William Wykeham’s early ecclesiastical career

Virginia Davis

Modern writers have largely neglected William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester 1367–1404. His importance as a key figure in the circle around Edward III in the latter part of Edward’s reign has been widely recognized.¹ His apparent greed in lapping up benefices until he was the most beneficed pluralist in Christendom by 1366 has been criticized. Wykeham’s tenure of the see of Winchester for nearly forty years has been largely ignored and it is only his extensive activities in lay and ecclesiastical building projects and his foundation of the pioneering linked colleges of Winchester College and New College, Oxford which have been studied in depth.² Early biographers in the century after Wykeham’s death provided short lives of the bishop which were somewhat hagiographical in tone.³ More recent all-round studies of Wykeham’s life and career were also the work of Wykehamists. In 1758 Robert Lowth published a biography of Wykeham which was based on extensive research in the Winchester College archives. Lowth, the son of a Winchester cathedral prebendary who had been a scholar at both Winchester College and New College was in 1764 a candidate for the wardenship of Winchester, although ultimately unsuccessful.⁴ He was an accomplished poet and distinguished pamphleteer, and his biography of Wykeham has remained the most comprehensive archival-based study of the bishop’s career. His work substantially influenced later writers and works, in particular the biography written by George Moberly, bishop of Salisbury.⁵ In 1835 Moberly had been appointed headmaster of Winchester College, a post which he held for thirty years and in which he was followed by his son in law George Ridding, one of the most influential of the nineteenth-century headmasters.⁶ George Moberly’s mid nineteenth-century work has remained the fullest biography; more recent books such as Hayter’s William of Wykeham, Patron of the Arts have concentrated on particular aspects of Wykeham’s career.⁷ This article arises from research carried out for a new biography of Wykeham.⁸ It will explore the circumstances surrounding Wykeham’s change of career direction and its possible motivations and then proceed to examine his rapid acquisition of benefices in the early thirteen-sixties, before his elevation to the episcopate in 1366.

Wykeham’s career was a dramatic ‘rags to riches’ story. The level of social mobility he achieved in his own lifetime would more typically have taken several generations. Born in Wickham in 1324, son of a Hampshire peasant villager, he rose – via royal service to King Edward III – to be bishop of Winchester, England’s wealthiest episcopal see. On Wykeham’s death in 1404, Pope Boniface IX translated John of Gaunt’s legitimized son Henry Beaufort from the bishopric of Lincoln to Winchester.⁹ The Hampshire peasant who had risen to become bishop of Winchester was succeeded by the king’s half-brother. The contrast between the respective backgrounds of these two bishops of Winchester highlights Wykeham’s enormous personal achievement.

Why did Wykeham enter the church? It has always been assumed that Wykeham was destined to become a cleric. His medieval biographers portray a pious, devout boy. They refer in particular to his early devotion to the Virgin Mary, to whom both of his educational foundations were later dedicated. Wykeham is depicted in close association with the Virgin in sculptures and stained glass at Winchester and New College and she appeared on his episcopal seal, reflecting his long-standing devotion to her.¹⁰ Robert Heete, fellow of Winchester College, writing a decade or two after the bishop’s death, provided an account of Wykeham’s daily attendance at mass in Winchester cathedral while a schoolboy. Aylward’s biography claimed that every morning Wykeham used to kneel near an image of the Virgin Mary which stood against a column in the nave and listen to mass being said by one of the monks from St. Swithun’s priory, Richard Pekis, which was ‘vulgarly called Pekismass’.¹¹ Wykeham’s early biographers certainly convey the impression that Wykeham was destined for an ecclesiastical career from an early age. Yet a close examination of the evidence surrounding his ordination to the priesthood and the timing of his early acquisition of benefices suggests otherwise.

Wykeham was well into medieval middle age when he finally became ordained acolyte in 1361. His advanced age (thirty-seven) at ordination as a priest was relative unusual in the mid fourteenth century. The minimum canonical age for being ordained acolyte was fourteen and the fact that Wykeham was thirty-seven when ordained acolyte and thirty-eight by the time he had attained the priesthood is in dramatic contrast to the majority of his contemporaries who became bishops. Bishop Buckingham (Lincoln, 1363–98) had been ordained acolyte aged twenty-four and was a priest by the time he was twenty-six; Archbishop Courtney (London, 1375–81) appears to have taken orders as soon as it was canonically permitted. Richard Scrope, later archbishop of York (1398–1405), was not an acolyte when appointed official to the bishop of Ely in 1375, but by the following year he had been ordained to the priesthood aged twenty-six.¹² There were other models for Wykeham’s behaviour, however, for example his fellow royal servant, the successful lawyer-clerk and diplomat Michael Northborough, bishop of London (1354–61), who had been collecting benefices from the early thirteen-forties, but remained un-ordained until he was provided to the bishopric of London in 1354.¹³

