Of Wykeham’s “College of St. Marie”, or New College, Oxford, this is not the place to speak, especially as it has already been dealt with in the “Oxford” volume of this “Beautiful England” series.  His other “College of St. Mary”, or, as it is commonly known, Winchester College, has a history extending far beyond that of most of our great public schools; and Winchester was celebrated for its educational institutions in Saxon days.

[Illustration:  WINCHESTER COLLEGE:  THE OUTER GATEWAY FROM “ARCADIA”]

Wykeham’s idea in founding these two colleges was one for which he had no precedent before him, so that his design was to a large extent in the nature of an experiment.  His idea, of course, was to enable those who proceeded from the Winchester to the Oxford College to receive a systematic and continuous education.  Where Wykeham led, others were not long in following.  Two of his successors in the see of Winchester, Waynflete and Fox, gave to Oxford the beautiful colleges of Magdalen and Corpus Christi respectively.  Archbishop Chichele, one of Wykeham’s first scholars, built St. Bernard’s College, now St. John Baptist’s, which he gave to the Cistercians before its completion; and later in life he founded the College of All Souls, while in his native village of Higham Ferrers, Northants, he built and endowed a school, bede-house, and church, which are among some of the loveliest pieces of building we possess.  Henry VI made himself intimately acquainted with the works of Wykeham, and copied them for his two colleges of Eton, and King’s College, Cambridge.  Until Wykeham’s time, schools had been under or connected with monastic houses; now they were distinct foundations, with priests still as masters, but priests secular and not religious.  Wykeham was, indeed, the pioneer of the public-school system, of which, with all its shortcomings, England is so justly proud.

Each of the bishop’s colleges took about six years in building, and that at Oxford was the first to be finished.  It must have been a proud day for Winchester when, on March 28, 1393, the “seventy faithful boys”, headed by their master, came in procession from St. Giles’s Hill, where they had been temporarily housed, and, all chanting psalms, entered into possession of their fair college.

The buildings have been but little altered since their founder’s day, and extend now, as then, on the south side of the Close, and along the bank of the Itchen.  They consist mainly of two quadrangles, in the first of which, entered from College Street by a gateway, are the Warden’s house and other offices.  Here is the brewhouse, quite unaltered; but the Warden’s house has absorbed the old bakehouse, slaughterhouse, and butcher’s room.  Over the second archway are figures of the Virgin, with Gabriel on her right, and Wykeham kneeling on her left.  Here was a room for the Warden, from which he could see all who entered or left the college; and here also is the site of the old penthouse under