SECT. II. IT is agreed by writers in general, that William Patten, after receiving the rudiments of instruction in Lincolnshire, was removed to Wykeham's school at Winchester. The register of admissions on the foundation has been carefully examined, and his name is not in it; but he might still be educated there, as Wykeham both introduced to his school, and to commons in the hall, several extraneous boys; and in his statutes permits sons of gentlemen (gentilium), a limited number, to enjoy the same privilege: but of these no mention occurs, except of the descendants of Uvedale his great patron, whose names appear in the account-books of the bursars of his time". Budden tells us he had been more than ambitiously diligent, if he might be allowed the expression, in his endeavours to ascertain the college in Oxford to which William had belonged, but without success; that Holinshed, who has had his followers, departed. from the common belief in ascribing him to • Budden, p. 56. Harpsfield, p. 643. Godwin, p. 232. Leland Itin. pt. 1. p. 50. Collier, vol. i. p. 691. A. Wood Hist. et Antiq. ii. p. 187. Ayliffe. Birch. P Mr. Blackstone. 9 P. 56. Harrison in Descrip. Angliæ, p. 6. 1. 2. cap. 3, and others. Merton, Merton, where, as he relates, he was fellow, while Nele and Harpsfield contend for his having been a Wykehamist. He declares he would not willingly recede from this opinion, which had the consenting voice of the multitude on its side, and argues in favour of it. A. Wood, a careful examiner of ancient records, asserts that the Album of Merton college does not allow his having been of it, unless he was one of the chaplains or postmasters. As to New college, he could not be fellow, not having been a scholar on the foundation at Winchester. In his statutes Wykeham does not admit of independent members; neither were there accommodations for them before the buildings next the garden were erected. Moreover, bishop Lowth has affirmed, that he never was of that college to which he is so generally given ". We shall leave the reader to collect, as he proceeds, the presumptive arguments which may be urged from this narrative to • Mr. Blackstone. The register of New College has A.D. 1423, Hen. Barbour, alias Duke. t Life of Wykeham, sect. vi. u Godwin. Nicholson's English Hist. Library, p. 140. Heylin. Gale Hist. and Antiq. of the Cathedral at Winchester, p. 140. A. Wood, p. 133. fix William at New college. But besides these, an evidence deserving particular attention is on record, John Langland, or Longland, fellow of Magdalen, a bursar there in 1515, and bishop of Lincoln in 1521, only twenty-five years after the death of the founder, whom, it is therefore probable, he remembered. This prelate informed the antiquary Leland, that William was of New college; and his testimony, corroborated, as it will be, by other circumstances, must have appeared decisive, had it been contradicted in a manner less positive, or by a writer of inferior authority to the biographer of Wykeham. Budden, I know not on whose testimony, has represented William, while an academic, endowed with intense application to the studies of humanity and eloquence. The having excelled in them far beyond what was common, he would have ascribed to him * Longland, John, Athen. i. 70. M. A. 1521. Fasti, i. 3. quære if not 1501? B. D. Dec. 1510. Ib. 15. See College Register. y Itin. pt. i. p. 50. a P. 57. Cujus cum præclaræ aliquot ab ipso habitæ orationes recensentur.-Joannes Vuaynflete, Carmelitanæ sodalitatis amator, &c. Balæus de Scriptor. Britt. centur. xii. n. L. as as his peculiar praise, had he not discovered that his brother had a claim to partake in the eulogium. Some noted sermons of John Waynflete, which were published, made him almost of opinion that the prerogative was not that of an individual, but of his family. The margin refers to Bale, whose account is, I apprehend, of another John Waynfiete, a Carmelite professor in the university of Cambridge, and afterwards a public reader of divinity in a college of his order in the city of Lincoln. The university of Oxford, about this period, was the seat of dull scholastic disputation, rather than of liberal science. Not long since, those eminent doctors had flourished, who, mutually complimenting each other with sounding titles, the profound, the angelic, and the seraphic, drew on themselves the reverence of their own times, and the contempt of all posterity. William, we may suppose, listened to the jargon which then prevailed, with the same attentive admiration as other students; and the wonder is, that his mind ever became enlarged from the shackles of authority and fashion. We Gilpin, Life of Wickliffe. are are told, indeed, of his pursuing with vigour, polite literature, philosophy, and divinity; but, though the industry of the antiquarian had now begun to redeem the Greek and Roman authors from the obscurity of barbarism, the study of them, which had its origin in Italy, was not yet arrived in the university of Oxford; and what was polite literature, philosophy, and divinity, before the Reformation? The Latin language was an essential part of the studies of a person intended for an ecclesiastic. John Leland, or Leilont, then a noted preceptor, and principal of Peckwater Inn at Oxford, was author of a New Grammar, which he published by the persuasion of William, who, it is obvious to suppose, had been a pupil, and had profited by the instructions of this master; and per • Warton, Life of sir T. Pope, p. 140, 2d edit. observes"This Grammatica Nova I saw among Mr. Wise's books (now "dispersed) many years ago. I am confident there is an uncata"logued copy in the Bodleian, among Hearne's or Tanner's. It was " in black letter, and, as I faintly recollect, printed about 1520. "I think there was something in it about Waynflete as an encour "ager of the work, and a patron of letters. I will endeavour to re"cover it." I have not been able to procure any further information concerning this book; but, I apprehend, it was not the first edition which Mr. Warton saw. haps, |