decessor for glass windows, IS.; for learning to write, 14S. A total equivalent to probably £40 of modern

money.

Trelawny, one of the Jacobean seven bishops who had been thrown into the Tower, addressed in his capacity of visitor to the college, the following letter to the warden, which throws an interesting sidelight on the life of Winchester at the end of the seventeenth and opening of the eighteenth centuries:

"MR. WARDEN AND GENTLEMEN,-When I was last at Winchester I thought it would be much for the health and cleanliness of the children of the College that there should be bed-makers appointed by the Warden for them, and the children relieved from the servile and foul office of making their own beds and keeping their chambers clean. And also, that during the winter half-year, between Michaelmas and Lady-day, they should not be obliged to rise before six o'clock in the morning. You then so entirely agreed with me in this opinion, and so readily complied with this proposal, that I thought I might spare the formality of sending a solemn injunction to that purpose; but Michaelmas now drawing near, I only write this to signify to you that I expect from that time, what I formerly enjoined, and you agreed to, should be put in execution.

"I am, Your most affectionate servant and brother, JONATH. WINTON."

Sept. 16th, 1708."

At its foundation the original constitution of Winchester Free College was a warden, ten fellows, seventy scholars, a headmaster (informator), an undermaster, three chaplains, three clerks, and sixteen choristers. As regulated by an ordinance of the Oxford University Commission which took effect in 1857, the future constitution was to be a warden, six fellows, one hundred scholars, twenty exhibitions, a head and undermaster, three chaplains, three clerks, and sixteen choristers.

The endowments of the college consist, according to the Clarendon Report, of divers manors, farms, lands, houses, tithes, manorial rights, and funded stock producing, on an

average, a gross annual income of £15,494 17s. 6d. This, it must be remembered, was in the 'sixties, and there is the long growth of increment to take into account since that far-off period. The college holds, in addition, on special trust for exhibitioners and other purposes, the sum of £60,132, with land which produces a net income of £240 14s. 11d. In the gift of the college there are thirteen benefices, ranging in value from £100 and £200 to £500 and £600. There is no statute regulating the bestowal of the ecclesiastical benefices; they are usually awarded to the fellows or others connected with the foundation.

According to Dr. Kitchin, the Dean and Chapter of Winchester have no control over the college, for by the statutes the warden has the general government of the foundation, and, until about 1860, was prohibited from being absent more than two months in the year. He is now supposed to be resident in the college eight months out of the twelve, and his duties resemble those of a collegiate "head of a house." Holding pre-eminence over every member of the college whatsoever, the warden is to govern and direct them in conformity with the statutes in force for the time being. In addition to a suitable provision for his table, not specified in definite amount, his ancient statutory emoluments were a stipend of £20 yearly and 12 yards of cloth at Is. 8d. a yard. His income in 1870, including allowance for servants, was £1,700 a year.

Laud, who visited the college in 1636, severely rebuked the contemporary warden for misappropriating college funds; and in 1710 the sub-warden and bursar protested that it was notorious that the collegers, or foundation scholars, were so badly provided for as to be at the charges of their friends, and that the warden took from the college income for his own use a greater sum than the amount applied to the maintenance of all the seventy scholars put together! By the end of the eighteenth century "poor " scholars were paying at Winchester £60, at Eton £80, and

similar sums elsewhere. The sons of the wealthy secured these scholarships; were passed on to the university after a farcical examination; and got a family job with a fellowship and a life's income. For, this was the "birthright of the patrician brigands, and a terrible uproar was caused by the sacrilegious Goldwin Smith and others who, many years later, would persist in poking their meddlesome noses into such very right, nice, and proper affairs!

CHAPTER II

WINCHESTER (continued)

ROGUES FALL OUT-BROTH, BEEF, and Beer Galore, and IllegITIMATE FEES AND TIPS-"A GRAVE SCANDAL "-FLESHED WITH THE REVENUES-ANOTHER RECOMMENDATION "-HIDEOUS EXPIATIONPRIVATE PATRONAGE IN 1852-PICTURESQUE LEGENDS AND THE SCEPTICS-DULCE DOMUM-MediævAL COLLEGIATE BUILDINGS-THE BOY TUTOR-FAMOUS WINTON SCHOLARS-OFFICIALS' ANCIENT AND MODERN EMOLUMENTS CONTRASTED ENDOWMENTS-DISREGARDED POVERTY ORDINANCES.

ABOUT 1712 the fellows of Winchester College fell out with the warden over the question of an election to a vacant fellowship, and as the usual sequel to what is proverbially said to happen in the case of rogues' quarrels it followed that the "victims " or, rather, the comparatively victimised were, if not in the way of getting their own, at any rate to be made aware in some degree as to how and to what extent they had been fleeced. In support of their (the fellows' case) the fellows compiled a curious table which shows clearly how the interests of the scholars -the main object of the foundation—had been sacrificed to the cupidity and lust for loot of the warden and fellows. Manifestly by Wykeham's ordinances this governing body, mere appendages and after-thoughts, had for centuries shared among themselves the plunder derived from the unearned increment of the college and its revenues.

By this table it would seem that the scholars, the nominally "poor and indigent" had only one meal, and that at mid-day, from Thursday to Saturday night, the Friday interval vernacularly known in the school as Bloody Friday," being reserved for floggings, of super"Orbelian" severity, accumulated during the week. Their menu shows a plethoric and unending monotony of

"

beef and broth, boiled beef and mutton. En revanche the Wintonian butts and barrels ran oceans of beer for the scholars.

One Warden Nicholas (1709) shows that the fees and gratuities extorted from Wykeham's poor and indigent scholars, as well as from the patrician sons of noble commoners, equalled £1 8s. Id.

In regard to the gratuities which from time immemorial at Winchester the scholars, by statute and in theory pauperes et indigentes, had had to pay to the headmaster by reason of the fact that the revenues of the endowment which should have been utilised to pay the teaching staff had been diverted to the behoof of the warden and fellows, we observe that in 1776 this practice was sternly condemned at a "scrutiny" conducted by the college's visitorial authorities, as a grievous imposition upon the pauperes et indigentes scholares (poor and needy scholars), and a

itself."

grave scandal (grave scandalum) to the college

And it was gravely recommended to the "scholars that they should ask their parents or friends not to present, for the future, such gratuities, and to the happy warden and fellows that they should discontinue the practice.

**

But as the aforesaid warden and fellows had been fleshed and had had their teeth set on edge by the exceeding richness of the college revenues, they declined, tacitly or overtly, to obey this farcical " Injunction."†

Much later, in 1838, the contemporary Wintonian dignitaries, doubtless in trepidation for the safety of their immortal souls, built a hideous Victorian structure known as the "New Commoners," at a cost of £27,000, in regard to which, in consequence of the cormorant-like tendencies of the happy warden and fellows that enfant malheureux the headmaster had, in his capacity of "hotel-keeper

To use the hunting metaphor which William Harrison (Description of England) ascribed, referring to the lust for social and economic loot of the Cecil and Cavendish families at the Reformation, to Henry VIII. As it was actually called.