Wykeham’s immediate purpose in founding a school appears to have been to help to provide a body of educated clergy. Successive visitations of the ‘Black Death’ had depleted the land of clergy, just as it had of labourers, and there was pressing need for a supply of educated men to recruit their ranks. It was to be part of the object of the college to provide such recruits. The scheme of the college and the statutes of the founders were carefully thought out and elaborated. The college was part of a wide educational scheme: a school and something more--a society, with roots in Oxford as well as in Winchester. The society was to comprise a school, a chantry, and a body of Fellows. The school was to consist of seventy scholars, a number chosen very possibly in symbolical allusion to the seventy ordained to teach and preach throughout the land of Galilee, just as Dean Colet afterwards chose ‘a hundred and fifty and three’ as the number of his scholars in the school he founded--St. Paul’s School, London. Over these were a master or _Magister informator_, and an usher or _hostiarius_: the chantry was equipped with three chaplains, three chapel clerks, and [Illustration: TOWER OF AMBULATORY, HOSPITAL OF ST. CROSS, WINCHESTER A picturesque red-brick corner of the domestic buildings of St. Cross Hospital, close to the magnificent grey-stone tower and archway known as Beaufort’s Tower. ] sixteen choristers: the number of Fellows or Socii was ten. The supreme head over this varied community was the Warden. This society, complete in itself and so far independent, was linked with another--the sister foundation of New College, Oxford--in such a way as to gain stability and dignity without subordination. Winchester was to be independent of New, but the influence of New was to be a potent factor in determining the policy of Winchester. The Warden of Winchester was to be appointed by New College, and New College was also to have extensive powers of visitation.