The three wheat-sheaves of the Kempe shield, repeated again and again on the elaborate groined roof of the Divinity School, commemorate the bounty of Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, who (1478) promised to give 1000 marks for the completion of the school and the library. A grateful University rewarded him with anniversary services; his name is still mentioned in the “bidding prayer” on solemn occasions. Nor was Duke Humphrey forgotten. His name still heads the list of benefactors recited from time to time in S. Mary’s. Religious services were instituted also for his benefit. He was more in need of them, perhaps, than the bishop. For the “Good Duke Humphrey” was good only so far as his love of learning and his generosity to scholars may entitle him to be considered so. The patron of Lydgate and Occleve, and the donor of hundreds of rare and polite books to the University was as unscrupulous in his political intrigues as immoral in his private life. But in his case the good he did lived after him.
The “Good Duke” was a reader as well as a collector. It was not merely the outsides of books or the title-pages which attracted him.
“His courage never doth appal
To study in books of antiquity.”
So wrote Lydgate, who knew. Even when he presented his books to the University, he took care to reserve the right of borrowing them, for were they not, according to the inscription which he was wont to insert lovingly in them, all his worldly wealth (mon bien mondain)? It is perhaps not surprising to find from the list of books which he gave to the University, that the duke’s taste in literature was for the Classics, for the works of Ovid, Cato, Aulus Gellius and Quintilian, for the speeches of Cicero, the plays of Terence and Seneca, the works of Aristotle and Plato, the histories of Suetonius and Josephus, of Beda and Eusebius, Higden and Vincent of Beauvais. A fancy for medical treatises and a pretty taste in Italian literature are betrayed by the titles of other books, for the duke gave seven volumes of Boccaccio, five of Petrarch and two of Dante to the University.
Duke Humphrey promised to give the whole of his collection to the University, together with a hundred pounds to go towards the
building of the library. But he died suddenly, and the University never, as it appears, received full advantage of his generosity. It was not till 1488 that the books were removed from S. Mary’s. For the completion of the library was delayed by an order from Edward IV. The workmen employed upon the building were summoned by him to Windsor, where he had need of them, to work at S. George’s Chapel. Those who were not employed on the chapel were handed over to William of Waynflete, who restored them to the University along with some scaffolding which had been used in the building of Magdalen. William Patten or Barbour of Waynflete, an Oxford man, who had been master of the school at Winchester, had been appointed first master and then Provost of Eton by the founder, Henry VI., and was rewarded for his success there by the Bishopric of Winchester. In 1448 he had founded a hall for the study of Theology and Philosophy, situated between the present schools and Logic Lane, and called it, probably after the almshouse at Winchester, of which he had been master, the Hall of S. Mary Magdalen. When he became Lord Chancellor he immediately took steps to enlarge this foundation, transferred it to the site of the Hospital of S. John, and styled it the College of S. Mary Magdalen (September 1457).