The most striking manifestation of the new spirit is seen in the Letters Patent granted in 1439, giving leave to William Byngham, rector of St. John Zachary in London, to found the College of God’s House in Cambridge, at first an annex to Clare Hall, and afterwards incorporated with Christ’s College. In his petition for the licence Bingham said that he had found all over the country grammar schools, formerly flourishing, now fallen into abeyance for lack of proper teachers. He therefore asked for leave to found a college of a master and twenty-four scholars for the training of Grammar schoolmasters, who were to issue thence to teach school all over the country. This, then, is the first Training College on record. In its statutes the importance of the classics was insisted on, not merely, as in the days of Wykeham and the foundation of Winchester, because grammar was the key which unlocked the Holy Scriptures, and was the gate to the liberal sciences “and theology, the mistress of all,” but because “it was necessary in dealing with law and other difficult matters of State and also the means of mutual communication and conversation between us and strangers and foreigners.” Here spoke the citizen of London and the man of the modern world. In much the same way Waynflete, himself ex-Headmaster of Winchester and first Headmaster of Eton, in his foundation of Magdalen College School, carried on by him from 1448 though not finally endowed and settled till 1480, provided by his statutes for the demyes being trained in grammar “that they might go out and teach others,” and he particularly ordered that they were not prematurely to be made sophisters.[[94]]

In 1443 Walter Lyhert, who succeeded Carpenter on his promotion to the See of Worcester, in the provostship of Oriel, also succeeded him as Warden (Custos), as he was now called, of St. Anthony’s. He in turn became a bishop, being promoted to Norwich in 1445. He was succeeded in the Mastership of St. Anthony’s by William Say, a Wykehamist of some fame, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s. Under his rule the new constitution was completed. By Bull of January 28, 1446, the Pope granted, on the request of Henry VI. as patron, power to make new statutes for the hospital and its inmates to the Bishop of Worcester (Carpenter), the Bishop of Norwich (Lyhert), William Waynflete, then Provost of Eton, and William Say, then master of the hospital. The school, like that of Eton, was thus inaugurated on the model and under the guidance of members of the College of William of Wykeham, which Henry VI. dearly loved and deeply studied, and to which he paid the sincere homage of exact imitation. The statutes made by Carpenter and the rest are not forthcoming, but considering the auspices under which they were made, we may safely conclude that they followed their model as closely as did those of Eton, so far as what was presumably mainly a day-school could follow the statutes of what was mainly a boarding-school. There are indeed not wanting minor indications that some scholars at least boarded in the hospital. We know at all events that in two things in which Eton departed from the Winchester model, St. Anthony’s followed suit, namely, the raising of the stipend of the master from £10 to £16, and the direction that the school should be a free school to all who chose to come. We also know that, as at Winchester and Eton, a singing master was established and a Song School; for in 1440, David Fythian, who was rector of St. Bennet Finck, and John Grene, clerks, at the request of John Carpenter (and we may be sure at his expense and in consideration of a payment by him) had granted a rent of ten marks issuing out of “the Cowpe on the Hoope” in All Saints parish, London Wall, with power of distraint on it and another brew-house called the Dolphin and a tavern called the Bell in Southwark, to pay “John Bennet of London, clerk, yearly 8 marks, and 4 yards of new cloth of gentlemens’ suit” for teaching singing “to the boys, who are and shall be in the church of the said hospital.” This meant, of course, the choristers. In 1449 the brewery called the Cup on the Hoop was definitely devised by will, which, when enrolled in the Hustings Court, at once operated as a conveyance and dispensed with the necessity of a licence in mortmain, to William Say, then Master, and the Brethren of St. Anthony’s, “for maintenance of a clerk to teach assiduously all the boys of the house chanting with the organ (cantico organico) and plain song,” but while John Benatt (sic) remained, the Master was not bound to find another teacher. The hospital was to enjoy the residue after providing for the Song schoolmaster.

There is a series of documents connected with the hospital, the exact purport of which it is a little difficult to make out, but they seem to suggest some intention on the part of John Carpenter to benefit alike St. Anthony’s School and Oriel College, Oxford, by exhibitions at the university; bringing the school, though in a much modified degree, into the same sort of relationship with that college which Winchester bore to New College, or Eton to King’s, or Westminster afterwards to Christ Church and Trinity, Cambridge.