That Wykeham had reached the age of thirty-eight before committing himself irrevocably to a career in the church clearly suggests that – even though he was to reach the pinnacle of the English church hierarchy – this was not part of his original career plan. His decision to enter the church marks a decisive change of career direction in middle age. Once his mind was made up, he acted with speed, proceeding rapidly to attain the status of priesthood within twelve months. This was despite the canonical injunction that a year should elapse between ordination as acolyte and as sub-deacon.¹⁴

Most boys undergoing formal education, as Wykeham did in Winchester in the thirteen-thirties,¹⁵ received the first tonsure but this, usually taken at about the age of twelve, did not commit a boy to a lifetime of celibacy or becoming a priest. Having been tonsured, there were seven formal stages to ordination. These seven steps were divided into two parts: the minor orders comprised the first four – janitor, lector, exorcist and acolyte – and the major orders the remaining three, which were sub-deacon, deacon and finally priest.¹⁶ It was not until a man reached the level of sub-deacon that he was firmly committed to a celibate career within the church. Indeed the first three steps – janitor, lector and exorcist – were clearly not regarded as particularly significant and were not usually a matter of record for episcopal registrars.¹⁷ Bishops’ registers most commonly note men’s ordinations once they reached the level of acolyte, implying that this status was regarded as a significant and worthy of record. Even so, ordination as an acolyte did not yet require the abandonment of lay life and an acolyte was not yet irrevocably committed to a career in the church.

There is no evidence that Wykeham considered entering the church before the late thirteen-fifties; up to this point his working life had been pursued as a layman. Throughout his early career Wykeham moved in circles of laymen and clerics, working equally easily with senior churchmen such as Bishop Edington of Winchester and with aristocratic laymen such as the Foxley family, father and son. That Wykeham had not even been ordained as an acolyte by the late thirteen-fifties suggests that a career in the church was not what he was seeking. He was a clerk in royal service, not a cleric. There was nothing to stop him behaving as some other clerks in royal service did, remaining a layman and being paid for his services by grants and annuities. This, for example, was the case with his younger contemporary, the poet Thomas Hoccleve (d. 1426), who rose to become one of the senior clerks in the privy seal office. In his poem The Regiment of Princes, Hoccleve wrote that when he fell in love he abandoned plans to enter the church and married instead.¹⁸

The early support obtained from his patron Bishop Edington was secular rather than ecclesiastical in nature; Wykeham was granted wardships rather than ecclesiastical benefices.¹⁹ Had Wykeham been seeking to enter the church, it would not have been difficult for Bishop Edington to find him a benefice in the wake of the destruction wrought by the Black Death. Nearly half of all beneficed clergy died in the diocese of Winchester when the initial plague outbreak struck and in the months immediately after the worst of the plague had passed, Bishop Edington was anxiously seeking appropriate candidates to fill the many vacancies in his diocese. In 1349 he had over 300 vacancies to fill in the diocese, compared with twelve in 1348 and even in the early thirteen-fifties the numbers of vacancies remained above pre-plague levels.²⁰ In these circumstances, it would not have been difficult to present Wykeham to a benefice.

Wykeham’s decision to enter the church was not a change of direction hastily undertaken; there was no ‘road to Damascus’ experience. Rather, in the late thirteen-fifties Wykeham must have come to realize that becoming a churchman was a wise move. From late 1357, Edward III’s recognition of the valuable services which Wykeham was rendering to him is evident from the grants of ecclesiastical benefices which begin in November of that year. Such grants were a normal way for a king to reward clerks in his service but from Wykeham’s personal perspective they moved him to consider his future. The timing of Wykeham’s ordinations in 1361 reinforces the suggestion that even in the late thirteen-fifties, when Edward III was beginning to reward him with benefices in the royal gift, Wykeham was only cautiously exploring the idea of becoming a priest.

At the end of November 1357 Edward made his first presentation of a benefice to Wykeham, the Pulham rectory in Norfolk.²¹ Interestingly, Pulham, worth £53 6s 8d, had earlier been held by Michael Northborough when he was Edward III’s secretary and was clearly reguarded as a suitable benefice for a rising member of the royal circle.²² However, Wykeham was never instituted at Pulham; owing to tension between king and pope, inflamed by the bitter dispute between Edward III and Thomas Lisle, bishop of Ely, who had fled to the papal court at Avignon in 1356, this presentation became the subject of litigation at the papal curia.²³ In April 1359 Wykeham was granted an annuity of £20 from King Edward III pending the successful resolution of the dispute.²⁴ Wykeham’s ambivalence about becoming a churchman clearly remained since, while awaiting the outcome of the litigation, he still made no move towards ordination as a priest. Even in March 1359 when Edward III granted him the prebend of Flixton in Coventry and Lichfield cathedral, he did not proceed to become an acolyte.²⁵ This grant, too, fell foul of the tense relationship between king and pope, this time over a dispute as to whether the king’s chaplain Robert Stretton was a suitable candidate to be bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. Although Wykeham’s presentation to Flixton prebend was reiterated by the king in August 1360, he was left in limbo, the presentation ignored by the guardian of the spiritual property of Coventry and Lichfield diocese during the vacancy.²⁶ Only in the spring of 1361, by which time Robert Stretton was firmly in place as bishop, was Wykeham successfully installed in this prebend. He did not go to Lichfield cathedral for the installation in person, but sent instead a proxy, Nicholas Ivinghoe.²⁷ While this may reflect the fact that Wykeham was an exceedingly busy man, actively concerned with a range of royal business, it also suggests that he remained ambivalent about a career in the church, though this is clearly conjecture.

