objection, the whole of Wykeham's biographers, contemporary or posthumous, agree in praising him as highly as Fuller, who says that his "benefaction to learning is not to be paralleled by any English subject in all particulars," and his great innovation, whereby elementary education was taken from the hands of the monks and, as in his own college, established upon an entirely different plan, would alone stamp him as one whose foresight was far beyond his own times. He influenced the nation in a way not easy to over-estimate, inasmuch as he originated, or at least carried into execution, the idea of the great public school, as Englishmen understand it, and, by the building of Winchester College, founded the institution he had long meditated in a way worthy of his design. Previously to the actual construction of the college, he had maintained in temporary shelters numbers of poor students. On the death of the Black Prince, whose fortunes he had vigorously espoused, and the assumption of power by John of Gaunt, Wykeham was impeached on the charge of embezzling the royal revenues, accepting bribes, and the like; and the king laid hands on the temporalities of his see. But almost the last act of Edward III. was to restore what he had seized to the bishop, under certain conditions which show the great wealth of the latter. Milman, in his "Latin Christianity," does full justice to the "splendid, munificent prelate, blameless in character," who devoted his vast riches to the promotion of learning, and says that, though his endeavour to maintain the hierarchical power over humanity was bitterly opposed by Wiclif, "the religious of England may well be proud of both." Wykeham was eighty years of age when he died, and his body lies in the chantry erected by his orders on the south side of the nave.