The Duke of York was defeated and slain, and King Henry was restored to his Queen and son, and placed at the head of a victorious army. But the son of the Duke of York occupied London, and took the decisive step of causing himself to be proclaimed King of England as Edward the Fourth. The battle of Towton, fought on the 29th of March, 1461, in which both Kings were present, was the crisis of the struggle between the houses. Edward's triumph was complete. Twenty-eight thousand Lancastrians perished on the field, and Henry with difficulty escaped to the Scottish borders. At the battle of Hexham in 1465, he witnessed the rout of another army that had rallied round him; and again escaping from the field, he sought an asylum in the wilds of Lancashire and Westmoreland. There he wandered more than a year, protected from the angry search of King Edward by the loyal devotion of the inhabitants of these districts. One John Machell, of Crakenthorp in Westmoreland, is mentioned in Rymer' as often having given shelter and concealment to the fugitive King.

At length a monk of Abingdon betrayed him; and King Henry was taken away captive to London. At his entrance into the capital of his late kingdom, the discrowned monarch was treated with studied indignity. Proclamation was made, forbidding any one to show him any sign of respect; and with his feet tied to the stirrups as a prisoner, he was publicly led three times round the pillory, and then conducted to the Tower, where he was kept for several years in rigorous confinement; his wife and son being during this time refugees abroad.

In 1470, the quarrel between Warwick and Edward caused the King-making baron to espouse the Lancastrian side. Edward was driven from the kingdom, and Warwick solemnly conducted Henry from the Tower. With the crown on his head, the restored King was led in solemn procession to St. Paul's. A Parliament was summoned, in which Edward was pronounced an usurper, and the crown was declared to belong to King Henry and his heirs.

Henry had exhibited Christian fortitude in his prison, and he showed Christian charity when thus unexpectedly re-invested with power. Holinshed collects several anecdotes of Henry's forgiving disposition, one of which clearly refers to this date, and I will cite

2 Rymer, xi. 575; see Lingard, vol. v. 245.

here the passage of the old chronicler :-" He was so pitiful, that when he saw the quarters of a traitor against his crown over Criplegate, he willed it to be taken awaie, with these words, 'I will not have any Christian so cruelly handled for my sake.' Many great offences he willingly pardoned, and receiving at a time a great blow from a wicked man which compassed his death, he only said, 'Forsooth, forsooth, yee doo fowlie to smite a King anointed so.' Another also, which thrust him into the side with a sword, when he was prisoner in the Tower, was by him pardoned when he was restored to his throne and kingdom."

Henry's restoration to liberty and power lasted only for a few months. Warwick had released him in October, and before the end of the following April, King Edward had returned, Warwick had been defeated and killed at Barnet, and King Henry was sent back to his prison, in the Tower, never to quit it again alive. On the 4th of May, Queen Margaret, who had brought an army over from France to aid Warwick, was defeated and taken prisoner at Tewkesbury, and Henry's son, Prince Edward, was brutally put to death by the Yorkists in cold blood after the battle. On the 22nd of the same month it was announced to the citizens of London that King Henry had died in the Tower of grief. No one believed the assertion of King Edward that his rival king had died a bloodless death. A report, almost universal, prevailed that the royal captive had been murdered, and Richard of Gloucester was charged by public fame as having committed the murder with his own hand. No certain evidence ever was or ever can be found as to the precise mode of King Henry's death; and the characters of Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third form the strongest testimony against them.

Henry's body was first buried privately at Chertsey Abbey. The popular reverence for him caused a belief to spread that miracles were wrought at his tomb at that place, and the Yorkist rulers caused his bones to be removed to Windsor. Henry the Seventh finally deposited them among the tombs of the English kings at Westminster.

The same prince, when he had obtained the English throne, applied to Pope Julius to canonise Henry the Sixth, and surely there is many a saint in the calendar far less deserving of that honour. The fees demanded at Rome for a royal canonisation were so heavy that the frugal mind of King Henry the Seventh

abandoned the project. But the virtues of Henry the Sixth are his best canonisation; nor need he have a fairer shrine than the College which his own piety founded, and which his own bounty endowed.

Having thus sketched the history of the foundation of Eton, and of our Founder, I proceed to the separate consideration of the eminent Etonians of the fifteenth century, and foremost of these stands, our first actual Provost :

WILLIAM OF WAYNFLETE.

THE father of this distinguished statesman, divine, and scholar seems to have sometimes borne the surname of Patten, sometimes that of Barbour. Indeed surnames among the mass of the population were at that period used with little fixity or regularity. William the son was known, at least after the period of his taking holy orders, by the designation of William of Waynflete. The old chronicler, Holinshed, says "It was a fashion in those days from a learned spirituall man to take awaie the father's surname (were it never so worshipful or ancient) and give him for it the name of the town he was born in." He cites several instances of this, and states "that it in like manner happened to William Waynflete, is a matter right proveable."