A third early preferment, and the first one which Wykeham actually obtained, was the grant on Tuesday 5 May 1360 of the deanery of St. Martin le Grand, London.²⁸ St. Martin le Grand, a royal free chapel, was situated in the City of London very close to St. Paul’s cathedral. By the fourteenth century, the majority of the eleven men who held prebends in the free chapel were active royal servants, so Wykeham was not unusual among them. However, he may also have been attracted by the position because St. Martin le Grand was urgently in need of major building works to restore this prestigious free chapel to its former glory, a task which Wykeham began immediately.²⁹

Wykeham hesitated to embrace the idea that his future career lay in the church. Even in the late thirteen-fifties he was reluctant to make a move in this direction despite the evident opportunities for wealth and advancement which it offered. The year 1361 was marked by a momentous change of direction in career terms. By now being referred to in administrative documents as ‘the king’s beloved clerk’,³⁰ he was an increasingly valued figure in the circle of men surrounding the king at court.³¹ By mid 1361 royal writs were being issued with the subscription, ‘By the King on the information of William of Wykeham’, while the first description of Wykeham as the king’s secretary is found in August 1361.³² It was not, however, just in terms of his growing influence within the royal circle that 1361 was important for Wykeham; this was also the year in which he finally made a decisive and significant alteration in his career. In December 1361, after a period of hovering on the edge of becoming a churchman, Wykeham took the final step. In a small ceremony held during mass on Sunday 5 December in Bishop Edington’s private chapel at Southwark palace, he was ordained acolyte.³³ He was aged thirty-seven. Wykeham then moved rapidly through the levels of ordination to achieve priestly status within six months, being ordained as priest by Edington in Southwark manor chapel on 12 June 1362.³⁴ Henceforth Wykeham’s rise in the church hierarchy was nothing short of dazzling. Within five years he was bishop of Winchester, the wealthiest diocese in the English church and one of the richest in Christendom.

What brought about this change of mind, this shift in career direction from a resolutely secular career in royal service to a high-flying ecclesiastical career? As indicated above, there was no sudden moment of conversion. One influence may have been the return of a virulent outbreak of the plague in 1361. While the overall effect of this outbreak was not as drastic as that of 1348–9, observed by Wykeham while in the service of Bishop Edington early in his career, nonetheless mortality rates were high – mortality among the clergy in Lincolnshire, for example, was about three times higher than normal.³⁵ Contemporary moralists such as the chronicler John of Reading regarded the plague as being God’s vengeance on an unworthy people.³⁶ Among the people whom Wykeham knew and worked with, a number of important figures died of the plague, including perhaps Henry Grosmont, duke of Lancaster.³⁷ Other wealthy figures were also victims. Henry Pycard, ex-mayor of London and royal office-holder who memorably had recently hosted a lavish dinner in Coldharbour Mansion for four kings – Edward III of England, Jean I of France, David of Scotland and Peter of Cyprus – had died by early July.³⁸ Edward’s own daughter Princess Margaret, who had recently married Wykeham’s ward John Hastings, the thirteenth earl of Pembroke, died late that year.³⁹ Clearly, entering the church was no protection against the plague since no fewer than three English and Welsh prelates died of its effects in 1361, as did Richard Kilvington, dean of St. Paul’s cathedral.⁴⁰ Nonetheless the high levels of mortality to be seen in London and throughout England in 1361 would certainly have focused Wykeham’s attention on thoughts of the afterlife.

In the absence of autobiographical writings it is impossible to know about possible changes in personal circumstances which might have occasioned Wykeham’s change in attitude towards a career in the church. Rather than a sudden religious conversion, however, it is more likely that Wykeham embraced an ecclesiastical career in the early thirteen-sixties because of his increasing conviction that riches and opportunities were likely to be very much more accessible as a churchman than as a layman from a peasant background. Without the backing of family resources Wykeham was dependent on royal largesse or membership of a noble affinity. He did not, for example, enjoy the privileges of his near-contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer, who was to follow in Wykeham’s footsteps as clerk of the king’s works in the thirteen-nineties.⁴¹ Chaucer had been born into a wealthy London merchant family, and had money behind him which offered him some freedom of action, even within the bounds of royal service, and left him free to marry.⁴² Wykeham’s case was different. Elevation to the deanship of St. Martin le Grand where Wykeham’s talents as a building project manager could be utilized to the full may have influenced his decision, increasing the realization that many of his passions and interests could be carried forward within the framework of the English church hierarchy.

