“Manners makyth man”--‘manners’ in the old and wide sense of the word, the equivalent of the Latin ‘mores,’ or of the word ‘conversation’ in St. Paul’s epistles, _i.e._ moral worth and character as contrasted with wealth, or the symbols of rank and power. This is the motto inseparably connected with Wykeham’s foundations at Winchester and Oxford alike, and who shall say how potent this motto has been in inspiring and moulding the character of English manhood and English public schools during the five centuries and more since their great founder was laid to rest? Winchester College is no common place. If Winchester Cathedral, which enshrines the bones of Egbert, should be the Mecca of all pious lovers of the Empire, Winchester College should be the Mecca for all English public school men. Not that Wykeham was the first to found an English public school, whatever exactly the term ‘public school’ may mean. Schools had existed in the land for six or seven hundred years before Wykeham’s day. There were schools in Winchester itself, as, for instance, the ancient Winchester Grammar School, seven of the poor scholars of which received a meal daily in the Hundred Mennes Hall at St. Cross. Wykeham did not invent schools as public schools, but what he did was to give to public schools the special impetus and character which they have borne ever since, and in this sense he is rightly named and revered as the ‘Father of English public schools.’ Earlier schools had almost invariably been linked to collegiate churches--the communities of secular canons--and had occupied always a subordinate position. Wykeham gave an independent position to his school, strengthening it indeed by making it part of a collegiate body, and linking it with the University, through the sister foundation of New College--St. Marie College of Wynchester in Oxford, to give it its full name--which Wykeham had completed in 1386. Before the college could be commenced many preliminaries were necessary,--bulls from the Pope, and other official sanctions, lawsuits and agreements with all kinds of bodies which had an interest in the site; but Wykeham began to organise his school before the permanent buildings were ready, and for some years his scholars were lodged in temporary quarters somewhere by St. Giles’s Hill. The site chosen for the buildings was just outside the city walls to the south, and when at last all was ready, on March 20, 1394, the opening ceremony was solemnized. The aged bishop received the Warden and seventy scholars in the presence chamber of his Episcopal palace of Wolvesey, and the whole body left Wolvesey in solemn procession, and entered and took possession of their new abode.