Wykeham was indeed the first College-founder, at Oxford at all events, who conceived the idea of making his College not a mere eleemosynary institution, but a great ecclesiastical corporation, which should vie both in the splendour of its architecture and the dignity of its corporate life with the Cathedral chapters and the monastic houses. The earlier Heads had been raised above the scholars or Fellows by the luxury of a single private room: they dined in the common hall with the rest. The Warden of New College was to live, like an abbot, in a house of his own, within the College walls, but with a separate hall, kitchen, and establishment. His salary of £40 was princely by comparison with the 40_s._, with commons, assigned to the Master of Balliol, or even the forty marks allotted to the Warden of Merton. Instead of the jealous provisions against burdening the College with the entertainment of guests which we meet with in the Paris College-statutes, ample provision is made for the hospitable reception of important strangers by the Warden in his own Hall, or (in his absence) by the Sub-Warden and Fellows in the Great Hall, as they would have been entertained in a Benedictine abbey by the abbot or the prior (the Sub-Warden being evidently intended to hold a position analogous to the latter). The Master of Peterhouse in Cambridge was allowed to have a single horse, on the ground that it would be “indecent for him to go afoot, nor could he, without scandal to the College, hire a hack” (_conducere hakenys_): the Warden of New College is to have _six_ horses at his disposal, for himself and the “discreet, apt, and circumspect Fellow,” with four servants, who attended upon the annual “progress” over the College estates--more than some provincial canons allowed to a cathedral dean. In chapel the Warden was placed on a level with cathedral canons by the permission to wear an amice _de grisio_ (vair or ermine).