What was remarkable about Wykeham and the benefices he held was not just the huge income he derived from them, but also the short period within which he acquired them. With the exception of the East Anglian rectory of Pulham to which the king had tried to appoint him in 1357, all the other benefices for which dates of acquisition are known were acquired between May 1360 and the end of 1363. During this period thirty-two benefices passed through his hands, eighteen of them being acquired (and in some cases disposed of ) in 1361 alone. All of the benefices were granted by Edward III, often while he was in temporary control of the right to present due to vacancies of bishoprics or abbeys. Wykeham was not in breach of contemporary canon law in amassing this portfolio of benefices. In 1366, when the papacy required declaration of all pluralists’ holdings, Wykeham only held a single benefice with cure of souls, the archdeaconry of Lincoln, although in addition he held eleven benefices without cure, all of which were prebends in cathedral chapters or in other collegiate churches.

Edward III began to shower his trusted royal servant with benefices from early July 1361.⁴³ In the second half of 1361 the king granted Wykeham no fewer than fifteen benefices, some of which he only retained for a few weeks before exchanging them for others. There is no doubt that he was high in royal favour at this period. This flood of benefices predated Wykeham’s ordination as acolyte in early December 1361. It is perhaps surprising, since he must now have had his sights set firmly on an ecclesiastical career, that he delayed even beginning to be ordained until December of that year. However, the explanation may simply be that the opportunity did not present itself. Bishop Edington held no general ordination ceremonies on the stipulated ember days in February, May or September 1361, perhaps because of the dangers from the plague.⁴⁴ The loss of the London register of Michael Northburgh (1355–61) means it is not known if there were other ceremonies held during this period in London which Wykeham could have attended with permission from his diocesan bishop, Edington.⁴⁵ It would also have been possible for Wykeham to be ordained at a private ceremony by the bishop, had he been keen to do so; in January 1361 Bishop Edington had ordained a single acolyte in Farnham castle chapel.⁴⁶ Even now, however, he was clearly not yet prepared to take the final step of committing himself to a clerical career; had he been ready, Wykeham could have taken the opportunity to ordained as a subdeacon at the same time as acolyte, a not-uncommon process.

On Saturday 10 July at Westminster, Edward, who had perhaps just received the news from Avignon of the death of the controversial Bishop Thomas Lisle on 23 June from plague, regranted the disputed rectory of Pulham to Wykeham.⁴⁷ King Edward followed this two days later with a grant of the prebend of Church Withington in Hereford cathedral worth £7 1s 4d.⁴⁸ This was in the king’s gift because Hereford diocese was vacant. On Friday 16 July 1361, Edward, now at his favoured manor of Henley and with Wykeham likely to have been present in his household, took advantage of the fact that the recent death from the plague of bishop Thomas Fastolf of St. David’s offered him further opportunities to dispose of ecclesiastical patronage. The king therefore granted two Welsh prebends to Wykeham. These were Treffelegh prebend in the collegiate church of Llanddewi Brewi in Cardiganshire in the diocese of St. David and the prebend of Trathelan in the collegiate church of Abergwili in the same diocese.⁴⁹ Eight days later, on Saturday 24 July 1361, Edward presented Wykeham to a vacant Hereford prebend in Bromyard collegiate church worth £20.⁵⁰ His interests were also being promoted by royal officials at the papal curia. In February 1361, a joint petition from the kings of England and France (John II, who knew Wykeham well as a result of his lengthy period as a French hostage at Edward’s court in the thirteen-fifties), asked the pope for a prebend in Lincoln cathedral for Wykeham.⁵¹ In the end Wykeham did not obtain a prebend in Lincoln cathedral until the late summer of 1362 but on 1 August 1361 Pope Innocent VI provided him to a prebend in St. Andrew’s collegiate church in Bishop’s Auckland in Durham diocese.⁵² However, Pope Innocent VI commissioned Wykeham’s fellow royal clerk, Adam Houghton, bishop-elect of St. David’s, directing him to examine Wykeham and if he was found fit to allow him to take this prebend. At this point Wykeham decided not to pursue the issue further, as he explained in his 1366 pluralism return.⁵³

On Monday 16 August, Wykeham was granted the prebend of Yetminster Prima in Salisbury cathedral.⁵⁴ By this time he had resigned the controversial rectory of Pulham, of which he had been trying to get possession since November 1357.⁵⁵ By now he may have felt that the range of other benefices which he had acquired in recent months adequately compensated for the potential loss of income from Pulham rectory, which was worth at least £20 a year. However, divesting himself of Pulham would have been convenient, because it was the one benefice Wykeham held which entailed the care of souls; a care that he was not in a position to exercise since he had yet to be ordained. He was thus in an awkward position vis-à-vis the church authorities. Concerns had already been expressed by Pope Innocent VI as to his suitability to be presented to the Bishop’s Auckland prebend. In the light of these queries and his meteoric rise both in royal favour and in ecclesiastical circles it is not surprising that he was attracting some hostile criticism.