Waynflete was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and he seems to have entered into holy orders in the year 1420. His age at this time may be guessed at, but the precise year of his birth is uncertain. In 1429, he was appointed Head-Master of Winchester, and for many years Waynflete discharged his duties there ably, diligently and successfully, when King Henry the Sixth became acquainted with him and resolved to make him the chief of his Eton College. Waynflete thus became an intimate favourite with King Henry; and to his honour be it recorded, that he was true to his royal patron in his adversity as well as in the time of his prosperous fortunes. Waynflete's appointment, first to the HeadMastership and then to the Provostship of Eton, has already been mentioned. His biographer, Chandler, says his family arms. had been a field fusily ermine and sable: and that when he was made Provost he inserted on a chief of the second three lilies slipped,

3 Holinshed, 232; Chandler's Life of Waynflete, p. 11.

argent; being part of the arms of the College: which addition he made because from Eton he derived honour and dignity.

In 1447, the wealthy and important see of Winchester became vacant by the death of Cardinal Beaufort: and King Henry, of whom it is truly written that he was "circumspect in ecclesiastical matters, and particularly cautious not to bestow preferment on persons undeserving, or in a manner unworthy of his own dignity," immediately appointed Waynflete to that high episcopal dignity. He was consecrated at Eton on the 13th of July in that year; on which occasion the Winchester College presented him with a horse which cost 67. 13s. 4d.; and gave money (13s. 4d.) to the boys at Eton. And it was at Eton that the new bishop held his first general ordination on Sunday, the 23rd of December following, by special licence from the Bishop of Lincoln.

:

In the next year Waynflete received a peculiarly honourable testimony of the confidence reposed in him by King Henry. The King, possibly perceiving the troubles that were about to overwhelm the nation, was solicitous to insure the completion of his two Colleges and made a testamentary provision for it, whereby he declared that "in consideration of the great discretion, the high truth, and the fervent zeal for his welfare," which he had proved in the Bishop of Winchester, he constituted him by his will, dated at Eton on the 12th of March, 1447, his surveyor, executor, and director; and also sole arbiter of any variance which might happen with his feoffees.

Waynflete, in the year after his promotion, founded Magdalen College, Oxford; and exerted himself zealously in the general advancement of learning in that University. He was now also prominently engaged by King Henry in the administration of State affairs; the condition of which was rapidly becoming more and more alarming. The continued ill-success of our arms in France had made the nation discontented with its rulers; and the public disaffection and disorder was fearfully augmented by the factions which raged among the leading nobility. Waynflete took an active and wise part in the suppression of Cade's insurrection. When summoned to attend a council in the tower, where Archbishop Stafford, Lord High Chancellor, had taken refuge, Waynflete forthwith repaired thither to give it as his opinion that by offering hopes of pardon to the mass of the insurgents they 5 Chandler, p. 42.

4 Chandler, p. 40.

might probably win them over without bloodshed. Accordingly, Waynflete formed one of a deputation, which, on the next day, crossed the river and undertook the perilous task of parleying with the rebels. By wisely offering pardon to all but the ringleaders, and by causing a grant of pardon under the Great Seal to be passed and published, Waynflete drew back many to their loyalty; the rest of the rebels began to doubt and distrust each other, and the dispersion of the formidable host of mutineers commenced that very night.

In a similar spirit of wisdom and moderation, Waynflete seems to have earnestly, though ineffectually, exerted his influence both spiritual and temporal to avert the threatening outbreak of civil war, between the partisans of the claims of the House of York, and the adherents of the reigning dynasty. He was with King Henry when the Yorkist and the Lancastrians were first arrayed in arms against each other on Blackheath, in 1452. Waynflete was then employed by his sovereign on the welcome task of going to the camp of the enemies, to inquire into the causes of their rising in arms, and to propose terms of reconciliation. He succeeded in bringing about a temporary compromise between the parties; and at least delayed the shedding of English blood in civil war. In 1456, Waynflete was appointed Lord Chancellor of England: an office then usually appropriated to ecclesiastics. Waynflete held the Great Seal of England for three years and nine months; a period of civil warfare, during which he firmly adhered to the House of Lancaster, and presided in some of the most important Parliaments that were convened in Henry's name during that struggle. He continued high in Henry's favour, and loyal to Henry's cause to the very last. And after the overthrow of the Lancastrians, though at first menaced with the displeasure of Edward the Fourth, he continued unmolested and respected by the victorious Yorkists. He lived to see the triumph of Henry the Seventh, and to rejoice at the dissensions, which had so long afflicted England, being terminated by that Prince's marriage with Elizabeth of York. Waynflete died in 1486, having been Bishop of Winchester for thirty-nine years. During the latter part of his long life the duties of his See, and the affairs of his own foundation, Magdalen College, Oxford, principally occupied his attention. But he was not unmindful of Eton. Leland, the old antiquary, writes that he had been informed on good authority