The pious and patriotic exertions of the good bishop were interrupted for a time by a political storm which rose against him in 1376, the last year of the reign of Edward III. He had been appointed one of the council established to superintend the conduct of affairs on the petition of the parliament which met in April of that year; and in consequence became a principal object of the resentment of the Duke of Lancaster and his party, who, after the death of the Black Prince in June, and the rise of the parliament in July, took possession of the superannuated and dying king, and proceeded to overthrow all the reforms that had been lately made in the government, and to effect, as far as they could, the ruin of all concerned in them. By the duke's contrivance eight articles were exhibited against the bishop at the beginning of the next Michaelmas term, charging him with various acts of pecuniary defalcation, oppression, and other sorts of misgovernment while he had been in office many years before as keeper of the privy seal and lord chancellor. He was heard in his defence, before a commission of bishops, peers, and privy councillors, about the middle of November, when judgment was given against him upon one of the articles, involving at the utmost a mere irregularity; and upon this, under the influence that then prevailed at court, an order was immediately issued for the sequestration of the revenues of his bishopric, and he was at the same time forbidden, in the king's name, to come within twenty miles of the court. The next parliament, which met on the 27th of January, 1377, was wholly devoted to Lancaster; and when, soon after, on the petition of the Commons, an act of general pardon was issued by the king, in consideration of its being the year of his jubilee, the Bishop of Winchester alone was specially excepted out of its provisions. All this, in the circumstances of the time, may be taken as the best attestation to Wykeham's patriotism and integrity. His brethren of the clergy, however, assembled in convocation, now took up his cause with great zeal; and, whether in consequence of their bold representations on the subject to the king, or for some other reason, it was soon deemed expedient to drop the proceedings against him, and on the 18th of June his temporalities were restored to him, on condition of his fitting out three ships of war for the defence of the kingdom and maintaining them at sea for a quarter of a year. And even from this mulct he was released on the accession of Richard II., a few days after. But the loss nevertheless to which he had been subjected by his prosecution is said to have amounted to ten thousand marks.
The instrument by which, on the accession of the young king, Wykeham was relieved from the pains and penalties which a dominant party had imposed upon him, is very full and explicit. It sets forth "that the king, reflecting upon the great damages and hardships that the Bishop of Winchester hath sustained on occasion of the said impeachment, and revolving in his mind the many acceptable, useful, and laudable services which the said bishop with great labour and expense hath long performed for his grandfather, the many high offices which he hath held under his grandfather and father, and the special affection and sincere love which his father while he lived always bore towards the said bishop, out of his special favour and with his certain knowledge, and also by advice and consent of his uncle the Duke of Lancaster and other prelates and lords of his council, remits and pardons all the aforesaid articles, and all other crimes and offences whatsoever in the amplest terms, and in the fullest manner, the exception of the said bishop in the Act of Grace passed in the last parliament of the late king, and all other statutes to the contrary notwithstanding; concluding with a clause to this effect: 'Willing that all men should know that, although we have granted to the Bishop of Winchester the said pardons and graces, nevertheless we do not think the said bishop to be in anywise chargeable, in the sight of God, with any of the matters thus by us pardoned, remitted, or released unto him, but do hold him to be, as to all and every of them, wholly innocent and guiltless.'"
His pardon was immediately followed by his employment in offices of trust and authority, where his great abilities and force of character gave assurance of a just and wise administration. As soon as Wykeham was released from his troubles he hastened to apply himself anew to the carrying forward and completion of his two colleges. The business of teaching appears to have commenced both at Winchester and at Oxford in 1373; Pope Urban VI.'s bull of licence for founding Winchester College was granted 1st June, 1378; the building of the College at Oxford, which he called "St. Mary College of Winchester in Oxford," was begun in 1380, and was finished in 1386; that of the College at Winchester was begun in 1387, and was finished in 1393. The papal bull confirming the statutes of the college at Oxford is dated 19th July, 1398. As soon as his two colleges were erected, he entered upon another great work, which still remains a monument of his taste and munificence: he resolved to rebuild his cathedral in the greater part of its extent. This undertaking he commenced in 1395, and he just lived to see it brought to a close in about ten years after.
The Bishop of Winchester was one of the fourteen persons appointed in 1386, on the petition of the parliament, instigated by the king's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, to be a council to the king for one year, and in fact for that term to exercise all the powers of government. As soon as the parliament was dismissed. Richard made an attempt to break from the yoke thus imposed upon him; the commission and statute appointing the council were declared by the judges, on the royal command, to be illegal and null, and to have involved all who had been concerned in procuring them in the guilt of treason. Upon this the Duke of Gloucester and his friends raised an army of forty thousand men. Having encamped before London, they sent a deputation, of which the Bishop of Winchester was a member, to the king; the deputies were graciously received, and returned with proposals for an accommodation; but in the mean time a body of forces which had been raised for the king in Wales and Cheshire, under the command of his minion the Duke of Ireland, was encountered by the Earl of Derby and a part of the army of the confederated lords at Radcott Bridge in Oxfordshire, and entirely defeated. This blow compelled Richard to yield for the present. But in May, 1389, another revolution in the government was effected by the king suddenly declaring himself to be of age, and removing the Duke of Gloucester and his friends from the council-board. He did not, however, dispense with the services of the Bishop of Winchester, but, on the contrary, forced him again to accept the great seal. Wykeham remained chancellor till the 27th of September, 1391, when he retired from office, Gloucester having by this time been restored to his place in the council, and all parties having been for the present again reconciled, in a great measure, it is probable, through the bishop's mediation. From this date Wykeham appears to have taken little or no share in public affairs. In 1397, when the Duke of Gloucester was put to death, and several of those who had joined him in taking arms in 1386 were attainted for that treason, the Bishop of Winchester and others were, at the intercession of the Commons, declared by the king from the throne in parliament not to have been implicated in what their fellow-commissioners had done. Wykeham was present in the parliament held 30th September, 1399, when Richard was deposed, and also in the first parliament of Henry IV., summoned a few days after; but this was the last which he attended. He continued, however, in the active discharge of his episcopal duties for two or three years longer, and was able to transact business till within four days of his death, which took place at South Waltham, about eight o'clock on the morning of Saturday the 27th of September, 1404.