There was no slowing down, however, in Wykeham’s gathering of benefices without the cure of souls throughout the autumn of 1361. On 24 September 1361, Edward granted Wykeham the prebend of the Altar of St. Mary in Beverley collegiate church, worth £16, while on 1 October, with more ecclesiastical patronage in the royal gift because of the recent death from plague of the bishop of London, Michael Northborough, Wykeham was presented to Oxgate prebend in St. Paul’s cathedral in London.⁵⁶ This was the first of several prebends Wykeham was to hold in St. Paul’s cathedral, although the rationale for the exchanges he made within the cathedral is unclear. However, he consistently held a prebend in St. Paul’s until he resigned all his benefices upon becoming bishop in 1367.⁵⁷

By the autumn of 1361, then, Wykeham had a clutch of benefices and he began to play the market with exchanges, although he also continued to acquire additional benefices from Edward III. The reasoning behind all of Wykeham’s exchanges is unclear at this point and it is apparent that complex negotiations were involved as Wykeham sought to rationalize his mass of benefices.⁵⁸ Thus, for example, he resigned his prebend in Bromyard collegiate church on 23 October 1361 and it was subsequently granted to the well-connected civil lawyer John de Waltham, nephew of archbishop Thoresby, archbishop of York (1353–73).⁵⁹ This resignation and grant are likely to be connected with that which took place three days later on 26 October when Wykeham and John de Waltham exchanged other benefices. Wykeham exchanged his Coventry and Litchfield prebend of Flixton (worth £4 13s 4d) for John de Waltham’s Southwell collegiate church prebend of Dunham, worth £36 13 s 4d.⁶⁰

After late 1361 the pace at which Wykeham acquired benefices slowed and he largely concentrated on acquiring a smaller number of very well-endowed benefices. These included the Lincoln cathedral prebend of Sutton which was described as worth 260 marks in 1366 (£173 6s 8d in Taxatio) and Laughton Prebend (£73 6s 8d) in York minster.⁶¹ Five benefices were exchanged for Crowhurst in Sussex, the prebendal church of the royal free chapel at Hastings.⁶² In addition, Wykeham’s desires to have a prebend in the important cathedral of Lincoln were fulfilled in April 1363 when he became archdeacon of Northampton; he resigned this a month later to take up the wealthier and more prestigious archdeaconry of Lincoln.⁶³ Wykeham was inducted as archdeacon in person on 12 September 1363 and henceforth he was an active defender of the rights of the archdeaconry.⁶⁴ The archdeaconry, unlike his other benefices, did carry responsibility for the cure of souls. Wykeham also acquired (at an unknown date) the Cornish parochial benefice of Menheniot, just outside Liskeard. This too carried responsibility for cure of souls; Wykeham must have catered for the spiritual needs of the parishioners of Menheniot by providing a vicar to act in his stead. In 1366, he stated that he had apostolic dispensation to hold Menheniot but at this point he had resigned it, faced with papal hostility to the holding of multiple incompatible benefices.⁶⁵

This concentration of benefices in a short period catapulted Wykeham rapidly into the upper ranks of non-episcopal churchmen’s income. It also attracted hostile criticism both from English contemporaries and at the papal court. In this Wykeham was a victim of the timing of his rise in the English church. Fewer hostile comments would have been made a decade earlier but Wykeham’s accumulation of benefices in the early thirteen-sixties took place in the decade during which the papacy launched a radical attack on pluralism. Successive generations of popes had sought to control pluralism through a range of decrees, beginning in 1317 with Pope John XXII’s decree Execrabilis which was concerned with pluralism when it involved the cure of souls.⁶⁶ Benefices without cure of souls – literally sine cura – such as appointment to a cathedral chapter or as a canon in a secular cathedral, were of much less concern to the papacy before the time of Pope Urban V (1362–70). Multiple holding of such posts by a single individual did not imperil people’s souls. Wykeham was not in breach of contemporary canon law in amassing this portfolio of benefices.

By 1366, when Pope Urban V demanded details of the extent of English pluralism, Wykeham’s income from his benefices placed him firmly at the top of the list. His total annual revenue from benefices was £873 6s 8d, an astonishing amount which was more than three times the income of the next person on the English list whose benefices totalled £270 a year.⁶⁷ In amassing such an extensive portfolio of benefices Wykeham was to attract the hostility of Pope Urban V, who from the outset of his pontificate in 1362 aimed to enhance the educational standards of the clergy throughout Christendom. To achieve this ambition Urban V embarked on reforms to the benefice system which were intended to reduce the concentration of rich prebends in the hands of a few men. Instead he aimed to ‘distribute the wealth of the church more widely among the lettered clergy’.⁶⁸ The resources freed in this manner were intended to support clergy seeking higher education in the universities. It is likely that Urban was thinking of men such as Wykeham when he complained in his bull Horribilis et detestabilis, in the spring of 1363, about the greed ‘of those reprobate clerks, quite incapable of study themselves, who nevertheless hold an excess of benefices, while innumerable prudent, wise and learned men, studying in the schools and elsewhere, have no benefice at all’.⁶⁹ Edward III’s response was to protest to a cardinal at Avignon that Wykeham was a man ‘of all the kindness, knowledge, loyalty, honesty and sufficiency of his person’.⁷⁰

