Not the least interesting feature of the Founder's chapel is its detached bell-tower, seen in the next picture, on the north side of the cloisters. He obtained leave to place this on the city wall, a large section of which the College undertook to maintain-thus adding a permanent charm to their own garden.
The magnificence of the Founder Bishop is well seen in his splendid crozier, bequeathed to him by his college, and still preserved on the north side of the chapel. The results of his work, for Oxford and for learning, will be briefly told of in the next chapter.
Plate XI. New College : The Tower
[NEW COLLEGE (2) HISTORY]
"Round thy cloisters, in moonlight,
Branching dark, or touched with white:
Round old chill aisles, where, moon-smitten,
Blanches the Orate, written
Under each worn old-world face."
L. JOHHSON.
William of Wykeham's College had other marked features besides its magnificent scale. Previous colleges had grown; at New College everything was organized from the first. As the great architectural History of Cambridge says: "For the first time, chapel, hall, library, treasury, the Warden's lodgings, a sufficient range of chambers, the cloister, the various domestic offices, are provided for and erected without change of plan." The chapel especially gave the model for the T shape, a choir and transepts without a nave, which has become the normal form in Oxford. The influence of Wykeham's building plan may be traced elsewhere also—at Cambridge and even in Scotland.
In these well-planned buildings, definite arrangements were made for college instruction, as opposed to the general teaching open to the whole University; special informafores were provided, who were to supervise the work of all scholars up to the age of sixteen. This marks the beginning of the Tutorial System, which has ever since played so great a part in the intellectual life of England's two old Universities.
Wykeham's scholars all came from Winchester, and were supposed to be pauperes , but as one of the first, Henry Chichele, afterwards Henry V's Archbishop of Canterbury and the Founder of All Souls', was a son of the Lord Mayor of London, it is obvious that the qualification of "poverty" was interpreted with some laxity. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that others than Wykehamists were admitted as scholars.