His idea, of course, was to enable those who
proceeded from the Winchester to the Oxford College to receive a
systematic and continuous education. Where Wykeham led, others were not
long in following. Two of his successors in the see of Winchester,
Waynflete and Fox, gave to Oxford the beautiful colleges of Magdalen and
Corpus Christi respectively. Archbishop Chichele, one of Wykeham's first
scholars, built St. Bernard's College, now St. John Baptist's, which he
gave to the Cistercians before its completion; and later in life he
founded the College of All Souls, while in his native village of Higham
Ferrers, Northants, he built and endowed a school, bede-house, and
church, which are among some of the loveliest pieces of building we
possess. Henry VI made himself intimately acquainted with the works of
Wykeham, and copied them for his two colleges of Eton, and King's
College, Cambridge. Until Wykeham's time, schools had been under or
connected with monastic houses; now they were distinct foundations, with
priests still as masters, but priests secular and not religious. Wykeham
was, indeed, the pioneer of the public-school system, of which, with all
its shortcomings, England is so justly proud.
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