Oriel College,[[95]] Oxford, possesses a conveyance, June 27, 1424, to John Carpenter and Henry Sampson, both fellows and afterwards provosts, and others of land at Dagenham in Essex. Nine years later, the manor or manors of Valence Gallants and lands at Frystelings and Copped Hall were conveyed to a similar body of feoffees. In 1442 the manor of Easthall was acquired. By deed of June 27, 1447, all these properties were conveyed to Carpenter and Sampson, and in 1451 by Carpenter, then Bishop of Worcester, to Oriel College, on condition of their granting them to St. Anthony’s, reserving a pension “for the exhibition of certain poor scholars in St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford,” a dependency of the College. By deed of 14th November in the same year, the college granted the lands to the hospital, reserving a rent-charge of twenty-five marks, and by deed of 20th November,[[96]] William Say, “Master or Warden of the house or hospital of St. Anthony and the brethren of the same” granted an annual rent of £20 to the Provost and fellows “of the Royal College, commonly called Oreall,” payable in St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, “for the exhibition and maintenance of scholars to study there according to the form and effect of certain provisions or ordinances to be made by John, Bishop of Worcester.” By another deed of the same day, the Bishop, John Carpenter, declared the conditions of the exhibitions, but, alas! only in general terms; and whether any ordinances were actually made by Carpenter, and if so, what has become of them, is unknown.

When the exhibitions were established seems rather obscure. The earliest extant accounts, now at Windsor, of the hospital are for 1478-79 and 1494-95, and contain no mention of the Essex property or of scholars at Oxford. But in 1501-2, the rental includes the manors of Valence and Easthall and lands called Frystelyng’s lands in Essex let for £13 a year; and among the expenses is the item “The skolers of Oxford stypents, £10 : 18s.” The first entry in the Oriel College accounts of any money received for scholars is December 6, 1504, when, £10 : 6 : 8 was received by the College “for Mr. Tretyng” and paid over to him. In 1521-22, the St. Anthony’s account, which is for expenses only, includes “for the exhibicion of the scolers of Oxford in Seynt Mary Haule £10 : 7s.” St. Mary’s Hall was originally the rectory house of St. Mary’s Church, which was appropriated to Oriel College, who still appoint the vicar; and was probably the original home of the college and always remained a dependency of it.

Hardly had the hospital and school thus been put upon a sound basis than the Wars of the Roses substituted the Yorkists for the Lancastrians on the throne. The Yorkist accession and the Restoration of Charles II. are the only epochs in English history since the Norman Conquest in which the successful party have not been content with the enjoyment of power and the prospect of having things all their own way for the future, but have set themselves more Gallico to destroy the good deeds of the opposite party and root out their remembrance, if possible, from the land. All the foundations of Henry VI. were threatened with destruction. For the purpose apparently of proving himself the true heir of the Plantagenet Edwards, Edward IV. professed the most extreme devotion to the collegiate church of Windsor. He showed his devotion in the vicarious way common in those days, by endowing it with the plunder of other places. An Act of Parliament on Edward’s accession in 1460 declared all the grants of the three Lancastrian Henries void. Part of the possessions of Eton was granted to other places; while the whole institution was by a Bull of Union in November 1463 annexed to St. George’s, Windsor. Whether, as has been represented,[[97]] it was intended that the school should cease to exist, is very doubtful. When St. James’s Hospital, Westminster, was granted to Eton itself as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Oxford, had been to Oriel College, and St. Julian’s Hospital, Southampton, to Queen’s College, Oxford, those colleges only took the net surplus after keeping up the hospitals. Windsor in like manner was probably only intended to get the surplus after keeping up Eton school. However, the Bull was strongly opposed by William Westbury, the provost and ex-headmaster. In 1467 a large part of the Eton estates was restored to it, and in 1470 King Edward IV. himself asked for the revocation of the Bull of Union and obtained a commission from the Pope for the purpose, and a final decree revoking it was pronounced by Cardinal-Archbishop Bouchier on August 30, 1476. It was, one can hardly doubt, by way of compensation to Windsor for the loss of Eton College that St. Anthony’s Hospital was, in 1475, annexed and appropriated to it in the same way as Eton had been. The terms of the annexation were absolute.[[98]] The King granted to “the Warden of Dean of the College of the Blessed Mary, St. George and Edward the Confessor in his castle of Windsor and to the chapter of the same college the Wardenship, advowson, parsonage, donation, collation, presentation, and free bestowal of the house, hospital or free chapel of St. Anthony, London, by whatever name it might be called, and the house hospital, or free chapel itself, with all its liberties, franchises, privileges, immunities, lands, tenements, rents, services,” etc., etc., belonging thereto, “to hold in pure and perpetual alms to their own use whenever it next became vacant by death, resignation, or otherwise”; and with power to take possession without any further process. On June 2, 1475, Dean and Chapter appointed Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, and others their attorneys to take possession of the hospital, they having got Peter Courtney, then master of the hospital, to resign in consideration of a pension of 100 marks or £66 : 13 : 4 a year. As in 1478 he became himself Dean of Windsor, he did not suffer much by the transaction.

