The College as School: the Case of Winchester College

Summary

Winchester College was founded in 1382 to fulfil at least four objectives: intercession for the founder’s soul; provision of residential education for some eighty pupils; the pupils’ preparation for further study at New College, Oxford; and provision through the two facilities of well-qualified recruits to the clergy. Fulfilment of these objectives required the erection and maintenance of the extensive stone buildings that still survive in Winchester, a lavish endowment to sustain running costs, and access to large quantities of food, drink, wax and communion wafers, among many other commodities. This essay aims to illuminate the various contexts of the institution, examining the founder’s intentions through his statutes, and considering the nature of its household as well as what is known of its educational function, its endowment, administration and bursars, and also its impact on Winchester. While its educational function has always been most striking, then as now, Winchester College was once a great intercessory institution. Apart from three chaplains, a warden and ten fellows, who were essentially chantry priests, the chapel needed to accommodate 134 residents for daily service – using, over time, literally hundredweights of wax, and consuming thousands of communion wafers, for instance. The college quickly became, and was to remain, a major spender and consumer in Winchester itself. Winchester College in context

William Wykeham founded two colleges dedicated to the Virgin Mary: Winchester College and New College, Oxford; the sheer scale of both foundations set them apart. Hitherto most schools were adjuncts of a church or a monastery. In 1338, at Ottery St Mary in Devon, Bishop Grandisson had founded a school for a master and eight boys as part of his new college. In 1384, Catherine Lady Berkeley founded the first chantry school at Wottonunder- Edge in Gloucestershire for a master and two poor scholars. Many more such foundations continued to be established in the fifteenth century, among them Archbishop Chichele’s collegiate foundation at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire. Founded in 1422, this triple foundation was to support eight chaplains, eight clerks, six choristers, and a chaplain, who was to teach grammar in the attached school. But it is to be emphasised that, Eton College apart (which nevertheless relied on Winchester as a prototype), all such institutions were considerably smaller than Winchester College, which accommodated seventy scholars who were educated, fed and housed free of charge. Winchester College was quite exceptional.