William of Wykeham 1323

The time which elapsed between the foundation and completion of the colleges may be attributed to Wykeham's preoccupation with politics in the disturbed state of affairs, due to the papal schism begun in 1379, in which England adhered to Urban VI. and France to Clement VII., to the rising of the Commons in 1381, and the wars with France, Scotland and Spain during John of Gaunt's ascendancy. Then followed the constitutional revolution of the lords appellant in 1388. When Richard II. took power on himself on May 3, 1389, he at once made Wykeham chancellor, with Brantingham of Exeter again as treasurer.

On Sept. 27, 1391, Wykeham finally resigned the chancellor ship. For three years after there are no minutes of the council. On Nov. 24, Wykeham lent the king the sum of ii,000 (equivalent to L30,000 now), which same sum or another LI,000 he promised on Feb. 21, 1395, to repay by midsummer, and did so (Pat. 18, Rich. II. pt. ii. m. 23, 41). Wykeham was clearly against the assumption by Richard of absolute power. He excused himself from convocation in 1397, and from the subservient parliament at Shrewsbury in 1398. Possibly he took part in the revolution of Henry IV. He appeared in the privy council four times at the beginning of Henry's reign (Proc. P.C. i. Ioo). There are records of loans by him to Henry IV. in the first years of his reign. Meanwhile, on Sept. 29, 1394, he had begun the recasting of the nave of the cathedral with William Wynford, the architect of the college, as chief mason, and Simon Membury, an old Wykehamist, as clerk of the works. He died on Sept. 27, aged 80.

His effigy in the cathedral chantry and a bust on the groining of the muniment tower at Winchester college are no doubt authentic portraits. The pictures at Winchester and New college are late 16th-century productions. Three autograph letters of his, all in French, and of the years 1364-66, are preserved, one at the British Museum, one at the Record Office, a third at New col lege, Oxford.

See Thomas Martin, Wilhelmi Wicami (1597) ; R. Lowth, Life of Wykeham (1736) ; Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, William of Wykeham and his Colleges (1852) ; T. F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester College (1892) ; G. H. Moberly, Life of Wykeham (1887) ; A. F. Leach,

History of Winchester College (1899) ; and the Calendars of Patent and Close Rolls, Edward III. and Richard II.

WILLIAMS, JOHN

(1582-165o), English archbishop and lord keeper, son of Edmund Williams of Conway, was born in March 1582 and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He received rapid promotion in the Church, and, on the fall of Bacon (1621), was appointed lord keeper, and was at the same time made bishop of Lincoln, retaining also the deanery of Westmin ster. Williams took the popular side in condemning arbitrary imprisonment by the sovereign. A case was preferred against him in the Star Chamber of revealing state secrets, to which was added in 1635 a charge of subornation of perjury, of which he had un doubtedly been guilty and for which he was condemned in 1637 to pay a fine of LI o,000, to be deprived of the temporalities of all his benefices, and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. He was sent to the Tower. In 1639 he was again condemned by the Star Chamber for libelling Laud, a further heavy fine being imposed for this offence. In 1641 he recovered his liberty on the demand of the House of Lords, who maintained that as a peer he was entitled to be summoned to parliament. In December 1641 the king, anxious to conciliate public opinion, appointed Williams archbishop of York. In the same month he was one of the twelve bishops impeached by the Commons for high treason and committed to the Tower. Released on an undertaking not to go to Yorkshire, a promise which he did not observe, the arch bishop was enthroned in York Minster in June 1642. On the out break of the Civil War, after visiting Conway in the Royalist in terest, he joined the king at Oxford; he then returned to Wales, and finding that Sir John Owen, acting on Charles's orders, had seized certain property in Conway Castle that had been de posited with the archbishop for safe-keeping, he went over to the Parliamentary side and assisted in the recapture of Conway Castle in November 1646. Williams, who was a generous bene factor of St. John's College, Cambridge, died on March 25, 165c.