the same year; and in the following March the venerable founder laid the first stone of "St. Marie's College of Winchester, in Oxenford." It is a little curious that this designation has entirely given place to the name of New College, by which it was popularly called at the time; there is also something singular in the title itself. "St. Marie's of Winchester in Oxenford" has a kind of confusion of terms, which, however, points significantly to the devotion of the founder to a locality made sacred to his heart by a thousand early associations. The society was to consist of the warden and seventy fellows, of whom fifty were to study arts or philosophy and divinity, and twenty to be devoted to civil and canon law; besides which, there were to be ten chaplains, three inferior clerks, and sixteen choristers; making up in all a hundred members. But to form an idea of the spirit and design of the founder, we must listen to his own words, in the declaration which he prefixes to his statutes, and which he begins, "In the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the Most Glorious Virgin Mary, and of all the Saints of God." In it, after giving thanks to Him who of His goodness has granted to him the abundance of His gifts, he sets forth his purpose of founding these two colleges for poor indigent clerks and students, "to the praise, glory, and honour of His Name, and the exaltation of the Crucified, and for the defence of Mary, His most glorious Mother, for the exaltation of the Christian faith, and for the support of Holy Church, and the divine worship, and the advancement of all liberal arts and sciences."

He refers to the particular exigencies of the Church at that time, saying how sorrowfully he had beheld the decay of the clergy, now reduced to small numbers by pestilences, wars, and other miseries; and, though unable wholly to remedy the evil, had desired in part at least to alleviate it. Then, after providing for the cultivation of various

branches of learning, he ordains that the students in their different faculties shall, from time to time, hold conferences together, "that so the whole body, tending to one end, may be ever of one heart and one soul;" and that, full of divine love and fraternal charity, "they may so sweetly and fervently labour together, that, by the divine help, this our college may ever be provided with men renowned in all sciences, and may securely, firmly, and quietly remain and abide for ever in the beauty of peace." "The annexation of a college to a dependent school," says a recent writer, "the institution of college disputations external to the public exercises of the university, the contemporaneous erection of a private chapel, and the appropriation of fellowships for the encouragement of students in neglected branches of learning, are among the more prominent signs of that which must be regarded more as the creation of a new system than as the revival of a literature in its decline."

The first warden had been chosen out of Merton College; but he resigning before the completion of the college buildings, the Bishop appointed in his room his own kinsman, Nicholas Wykeham. The buildings were finished in six years; and on the 14th of April 1386, being the Saturday before Palm Sunday, the warden and fellows took possession of them, entering in solemn procession, with the cross borne before them, and singing the litanies. These buildings remain substantially entire to the present day; additions have been made, but no material part of Wykeham's work has been destroyed. It is needless to say he was his own architect; and probably the designing of his colleges and their chapels was a most welcome opportunity to him of indulging his favourite taste in the midst of more wearisome engagements. "The architecture of William of Wykeham," says Dr. Ingram, in his description of the college, "is peculiarly his own. characteristics are simplicity, elevation, grandeur, and stability. He built, as he always thought and acted, for posterity. His masonry is distinguished for the soundness of its materials, and the judgment displayed in their disposition." So true it is that a man's works will invariably

Its