Not the least interesting feature of the Founder's chapel is its
detached bell-tower, seen in the next picture, on the north side of
the cloisters. He obtained leave to place this on the city wall, a
large section of which the College undertook to maintain-thus adding
a permanent charm to their own garden.
The magnificence of the Founder Bishop is well seen in his splendid
crozier, bequeathed to him by his college, and still preserved on the
north side of the chapel. The results of his work, for Oxford and for
learning, will be briefly told of in the next chapter.
[Plate XI. New College : The Tower]
NEW COLLEGE (2) HISTORY
"Round thy cloisters, in moonlight,
Branching dark, or touched with white:
Round old chill aisles, where, moon-smitten,
Blanches the Orate, written
Under each worn old-world face."
L. JOHHSON.
William of Wykeham's College had other marked features besides its
magnificent scale. Previous colleges had grown; at New College
everything was organized from the first. As the great architectural
History of Cambridge says: "For the first time, chapel, hall,
library, treasury, the Warden's lodgings, a sufficient range of
chambers, the cloister, the various domestic offices, are provided
for and erected without change of plan." The chapel especially gave
the model for the T shape, a choir and transepts without a nave,
which has become the normal form in Oxford. The influence of
Wykeham's building plan may be traced elsewhere also--at Cambridge
and even in Scotland.
In these well-planned buildings, definite arrangements were made for
college instruction, as opposed to the general teaching open to the
whole University; special /informafores/ were provided, who were to
supervise the work of all scholars up to the age of sixteen. This
marks the beginning of the Tutorial System, which has ever since
played so great a part in the intellectual life of England's two old
Universities.
Wykeham's scholars all came from Winchester, and were supposed to be
/pauperes/, but as one of the first, Henry Chichele, afterwards Henry
V's Archbishop of Canterbury and the Founder of All Souls', was a son
of the Lord Mayor of London, it is obvious that the qualification of
"poverty" was interpreted with some laxity. It was not until the
middle of the nineteenth century that others than Wykehamists were
admitted as scholars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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