Wykeham, always conscious of his rights and keen to defend them, was equally careful to remain within the letter of canon law with regard to his benefices. Despite the hostile criticism sparked by his huge portfolio of benefices, he was not actually in breach of the letter of contemporary canon law in amassing it. In 1366, when the papacy required declaration of all pluralists’ holdings, Wykeham only held a single benefice with cure of souls, the archdeaconry of Lincoln, in addition to the eleven without cure, all of which were prebends in cathedral chapters or in other collegiate churches. In the return in archbishop Langham’s register it is stated that he has only one benefice with cure of souls – which was the valuable archdeaconry of Lincoln – and eleven other benefices without cure, and that following the publication of the papal’s bull on pluralities issued on 5 May 1365, he had resigned the Cornish living of Menheniot which he had been holding as an additional benefice with cure.⁷¹

The death of William Edington, bishop of Winchester, in early October 1366 provided the opportunity for Wykeham’s final and most impressive promotion. On 13 October 1366 King Edward III issued a licence permitting the monks of St. Swithun’s cathedral to proceed to elect a replacement for Edington, recommending as he did so that Wykeham was a suitable candidate, a recommendation which the monks duly followed.⁷² Papal approval was also needed since Pope Urban V had reserved the see in Edington’s lifetime for papal provision. It is clear that the pope was extremely reluctant to bend to Edward’s request that he provide Wykeham to the see. Edward III was forced to launch a major diplomatic offensive at Avignon to guarantee his ultimate success, working to ensure that cardinals and other influential members of the papal court would intercede on Wykeham’s behalf. Finally, in July 1367, Urban relented and provided Wykeham to England’s most valuable benefice.⁷³

The decade between 1356 and 1366 was a crucial one in the development of William Wykeham’s career. These years saw his swift rise within the royal circle, to the point where he was indispensable to the king. As the keeper of the king’s signet seal he was privy to Edward’s thoughts and actions at the earliest moment. Contemporaries were aware of his growing influence. In addition to these rapid developments within his career, he had taken a decisive step in finally deciding to become a priest. Consideration as to whether or not to take this step must have dominated Wykeham’s private thoughts for much of this period. Having proceeded to ordination, he had cut off opportunities for marriage, parenthood and carrying on his family name, although the fact that his sister Alice had married and produced nephews may have made this of less importance. It is ironic that his subsequent actions in founding Winchester College and New College, Oxford, made possible only because of the wealth of the see of Winchester, were to perpetuate his name far more effectively than fathering a family would have done.

Wykeham’s promotion as bishop of Winchester provoked hostile remarks from contemporary commentators. John of Reading complained that ‘the mammon of iniquity raises the unworthy to be prelates’.⁷⁴ Wykeham’s pluralism and relatively recent promotion to the priesthood made him an easy and obvious target for critics. Although he lacked pastoral experience when he became bishop of Winchester he was far from being unique in this among the episcopate. Hostility arose primarily from the speed of his ascent within the church hierarchy; he had only been ordained as a priest five years before his elevation to the episcopate. It arose too because his elevation had been to the wealthiest and one of the most powerful of the English dioceses. His successor – Henry Beaufort – was half-brother to the reigning monarch and was to become a cardinal. Already powerful as confidant of King Edward III and as keeper of the privy seal, this elevation as bishop would reinforce Wykeham’s position in the upper ranks of English political society.

What sort of bishop did Wykeham turn out to be? There is no doubt that – throughout his episcopate – he was both concerned for and involved with his diocese. It was, of course, easier for a bishop of Winchester to be simultaneously politically involved and resident and active in his diocese than it would be for those whose dioceses were further from London. Nonetheless, Wykeham’s engagement with his diocese was not merely a matter of geography. There is clear evidence of his active concern for the welfare of both people and buildings assigned to his care.⁷⁵ Much daily administration was the responsibility of his episcopal administrators but Wykeham oversaw them carefully. It was not his style merely to appoint commissions to carry out visitations or deal with other matters and to feel that in doing so he had discharged his duty. His episcopate saw magnificent redevelopment in Winchester cathedral and the rebuilding and refurbishment of key episcopal palaces, but also concern for the physical fabric of parish churches and for the pastoral care of their parishioners. Edward III had been right when he had assured the pope nearly forty years earlier that Wykeham would be an excellent bishop. Wykeham may have made a belated decision to enter the church, but as with everything he did, once he had embraced the decision he was committed to it.

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¹ See, e.g., W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III (New Haven and London, 1990), pp. 90–4.

² Ormrod, Reign of Edward III, p. 90.

³ The early lives by Robert Heete (d. 1433) and Thomas Aylward (d. 1413) are printed as appendices to G. H. Moberly, Life of William of Wykeham (1887).

⁴ S. Mandelbrote, ‘Lowth, Robert (1710–87)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17104> [accessed 31 Dec. 2007].

⁵ R. Lowth, The Life of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester (1758); Moberly.

⁶ J. A. Hamilton, ‘Moberly, George (1803–85)’, rev. G. Rowell, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18862> [accessed 31 Dec. 2007].

