Queens’. It was in 1443 that the charter of the double foundation of Eton at Windsor and King’s College at Cambridge was signed—the one “our royal college of S. Mary of Eton,” the other “our royal college of S. Mary and S. Nicholas”; for Henry dedicated his college to his patron saint Nicholas “of Bari” the patron of scholars. The king laid the foundation stone himself (p. 112) in the presence of John Langton chancellor of the university, the keeper of the Privy Seal, the chancellor of the Exchequer, and the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury.[178] The king’s father had intended to build a college at Oxford; Henry VI. carried out his intention in endowing a college but decided that the university should be Cambridge. A small college called God’s House which had just been founded,[179] together with Mill Street (acquired in 1445) and Augustine’s hostel (in 1449) and the church of S. John Zachary, were pulled down to clear a space: but the original plan for the college was never carried out, and the buildings we now see were erected in the first quarter of the xviiith and in the xixth centuries.[180]
The chapel.
The only portion of the original plan executed was the chapel. The importance of King’s College chapel is not only architectural; is due not only to the fact that it was begun before the Italian classical revival as a monument of English Gothic, and completed in the full blaze of the renascence, but that it marks a chapter in the history of English religion. The church built for the old worship was consecrated for the new; the first stone was laid by Henry VI. in the presence of great catholic prelates, the oaken screen—perhaps the finest woodwork in the country—bears the monogram of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn[181] twined with true lovers’ knots. In the third place “this immense and