Nor, indeed, did the hospital or school, which went on for at least 200 years more. Absolute as the terms of annexation were they seem to have been interpreted not as an abolition of the hospital, but only as a transfer to the dean and chapter of the right to the surplus, formerly taken by the master for his own use, estimated in the pension arrangement at 100 marks.

This comes out clearly in one of the earliest Account Rolls of the hospital after the transfer, which is fortunately preserved at Windsor, and gives an exact picture of the way the hospital was managed. It is for the year 1478-79 when David Hopton, Canon of Windsor, acted as Master of the hospital. The total income was the very large sum of £539 : 19s. or about £10,800 a year of our money. Of this only £18 : 2 : 4 was derived from rents or property, and that rental was subject to outgoings in the way of quit-rents of £7 : 6 : 8 and repairs to the extent of £9 : 5s.; so that the endowment was really a minus quantity.

The whole of the rest of the revenue was derived from voluntary subscriptions, which are called in the accounts “procurations,” being collected by procurators or proctors, exactly on the same principle that collections on Church Briefs were made after the Reformation. Indeed these and other like accounts make it clear[[99]] that the system of Church Briefs,[[100]] only abolished in 1828, was not of post-Reformation origin, but was extremely ancient. The right of collecting in a particular district was farmed out to different people who paid a fixed rent for the privilege for a term of years, and pocketed in return for the expenditure of their time and trouble whatever they managed to extract from the pockets of the faithful beyond the stipulated rent. Some specimens of St. Anthony’s Hospital leases to these farmers are preserved. There is one for the year 1479. It’s an Indenture made between the Dean or Warden of St. George’s College, the Master of St. Anthony’s, London, or in England, and the Canons of Windsor of the one part, and Thomas Morton of Worcester of the other part. In the same form as in a lease of land the Dean and Canons transfer, grant, and let to the aforesaid Thomas “all goods, profits, and commodities for any reason given, or to be given, assigned, or to be assigned, bequeathed, or to be bequeathed to and for the Hospital of St. Anthony in and throughout the whole bishopric of Hereford and archdeaconry of Oxford in places exempt [from the ordinary’s authority] as well as not exempt; with all pigs and other animals in the places aforesaid”; and constitute the said Thomas their lawful proctor and receiver in the premises, with full power of appointing substitutes, and without rendering any account. The term was ten years and the rent reserved £30 a year, payable in two half-yearly payments at Michaelmas and St. Philip and St. James’s Day. If the rent was in arrear the Dean and Canons were at liberty to dismiss the said Thomas and appoint another proctor in his place. The total rents of the Hospital shown in the account for 1478-79 derived in this fashion were:

Bishoprics of Salisbury and Ely, and archdeaconries of Lincoln, Stow, Huntingdon, and Leicester, and Deanery of Rutland (3 proctors in one lease)£128134
Archdeaconries of Northampton, Bedford, Bucks, and the jurisdiction of St. Alban’s (1 proctor)4000
Bishoprics of Exeter and Bath and Wells (3 proctors)4400
Bishopric of Rochester, and Deaneries of Shoreham and Croydon, with church of Criff400[[101]]
Archdeaconries of Derby, Stafford, Coventry, and Shrewsbury (2 proctors)2200
Archdeaconries of Chester and Lancaster1100
Bishopric of London2200
Bishopric of Winchester26100
Bishopric of Chichester800[[102]]
Province of York and Isle of Man (2 proctors)76134[[103]]
Bishopric of Winchester28134
Bishopric of Hereford and Archdeaconry of Oxford2968[[104]]
Archdeaconry of Canterbury26134
Bishopric of Norwich4400
Bishoprics of St. David’s and Llandaff800[[105]]
Bishoprics of Bangor and Asaph4168
£523168