which may be freely rendered—
Learn, or depart, or stay and be beaten;
though it is more than doubtful whether, in the experience of earlier Wykehamists at least, the first and the last-mentioned fates were at all often found to be mutually exclusive.
Beyond is ‘Meads,’ where ‘Domum’ is yearly held, and beyond, again, ‘New Meads,’ with its magnificent sward, its lofty trees, and its memories of ‘Eton Match’; and right away again, across the river, ‘Hills’ lies in full view—St. Catherine’s Hill, where Winchester boys in earlier days repaired for recreation on ‘remedies’ or holidays, the joys of which may be followed out in full in Bompas’s delightful life of Frank Buckland.
“Manners makyth man”—one is tempted to wonder if more may not here be meant than meets the ear, and whether ‘manners,’ in its Latin equivalent mores at least, does not wrap up a punning allusion, after the method so dear to that age, to Warden Morys, to whose hands, on the erection of the building, Wykeham first committed the future of his great college. But be that as it may, the emblem seems to sum up the spirit of the college with literal fidelity. Passing through its chambers, its chapel, its courts, its cloisters, one is sadly tempted to linger to recall the memory of this great headmaster, or recount the quaint stories told of this famous warden or that, and the names of Ken, Arnold, Goddard, Gabell, Huntingford, Barter, rise almost instinctively to one’s lips. We shall find their memories all piously preserved and commemorated whether in portrait, tablet, or building, as for instance the Memorial Gateway erected as a memorial of the old Wykehamists who fell in the South African War; but here we may not stop, and those who wish to do so can follow out their story in Leach’s Winchester College or Adams’s delightful Wykehamica. But more striking than the past, the noble traditions nobly preserved is the vitality in the present. ‘Sainte Marie College’ has always known how to adapt herself successfully, as age succeeded age, to the requirements of the day, and has paid the truest respect to the Founder’s wishes in never allowing herself to grow old. There is no frost, mingled with the kindliness of age, in Winchester College.
CHAPTER XVIII
WOLVESEY—ST. CROSS—THE CASTLE HALL—THE ROUND TABLE
And for great Arthur’s seat ould Winchester preferres,
Whose ould Round Table yet she vaunteth to be hers.
Drayton’s Polyolbion.
From College one turns naturally to Wolvesey—Wolvesey with its wonderful grey stone walls, its memories of Saxon and Norman, Plantagenet and Stuart times. Here Alfred kept his Court, with all the learned men of his time around him; here the English Chronicle was first compiled; and here, above that very Wolvesey wall, it may be, the Danish pirates captured in the Solent were hanged—as has been already related—in retributive justice. But the big blocks of ruin in Wolvesey Mead are of later date; they recall to us the career of that notable figure among the Bishops of Winchester, Henry of Blois, King Stephen’s brother, bishop from 1129 to 1171—the masterful man, devoted churchman, and scheming politician, whose story has been somewhat fully related in Chapter VIII. To strengthen himself he fortified
CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE, WINCHESTER