Of birth, of mind, of humour manifold:
The grave, the gay, the timid, and the bold,
The noble nursling of the palace hall,
The merchant’s offspring, heir to wealth untold,
The pale-eyed youth, whom learning’s spells enthrall,
Within thy cloisters meet, and love thee, one and all.
The history of the College has been so ably written by Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte, that it would here be superfluous to do more than touch upon a few incidents of special interest.
Henry VI., unlike the warlike Plantagenets from whom he sprang, was essentially of studious disposition, and the foundation of a college—one of his favourite schemes, almost from boyhood—was a project which he at once gratified on reaching years of discretion. In 1441, when nineteen, he granted the original charter to “The King’s College of our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor.”
This ancient constitution remained in force till the year 1869, when a new governing body was introduced, which drew up new statutes two years later. The last Fellow representing the old foundation, as instituted by Henry VI., was the late Bursar, the Rev. W. A. Carter, who died in 1892.
On the completion of the arrangements for the institution of the College, the old parish church, standing in what is now the graveyard of the chapel, was pulled down, and a new edifice of “the hard stone of Kent—the most substantial and the best abiding,” begun. Roger Keyes, before Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, was appointed master of the works, receiving a patent of nobility and a grant of arms for his services. At the same time the newly founded College was assigned a coat of arms, three white lilies (typical of the Virgin and of the bright flowers of science) upon a field of sable being combined with the fleur-de-lys of France and the leopard passant of England, to form the design with which Etonians have been familiar for more than four hundred and fifty years.