⁷ W. Hayter, William of Wykeham, Patron of the Arts (1970).

⁸ V. Davis, William Wykeham (2007).

⁹ Handbook of British Chronology, ed. F. M Powicke and E. B. Fryde (2nd edn., 1961), p. 259.

¹⁰ The image of the Virgin Mary can be found in many places within Wykeham’s collegiate foundations. At Winchester College, for example, her statute can be found over the main entrance, while glass at New College depicts Wykeham robed as a bishop, gazing devoutly at the Virgin Mary.

¹¹ Moberly, p. 288.

¹² A. K. McHardy, ‘Buckingham, John (c. 1320–1399)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2786> [accessed 24 Feb. 2008]; R. N. Swanson, ‘Courtenay, William (1341/2–1396)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6457> [accessed 24 Feb. 2008]; P. McNiven, ‘Scrope, Richard (c. 1350–1405)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24964> [accessed 24 Feb. 2008].

¹³ R. M. Haines, ‘Northburgh, Michael (c. 1300–1361)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20324> [accessed 24 Feb. 2008]; Calendar of Papal Letters 1342–62, p. 522.

¹⁴ V. Davis, Clergy in London in the Late Middle Ages (2000), p. 12.

¹⁵ No records of tonsures in the diocese of Winchester are recorded from this period.

¹⁶ Davis, Clergy in London, pp. 5–8.

¹⁷ Occasionally exorcists are recorded, for example they are quite frequently noted in late medieval registers of the bishops of Exeter. From the 1490s ordination as exorcist begins to be regularly recorded by London episcopal registrars (Davis, Clergy in London, p. 7).

¹⁸ J. A. Burrow, ‘Hoccleve, Thomas (c. 1367–1426)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13415> [accessed 20 Feb. 2007].

¹⁹ Davis, Wykeham, ch. 2.

²⁰ The Register of William Edington, Bishop of Winchester, ed. S. F. Hockey (Hampshire Record ser., vii–viii, 2 vols., Winchester, 1986) (hereafter Edington Register), i. xii.

²¹ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1354–8, p. 642; this presentation was in fulfilment of a royal grant made earlier that month whereby Wykeham had been granted an additional 1s a day from the exchequer pending suitable ecclesiastical preferment (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1354–8, p. 634). This was Wykeham’s first benefice from the king; the 1349 presentation of a ‘William de Wykeham, chaplain’ by Edward III to the Norfolk parish of Irstead refers to a different William of Wykeham (Davis, Wykeham, p. 13).

²² Calendar of Papal Registers 1342–62, pp. 394, 419; Haines.

²³ On Lisle, see J. Aberth, ‘Crime and justice under Edward III: the case of Thomas de Lisle’, English Historical Review, cvii (1992), 283–30. For the litigation, see Davis, Wykeham, pp. 43–5; Moberly, pp. 36–9.

²⁴ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1358–61, p. 198.

²⁵ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1358–61, p. 182.

²⁶ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1358–61, p. 455.

²⁷ Register of Robert de Stretton Coventry and Lichfield, 1358–85, ed. R. A. Wilson (William Salt Archaeol. Soc., new ser., viii, 1905), p. 158.

²⁸ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1358–61, p. 353.

²⁹ Davis, Wykeham, pp. 29–30.

³⁰ Calendar of Close Rolls 1354– 60, p. 371.

³¹ Davis, Wykeham, pp. 25–7.

³² Davis, Wykeham, pp. 30–1, nn. 47, 51.

³³ Edington Register, ii. 192.

³⁴ He was ordained subdeacon in Southwark manor chapel on 12 March 1262 (Edington Register, ii. 195); priest (Edington Register, ii. 197). Wykeham must have been ordained deacon between March and June but the details do not survive.

³⁵ Mortality among the clergy in Lincolnshire was about three times higher than normal (see J. Saltmarsh, ‘Plague and economic decline in England in the later middle ages’, Cambridge Historical Journal, vii (1941), 23–41).

³⁶ Chronica Johannis de Reading et Anonymi Cantuariensis, 1346–67, ed. J. Tait (Manchester, 1914), p. 150.

³⁷ W. M. Ormrod, ‘Henry of Lancaster, first duke of Lancaster (c. 1310–1361)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12960> [accessed 6 Nov. 2007].

³⁸ R. L. Axworthy, ‘Picard, Henry (d. 1361)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/52213> [accessed 6 Nov. 2007].

³⁹ R. I. Jack, ‘Hastings, John, 13th earl of Pembroke (1347–75)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12580> [accessed 6 Nov. 2007].

⁴⁰ Thomas Fastolf, bishop of St. David’s, died in June 1361; Thomas Lisle, bishop of Ely, also died that month while Bishop Michael Northburgh of London died in Sept. 1361.

⁴¹ G. L. Harriss, ‘Mulso family (per. c. 1350–1460)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/52789> [accessed 20 Feb. 2007].

⁴² D. Gray, ‘Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340–1400)’, O.D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5191> [accessed 24 Feb. 2008].

⁴³ In addition this is discussed in Moberly, pp. 45–51, though not all the material cited there is accurate.

