Chapter X - The Last Days of William Byngham

Summary

The latest dated document relating to the first proctorship is that of 8 December 1450 concerning the parsonage of Trellage, and the fewness of documents from June 1449 onwards is to be expected, following upon the spate of charters, grants, leases, surrenders and releases in the preceding years. The foundation of the college as a corporate body, the transfer to its perpetual ownership of the properties acquired for its home and for its endowment, and the letting upon lease of the latter, set the Proctor and scholars comparatively free to devote their attention to those internal affairs which while forming their main purpose have left little trace in records for the use of the historian.

Byngham is said to have been proctor of the university in 1446, and the statement is found in the Historical Register, but it is inherently improbable. That official statement derives from the Introduction to Grace Book Γ, which in its turn gives Fuller as authority, but the only sources upon which absolute reliance for the names of fifteenth-century university proctors may be placed are the contemporary documents preserved in the University Registry. These are the manuscripts of the Grace Books from 1455 onwards, and those of the Proctors' Indentures, from 1430 with occasional lacunae but including an earlier sheet which supplies the names of proctors for 1362 and 1363.