When I left Winchester, I was lucky enough to end
up studying for primary and post graduate degrees
at Oxford, the Sorbonne, Poitiers, Wales, and
London. At Oxford, I naturally enough headed for
New College, where the architecture, heraldry, and
Wykehamicity felt reassuringly familiar. Both colleges
are soul-stealingly beautiful, but there are strong
differences. New College feels like a vast gothic abbey,
with restful gardens and contemplative cloisters. It has
an unmistakably monastic atmosphere, with an airy
medieval beauty that calms any mood. Winchester is
more of a bishop’s castle, stone rather than lawns,
the smaller scale giving a more focused and
purposeful atmosphere. The fortification at both is
real, as class war was still rife: the St Scholastica’s Day
riots in Oxford and the Peasants’ Revolt were both
within living memory. Winchester is also different
from New College, not to because it alone produces
Wykehamists: a largely benign operation, but one
that can be performed only on the teenage brain.
It has something to do with Winchester having been
able to sail through the centuries charting its own
course and not as part of a flotilla. But it is also linked
to the very strong sense of tradition that continues to
be valued. Even today, alumni are known by
the Founder’s name.
Winchester wants its
fresh-faced New Men
to sit in stunning
settings with gifted
dons and revel in the
pleasure of searching
conversation, a luxury
largely unknown to
their generation.
14 The Wykeham Journal 2014
As one looks at Wykeham’s two colleges, it is easy to
imagine him as some sort of bookish, dreamy cleric,
born to privilege and the country’s top jobs. In fact he
was a poor nobody with no real education (his famous
motto, Manners Makyth Man, is in English not Latin,
and speaks powerfully to the idea that behaviour,
not privilege, defines a person). He earned his vast
fortune, one of the largest in England, on the wool
market, trading exchequer tallies, and using his
contacts at the papal court to manage the revenues
of alien (e.g., French) priories confiscated during
the Hundred Years War. He was a man of the
world, not a theologian.
Another misconception is that he founded his
colleges as a retirement job. In fact, when the
first stone of Winchester College was being laid,
Wykeham was in the thick of a full-scale political
rebellion and armed insurrection against King
Richard II. As the first courses of Chamber Court
and Chapel rose from the ground, he even found time
to switch sides, convince Richard of his fidelity, and
be appointed Chancellor of England for the second
time (1389-1391). When Winchester finally opened
its gates in 1394, Wykeham (in his 70s) had still not
slowed down, and was heavily involved in the knifeedge statecraft marking the close of Richard’s reign,
and with it the end of 245 years of Plantagenet rule.
Our Founder, then, was an undoubted revolutionary,
in business, politics, and education — although not
in religion, where his views were traditional English.
In this year’s journal, we look at how the radical