Wykeham’s ultimate purpose in founding his College was conventional enough; in the manner of carrying it out there was much that was original. It was, however, rather the greater scale of the whole design than any one original feature that gives an historical appropriateness to the name “New” which has accidentally cleaved to “St. Marie Colledge of Wynchester” in Oxford. In the number of the scholars, in the liberality of their allowances, in the architectural splendour of the buildings of his College, Wykeham eclipsed all previous Oxford College-founders. In many respects the founder of Queen’s had, indeed, aimed as high as Wykeham; but he had begun to build and was not able to finish; his Provost and apostolic twelve never grew to the seventy which he contemplated. What Eglesfield designed, Wykeham accomplished. The most original feature of Wykeham’s design was the connection of his College at Oxford with a grammar-school at a distance. The fundamental vice of mediæval education was the prevalent neglect of grammatical discipline and the absurdly early age at which boys were plunged into the subtleties of Logic and the mysteries of the Latin Aristotle, the very language of which, unclassical as it was, they could hardly understand. Wykeham had no thought of a Renaissance, or of any fundamental change in the educational system of the day; he was only anxious to remedy a defect which all practical men acknowledged. Boys were still to be taught Latin chiefly that they might read Aristotle, and Peter the Lombard or the Corpus Juris; but they were to learn to walk before they were encouraged to run. Hard by his own cathedral, the Bishop erected a College for a Warden, Sub-Warden, ten Fellows, a Head Master, Usher, and seventy scholars, with a proper staff of chaplains and choristers. From this College exclusively were to be selected the seventy scholars of St. Marie Colledge of Wynchester in Oxford; and no one could be elected before fifteen or after nineteen, except in the case of “Founder’s-kin” scholars, who were eligible up to thirty. This implies that the usual age of Wykehamists upon entering the University would be much above the average, since it was quite common for boys to begin their course in Arts at fourteen or earlier. By the erection of his College at Winchester, Wykeham became the founder of the English public-school system.