324, 335). Shortly before his death he endowed (16 Aug. 1404) a chantry in this chapel for the souls of his parents and others (Lowth, App. p. xxix). He had already provided for his heir, his sister's grandson, Thomas Perot, who had taken the name of Wykeham, settling on him estates worth six hundred marks a year (ib. p. 268). He left legacies to other kinsmen, to the monks of St. Swithun's and the members of his own foundations, to many other monasteries and churches, to the poor in various prisons, to his executors, and to over 150 friends, officers, and servants, amounting in the total to between six and seven thousand pounds. His crozier (figured in Lowth, p. 263) he bequeathed to New College, his bible to Winchester. The personal bequests and those to the poor he characteristically discharged before his death. His strength gradually failed, but he was able to transact business until four days before his death, on 27 Sept. 1404. Over his remains, within his chantry, was erected a tomb of white marble, with a recumbent effigy and a Latin epitaph. The chantry, except the statues lately restored, and his monument remain untouched. They are figured in the works of Lowth and Longman and elsewhere. Besides the effigy there is a corbel bust of Wykeham made ten years before his death in the muniment-room of Winchester College (Leach, p. 50). In both the face is round and full.
Wykeham had risen in life as a man of affairs, not as a scholar; and though Wycliffe's growl at the preferment of clerks ‘wise in building castles or worldly doing,’ who could not well read their psalter, was no doubt an exaggeration as far as Wykeham was concerned, the list of his books does not point to any superfluity of learning (Lowth, App. p. xxxvii). But, as a contemporary observed, ‘quod minus habuit litteraturæ, laudabili compensavit liberalitate’ (Ann. Henrici IV, p. 391), a liberality which, however conventional on the whole in motive—for he was no innovator—was not only exceptional in its munificence, but showed a consciousness of some of the defects of the school training of his time, his endeavour to correct which bore more fruit than he could have foreseen. That real goodness of heart underlay his generosity there is ample proof. Almost his first act as bishop had been to excuse his poorer manorial tenants customary payments to the amount of 500l.; on three occasions he paid his tenants' share of subsidies granted by parliament; in 1377 he paid off the debts of the priory of Selborne out of his own purse (Moberly, p. 317). He relieved old and impoverished officers of the bishopric, fed at least twenty-four poor people every day during his long episcopate, and kept open house to rich and poor (ib.). At his own cost he repaired bad roads and ruinous churches, and he increased the demesne of the bishopric by estates yielding a rental of two hundred marks a year (ib. p. 319). In religious matters he was conservative. A clerical minister occupied a somewhat ambiguous position in those days of conflict between church and state; but it may safely be asserted that he was not ‘the head of the nationalist party in the English church’ (Moberly, p. 185). Entirely without sympathy with the new ideas which were fermenting within the church, he joined in the repressive measures against Wycliffe and his followers; but his gentle and moderate temper indisposed him to severity, and it was he who induced Archbishop Courtenay to pardon Chancellor Rygge [q. v.] of Oxford in 1382 (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 308). The same qualities made him a more useful adviser to Richard II when he emancipated himself from the yoke of the lords-appellant than many a more gifted statesman.
Wykeham did not escape detraction either in his own or later times. The inaccurate and malicious notes of his life supplied to Leland (Itinerary, iv. 161, vii. p. ix) by that unworthy Wykehamist Dr. John London [q. v.] were effectually exposed by Lowth (p. 287), along with the equally malicious attacks of William Bohun in his ‘English Lawyer’ (1732) and his comments on Nicholas Bacon's ‘Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England’ (1739).
[Two brief biographies of Wykeham, written shortly after his death, are preserved at Winchester College. The earlier and briefer of the two is ascribed by Lowth with much probability to Dr. Thomas Aylward, one of the bishop's executors. The other, which is the fuller and more valuable, bears the title Libellus seu Tractatus de prosapia, vita, et gestis venerabilis patris et domini, domini Willelmi de Wykeham, and is dated 1424. The name of the author, a fellow of one of Wykeham's colleges, was given by Martyn as Heresius, by which Lowth supposed Robert Heete, fellow of Winchester College (1422), to be meant. Both the above are printed in the appendix to Moberly's Life. The Brevis Chronica de ortu, vita, et gestis nobilibus reverendi domini Willelmi de Wykeham, printed (from a manuscript at New College) in Anglia Sacra, is a mere excerpt from the Libellus. Wharton erroneously ascribed it to Dr. Thomas Chaundler, warden of New College, who made it his chief authority for his Collocutiones de laudabili vita et moribus et christiana perfectione Willelmi de Wykeham, written in 1462,
