erk able of God's
word and holy ensample, but a kitchen clerk, or a penny clerk, or one
wise in building castles and other worldly doings." But despite this
objection, the whole of Wykeham's biographers, contemporary or
posthumous, agree in praising him as highly as Fuller, who says that his
"benefaction to learning is not to be paralleled by any English subject
in all particulars," and his great innovation, whereby elementary
education was taken from the hands of the monks and, as in his own
college, established upon an entirely different plan, would alone stamp
him as one whose foresight was far beyond his own times. He influenced
the nation in a way not easy to over-estimate, inasmuch as he
originated, or at least carried into execution, the idea of the great
public school, as Englishmen understand it, and, by the building of
Winchester College, founded the institution he had long meditated in a
way worthy of his design. Previously to the actual construction of the
college, he had maintained in temporary shelters numbers of poor
students. On the death of the Black Prince, whose fortunes he had
vigorously espoused, and the assumption of power by John of Gaunt,
Wykeham was impeached on the charge of embezzling the royal revenues,
accepting bribes, and the like; and the king laid hands on the
temporalities of his see. But almost the last act of Edward III. was to
restore what he had seized to the bishop, under certain conditions which
show the great wealth of the latter. Milman, in his "Latin
Christianity," does full justice to the "splendid, munificent prelate,
blameless in character," who devoted his vast riches to the promotion of
learning, and says that, though his endeavour to maintain the
hierarchical power over humanity was bitterly opposed by Wiclif, "the
religious of England may well be proud of both." Wykeham was eighty
years of age when he died, and his body lies in the chantry erected by
his orders on the south side of the nave.

#Henry of Beaufort# (1405-1447), who followed Wykeham in the bishopric,
was the second son of John of Gaunt, by Catharine Swynford, and uncle of
Henry V. In 1398, at the early age of twenty-one, he was made bishop of
Lincoln, and in 1404 was translated to Winchester. During the reign of
Henry V. he thrice filled the office of chancellor. In 1417, when
ostensibly on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he was present at the Council
of Constance which was then considering the affairs of the c