⁴⁴ There were no general ordination ceremonies held in the diocese of Winchester between May 1360 and Dec. 1361 (Edington Register, ii).

⁴⁵ D. M. Smith, Guide to Bishop’s Registers of England and Wales (1981), p. 136, n. 3.

⁴⁶ Edington Register, ii. 190.

⁴⁷ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 42.

⁴⁸ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 42.

⁴⁹ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, pp. 43, 112.

⁵⁰ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 46. This grant was made by a ‘letter of the secret seal’. The see of Hereford was vacant because of Bishop Charlton’s death Nov. 1360.

⁵¹ Calendar of Papal Registers 1342–1419, p. 363.

⁵² Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 244 (re. Sutton). Calendar of Papal Registers 1342–1419, p. 320. Edward’s request to the curia had been made earlier that year (Calendar of Papal Registers 1342–1419, p. 373).

⁵³ Registrum Simonis de Sudbiria diocesis Londoniensis, A.D. 1362–75, ed. R. C. Fowler and C. Jenkins (2 vols., Canterbury and York Soc., xxxiv, xxxviii, 1927–38), ii. 164–5.

⁵⁴ ‘Prebendaries: Yetminster Prima’, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1300–1541, iii: Salisbury Diocese (1962), pp. 100–1 <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=32371> [accessed 6 Nov. 2007].

⁵⁵ There is no record of the date of Wykeham’s resignation, but on 20 Aug. 1361, a royal grant of Pulham was made to Andrew Stratford (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 44).

⁵⁶ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 79; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 79; the grant was repeated on 1 Nov. 1361 (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 107).

⁵⁷ There is particular confusion with Wykeham’s holding of the prebend of Totenhall for which he exchanged Oxgate in Nov. 1361. Wykeham resigned Totenhall by Dec. 1362 and it went to John de Blewbury. However, Wykeham regained it in Apr. 1363 when he exchanged his prebend in St. Stephen’s Westminster with Blewbury, returning as prebendary of Totenhall, which he was still holding in 1366 (‘Prebendaries: Totenhall’, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1300–1541, v: St. Paul’s, London (1963), pp. 62–4 <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=32412> [accessed 6 Nov. 2007].

⁵⁸ Complex exchanges of benefices were sometimes facilitated by brokers which were nicknamed ‘chop-churches’. Their activities were condemned by the bishops, as can be seen in 1391 when Archbishop Courtenay issued his Litera missa omnibus Episcopis suffraganeis Domini contra Choppe-Churches (H. Spelman, Concilia Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in re Ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (2 vols., London, 1654), ii. 641–4). On the market in benefices, see R. N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (1989), pp. 55–6; R. L. Storey ‘Ecclesiastical causes in chancery’, in The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, ed. R. L. Storey and D. A. Bullough (Oxford, 1971), pp. 236–59; A. H. Thompson, The English Clergy and their Organisation in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1927), pp. 107–9; L. F. Salzman, ‘“Chopchurches” in Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, c (1962), 137–41.

⁵⁹ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 90.

⁶⁰ Biographical Register of the University of Oxford (1973). The values of benefices are taken from the online Taxatio Database developed from Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae Auctoritate Papae Nicholai IV (Record Commission, 1802) (see <http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/taxatio/index.html> [accessed 22 Feb. 2008]).

⁶¹ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, p. 244; ‘Prebendaries: Laughton’, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1300–1541, vi: Northern Province (1963), p. 64.

⁶² Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, pp. 167–8; the benefices concerned were an unnamed prebend in St David’s diocese; the prebend of Ruyl in Aberwilly collegiate church; the prebend of Triffelegh in Landowybry collegiate church; the prebend of Church Withington in Hereford cathedral and the prebend of Warminster in Wells cathedral.

⁶³ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1361–4, pp. 319, 345.

⁶⁴ Davis, Wykeham, pp. 48–9.

⁶⁵ Registrum Simonis de Sudbiria, ii. 164–5.

⁶⁶ A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘Pluralism in the medieval church’, Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers, xxxiii (1915), 61–4.

⁶⁷ For more details, see Davis, Wykeham, pp. 41–3.

⁶⁸ J. J. N. Palmer and A. P. Wells, ‘Ecclesiastical reform and the politics of the Hundred Years’ War during the pontificate of Urban V (1362–70)’, in War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. T. Allmand (Liverpool, 1976), pp. 169–89.

⁶⁹ Allmand, p. 171.

⁷⁰ Cited in J. R. L. Highfield, ‘The promotion of William of Wickham to the see of Winchester’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, iv (1953), 44–5.

⁷¹ Registrum Simonis de Sudbiria, ii. 164–5.

⁷² Calendar of Patent Rolls 1364–7, p. 324.

⁷³ Davis, Wykeham, pp. 50–1; full details of the circumstances surrounding Wykeham’s promotion and the complex interrelationship between individual promotion and international politics are discussed in Highfield, pp. 37–54.

⁷⁴ Chronica Johannis de Reading, p. 178.

⁷⁵ Davis, Wykeham, ch. 9.