William of Wykeham, Bishop of

Winchester.

HE name of William of Wykeham sounds as a spell to the ear of all who love knowledge, conjuring up a thousand bright recollections associated with the time when Learning triumphed o'er barbarous foes;" or, we should rather say, when she was beginning to triumph. The strife between light and darkness had then little more than commenced; such learning as there was extended the views of men to no useful or practicable object; its only aim was to preserve the knowledge, and with it the errors of earlier times; and even this scanty supply of what may be termed the food of civilization, without which it cannot exist, much less progress, was confined only to a few fortunate individuals. Nor in our own day is the strife brought to a conclusion. The mass of education and intelligence scattered throughout the community, is not a little limited, bearing about the same proportion to the general ignorance that the few grains of gold, thrown down by the torrent into the river's bed, are ever found to bear to the sand and gravel in which they are deposited.

William, the son of John and Alice Longe, first saw the light

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of day in 1324, in the eighteenth year of King Edward the Second, between the close of the summer and the setting in of autumn. He was born probably in the same house that his forefathers had been born in through many ages, and certainly in the same village of Wykeham, Hants, from which, as being his birth-place, some have thought he afterwards took the name of Wykeham, in conformity with a custom then very common among ecclesiastics. This, however, has been disputed by some writers, and Bishop Lowth, in investigating the subject, sets out by saying, "that several of his kindred, living at the same time with him, bore the same name.' Of these he mentions no less than six, and even produces an old document in support of this opinion; but having thus elaborately raised his edifice of doubt, he demolishes the whole fabric at a blow by observing, that "if we consider the uncertain state of family names at the time of the birth of Wykeham, we shall not think it strange that there should be such doubt with regard to the surname of his family; or even if it should appear that he had properly no familyname at all. Surnames were introduced into England by the Normans at the Conquest." "But certain it is,' says Camden, 'that as the better sort, even from the Conquest, by little and little took surnames, so they were not settled among the common people fully until about the time of Edward the Second.' As we must allow Wykeham to have been what the Romans called novus homo, so with regard to his surname, he might perhaps be strictly and literally the first of his family. Upon the whole, therefore, I cannot help giving credit to the testimony of a pedigree of Wykeham's family, preserved in an ancient register of Winchester College, which mentions his father by the name of John Longe; which, whether it was the proper surname of the family, or a personal bye-name given him on account of his stature (in which case his true surname might be Aas, the same that was borne by his brother Henry), it is neither material nor possible to determine. This pedigree

must be allowed to be of good authority, as it was drawn up in the next age to that of Wykeham himself, as it is in many particulars confirmed by collateral evidence, and as there does not appear any reason to question the truth and exactness of any part of it."

This conclusion of the learned bishop's bears no slight resemblance to a judicial summing-up, wherein we may be pretty well sure beforehand, that whichever side of the argument the judge begins by advocating, he will end by overthrowing.

The mother of Wykeham, from whatever source he derived his name, was of gentle blood, she being the daughter of William and Alice Bowade, who claimed kinship with the Lord of Stratton, near Selborne. His father, though less highly connected, would appear to have been a substantial yeoman, who ploughed the same land that had been cultivated by his ancestors for many previous generations, each succeeding the other upon the same spot, like the leaves that in the change of seasons spring and die upon the same tree.

That his family belonged to the middle station of life has by some been inferred from the motto which the bishop added to his arms when he began to rise in the world: "MANNERS MAKYTH MAN;" and by which, according to Lowth, he intended to signify, "that a man's real worth is to be estimated, not from the outward and accidental advantages of birth, rank, and fortune, but from the endowments of his mind and his moral qualifications."

Whether the motto did, indeed, signify all this, like the comprehensive shake of the head by Lord Burleigh in the "Critic," may admit of question; but the arms themselves have supplied matter for some curious inquiry, growing out of a dispute between Sir Richard Fiennes and a descendant of the bishop. The subject is thus mooted in a letter from the Somerset Herald to Lord Treasurer Burleigh: "The said bishoppe (William of Wykeham) bore his arms diversely at two sondry tymes,

as the seals thereof, shewed by Sir Richard Fynes, testify. Before he was bishoppe, when as yet he was but Archdeacon of Lincolne, he sealed but with one cheveron in his armes between three roses; but after, when he was advanced to the bishopricke, he sealed with two cheverons between three roses; and so are generally known to this day to be his without contradiction. It hath been demaunded of me by the sayd learned men, whether the armes which the said bishoppe used were given unto him in respect of his dignity episcopall, or were boren by him before, as receyved from his auncestry and race. Whereunto I coulde not answer affirmatyvely, because I had never seen matter of the first allowance of them. But havynge read certyne learned wryters' opinions of the said byshoppe, which do agree in this, that he was humilis conditionis, and that he was called Wykeham, a loco unde natus est et non a parentibus; as it is also affirmed in the chapter of his Lyf before alleadged, wherein also his father, called John, is said to be progenitorum libertate dotatus; and he himself, by Ranulph, Monke of Chestre, being noted to be libertinus, vel a patre libertino natus; I was moved to thinke, as I told them, that these armes came not to him by descent. And agayne, behoulding the armes sometyme with one, and then after with two cheverons, quæ quidem signa per Carpentarios et domorum factores olim portabantur, as Nicholas Upton wryteth, and comparing them to the quality of the berar who is sayd to have had his chiefe preferment for his skill in architecture, erat enim regi Edwardo iij in principio a fabricis (sic apud Lowth, p. 11, Note) ingeniosus et architectura delectatus, as Dr. Caius maketh mention in his bookes De Antiquitate Cantabrigiensis Academiæ. I was also induced, per conjecturam Heraldicam, to thinke that the bishop was himself the first berar of them." *

Report of Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, to Lord Treasurer Burghley, concerning the dispute between Sir Richard Fiennes and Humphrey Wickham, Esq., dated March, 1572, MS. Ant. Wood, No. xxviii. in Museo Ashmoleano. Oxon.