CONTENTS. Birth of Wykeham. His early education. His devotion to our Lady. Old Winchester Cathedral. The Pekis-mass. Wyke- ham is introduced to the King. He is appointed clerk to the royal works. His skill as an architect. Rebuilding of Windsor Castle. Wykeham is ordained priest. The treaty of Bretigni. Wykeham becomes a Minister of State. He The war in Castile. Fresh hostilities with France. Wyke- ham's first speech in Parliament. Bad success of the Eng- lish arms. The ministers are forced to resign. Wykeham in his diocese. He rebuilds his palaces. His devotion to the dead. His character as Bishop. His first visitations. Religious foundation of Winchester. The priory of Sel- borne. The hospital of St. Cross. Wykeham resolves to found a college. Philippa and the Black Prince. Intrigue of Lancaster. restored to favour. Death of Edward III. Coronation of Richard II. Insurrection of the Commons. Trial of Wick- THE LIFE OF WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM. CHAPTER I. THE SCHOOLBOY AND ARCHITECT. THERE are probably few localities in England round which still fingers so much of Catholic association, or which-externally at least-preserve so many memorials of the ages of faith, as the city of Winchester. Of all our cathedral towns it may indeed be said, that they stand like so many monuments, continually suggestive of the power and spirit of our old religion; but of none is this more true than of Winchester, which still retains the wrecks of so many ancient institutions of piety, and where neither the decay of faith nor the lapse of time has been able entirely to efface the memory of their founders. The history of the city, moreover, is closely connected with that of the kingdom; we might even say that it was there that our national existence began, in that great assembly of nobles and clergy summoned by Egbert after the submission of the other states of the Heptarchy, which, as some writers tell us, decreed that the whole island should be called England, and that thenceforth all its inhabitants should be known as Englishmen. There, in the old monastery of Winchester, was nursed the great St. Swithin, in his own time the barrier of England against the Danes; there, too, the royal Confessor held his court; and from the days of Egbert to those of Richard Coeur de Lion, Winchester, rather than London, may be said to have been B the capital of the kingdom. Yet it is remarkable, that among all the great names associated with the city of Winchester, the special and peculiar interest attaches to one which is neither of royal nor of noble lineage; it is that of a man of obscure and humble parentage, not even a scholar, but one who owes his celebrity entirely to his moral worth and to his large-hearted benevolence. There must surely have been something very uncommon in the character of William of Wykeham, the subject of our present sketch, for his memory to have been preserved with veneration even to our own times, and among those most opposed to the faith which he professed; for he is one of the very few great Catholic prelates of England whose name has for the most part escaped the calumnies of posterity, and is honoured alike by Catholics and Protestants as among the best and worthiest that appear on the pages of our history. He was born in the year 1324, towards the close of the reign of Edward II. His ancestors were of the old stock of English yeomen, a class just removed above that of mere peasants; and his parents were, as it would seem, too lowly to claim the privilege of a settled hereditary surname. This appears for many generations to have remained a distinction peculiar to the nobler born; and we therefore find the family of the future Chancellor of England called indifferently, sometimes by the name of Long, and sometimes by that of Perot, while he himself adopted that of the place of his birth, namely, the little village of Wykeham, which stands on the borders of Waltham Chase, about half way between Winchester and the sea. Little as is known of the parents of Wykeham, it is certain that they were too poor to provide him with the means of a liberal education; nor would they probably have aspired to any higher lot for their son than to till the lands of the Lords of Wykeham, as they had done before him, and to grow skilful in the science of woodcraft and the use of the English longbow This was the almost invariable practice of ecclesiastics, who appear seldom to have retained their family name, but to have adopted that of their birthplace. Thus we have William of Waynflete, Simon of Sudbury, and many others. |