If you are a Wykehamist, we repeat, you well know Saint Catherine’s Hill. Oft, in happy, bygone days—far too soon flown—have you wended, with a joyous band of your schoolfellows, across the meadows and by the brink of the meandering Itchen towards your favourite hill. Oft, in summer-tide, have you plunged into the deep pool hard by the mill—oft have you thrown the line upon the glassy water and dragged forth the speckled trout—oft have you lingered on the rustic bridge and watched the light skiff, rowed by a comrade, shoot swiftly under it—oft have you joined the merry groups seated on the banks at the foot of the hill, or started in the mimic chase with the fleetest runners of the crew—oft have you climbed the steep sides of the eminence, have tracked its circling trench, threaded the intricacies of its maze, or, reclining beneath the shade of its tree, enjoyed the glorious prospect of the ancient city commanded from the point. Oft thence have you gazed upon the turrets and crocketed pinnacles of the venerable pile, erected by your benefactor, the revered William of Wykeham. Deep is the debt you owe him. Nobler seat of learning there cannot be than Winchester College; second only in architectural beauty to regal Eton. Well-nigh five hundred years has your famous school endured. May it last five hundred more! Beautiful, most beautiful, is, now-a-days, the view from Saint Catherine’s Hill; but in the middle of the 16th century, when we must now regard it, it was infinitely more so. From this height, the fine old city, skirted on the south by lordly trees, was beheld in its highest perfection. Thronged with convents, colleges, hospitals, churches, and other buildings of ancient date, and great beauty of architecture, and boasting one of the grandest cathedrals in the kingdom, Winchester had then a grave, monastic air—something of which it yet retains, despite the many and grievous changes it has undergone. True, its religious communities and charitable establishments had been suppressed by Henry VIII., and their revenues seized upon, but the spoiler had spared the edifices. Most of these monasteries and convents were restored by Mary, and the long exiled monks and nuns had just got back to their old abodes. The aspect of Winchester, however, at the epoch in question, was martial, as well as monastic. Besides well-fortified walls, flanked by numerous towers, and defended by bastions, the city possessed two large castles, one of which, built by William the Conqueror, occupied a commanding position on the south-west, and covered a vast area with its works and outworks. This fine old Norman castle, eventually demolished by Cromwell, was besieged and taken by the Dauphin of France in the reign of John, but it held out gallantly against Simon de Montfort and the barons in the days of Henry III. In Mary’s time it was in good repair, and well supplied with ordnance and men.