We conclude with Lowth's just eulogium upon the high-minded munificence of this remarkable man:—"We frequently hear of men who, by the force of their genius, by their industry, or by their good fortune, have raised themselves from the lowest stations to the highest degrees of honour, power, and wealth; but how seldom do we meet with those who have made a proper use of the advantages which they have thus happily acquired, and considered them as deposited in their hands by Providence for the general benefit of mankind? In this respect Wykeham stands an uncommon and almost singular example of generosity and public spirit. By the time that he had reached the meridian of life, he had acquired great wealth; and the remainder of his days he employed not in increasing it to no reasonable end, but in bestowing it in every way that piety, charity, and liberality could devise. The latter half of a long life he spent in one continued series of generous actions and great designs, for the good of his friends, of the poor, and of his country. His beneficence was ever vigilant, active, and persevering: it was not only ready to answer when opportunity called, but sought it out when it did not offer itself. No man seems to have tasted more sensibly the pleasure of doing good; and no man had ever a greater share of this exquisite enjoyment. The foundation of his colleges, the principal monuments of his munificence, was as well calculated for the real use of the public, and as judiciously planned as it was nobly and generously executed. Whatever Wykeham's attainments in letters were, he had at least the good sense to see that the clergy, though they had almost engrossed the whole learning of that age, yet were very deficient in real and useful knowledge; besides that by the particular distresses of the times, and the havoc that several successive plagues had made in all ranks of the people, but especially among the clergy, the church was at a loss for a proper supply of such as were tolerably qualified for the performance of the common service. It was not vanity and ostentation that suggested this design to him; he was prompted to it by the notorious exigence of the times and the real demands of the public. The deliberation with which he entered upon it, and the constant attention with which he pursued it for above thirty years, shows how much he set his heart upon the success of his undertaking, and how earnestly he endeavoured to secure the effectual attainment of the end proposed, the promotion of true piety and learning. In a word, as he was in his own time a general blessing to his country, in which his bounty was freely imparted to every object that could come within the reach of his influence, so the memory of this great man merits the universal regard of posterity, as of one whose pious and munificent designs were directed to the general good of mankind, and were extended to the latest ages."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'History of the Life of King Henry II.' i. 281.—Henry, when he first made his appearance in England, attracted observation, among other things, by being dressed, after the manner of boys in his native country, in a coat or jacket with short skirts, or perhaps without any skirts at all; whence they gave him the sobriquet of curt-mantle. This we learn from the writer of 'Brompton's Chronicle,' who, in giving an account of Henry's death, after telling us that those present, in their rapacity, stripped the royal corpse, and that it lay for a long time naked, till a boy threw over the lower part of it a short cloak, absurdly observes that thus was fulfilled the surname which the king had borne from his infancy, originally given to him because he had first brought the fashion of the short coat from Anjou into England.—Twisden, Scriptores x. 1150.
[2] Twisden, Scriptores, p. 346.
[3] The original is, "De David legitur, ad commendationem decoris ejus, quoniam rufus erat. Vos autem dominum regem subrufum hactenus extitisse noveritis, nisi quia colorem hunc venerabilis senectus et superveniens canities aliquantulum alteravit." The writer of an amusing article on 'Ancient Collections of Private Letters,' in the 'Quarterly Review' for April, 1837 (vol. lviii, pp. 414-464), renders the latter of these sentences thus:—"You are aware that his complexion and hair were a little red, but the approach of old age has altered this somewhat, and the hair is turning grey." Peter of Blois's Latin is not purer than that of the generality of the writers of his age; but he would not have used noveritis for novistis, as this translation would imply that he did. As to the sense in which he uses rufus and subrufus, there may be more doubt. In our English version of the Bible, David is described as ruddy, or of a florid complexion; but the word in the Vulgate is rufus, which, at least in middle-age Latin, may signify either red-faced or red-haired. King William II., however, was certainly called Rufus from the redness of his complexion—either because it was excessive, or perhaps to distinguish him from his father of the same name, who may have been a man of a dark complexion. On the other hand, the immediately subsequent mention of the beginning greyness (superveniens canities) may seem to favour the notion that Peter of Blois means here to speak of David as having been red-haired, and of Henry as having also had originally hair of a reddish colour. Dr. Lingard, however, we observe, understands, as we have done, that what is indicated is Henry's florid complexion. (Hist. Eng., ii. 194, edit. of 1837.) We may notice, by the bye, that the writer in the 'Quarterly Review' has throughout his article inadvertently designated Henry II. as Henry Beauclerc, whereas it was his grandfather, the first Henry, who was known by that name.