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The Warden's Text of the Foundation Statutes of All Souls College, Oxford1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

E. F. Jacob
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Extract

Archbishop Chichele's statutes for the college of his foundation were dated at Lambeth on 2nd April 1443. ‘Dating’ means that on this day they were approved and issued to the warden, Roger Keys, who was present along with the primate's brother, Thomas Chichele, archdeacon of Canterbury, William Bykonyll, chancellor of the archbishop, John Brykhed or Birkhede, canon of Chichester, later rector of Harrow and one of Chichele's executors, and John Bolde, also canon of Chichester. Birkhede and Bolde are familiar figures in the early history of All Souls. They acted as feoffees of the lands accumulated to form the endowment, before the whole complex of estates was made over to the king, who re-granted it to the college. Bykonyll, like the armigers Robert Danvers and John Darell, had also been concerned in the foundation; while Thomas Chichele (as also Birkhede) was commemorated as a benefactor by the next generation. The nucleus of the little group that met to witness one of their master's last formal acts consisted of a few friends and colleagues from the archbishop's household, his helpers in the Oxford enterprise of the past six years.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1935 , pp. 420 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1935

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References

page 420 note 2 Wrongly given as Byronyll in the printed version of the Statutes (1853); Stat. of the Oxford Colleges, All Souls College, p. 67. It is also spelt with a c. Bykonyll does not appear in Miss Churchill's list of chancellors (Canterbury Administration, ii, 245).

page 420 note 3 The printed version erroneously has Joseph Brykhed (ibid.). Birkhede was admitted in 1465 as a brother quoad suffragia (i.e. to the confraternity): All Souls Coll. Archives, Miscellanea, no. 30.

page 420 note 4 Cf. All Souls Coll. Archives, Chartae Fundationis Collegii, no. 6 (24 April, 20 Hen. VI). Bolde is a Wigan name.

page 420 note 5 A.S.C. Archives. Googy Hall, Hope Omnium Sanctorum, no. 34; Newlands, Midley, Old Romney, no. 60.

page 420 note 6 Ibid., Miscellanea, Various Documents and Papers, no. 262.

page 421 note 1 Fo. 23v.

page 422 note 1 This, like the sub-warden's copy, has a stamped black leather binding. The front fly-leaf in each is a page of a thirteenth-century manuscript. Both have been edited and annotated throughout by Warden Hovenden, who, owing perhaps to the difficulty of reading the early sixteenth-century hand, had a new volume of statutes and injunctions, 1443–1602, prepared in a fine humanistic script. This is bound in vellum, with the college arms stamped in gold on the back. These copies, which have the preamble but not the dating clause, are all derived from the warden's text, not from any other.

page 422 note 2 Sir Charles Mallet, A History of the Univ. of Oxford, i, 363, n. 2, calls the Rawlinson text ‘the complete manuscript’. Had he studied it, he would have seen that Wharton had to complete the fifteenth-century version of the statutes which it contains. Unfortunately he has accepted the uncritical text of the Commissioners of 1853, on which compare my comments below.

page 422 note 3 A.S.C. Archives, Llangenith, no. 2 (16 March, 19 Hen. VI). Each cord is composed of two strands of pink and green silk.

page 422 note 4 I am indebted to Mr. S. C. Ratcliff for calling my attention to this resemblance, and for valuable notes on the P.R.O. seals.

page 423 note 1 Archaeologia, lxxiv, p. iii.

page 423 note 2 The British Museum has a sulphur cast of the same impression (Catalogue of Seals, i, no. 1229) thus described: ‘The Trinity in a canopied shrine with angels placed in the niches of tabernacle work at the sides. A narrow rim bears an illegible inscription in very small characters. Around are busts, full-face, of an archbishop and seventeen bishops, heads outwards, under carved canopies.’

page 423 note 3 The Episcopal Register of William of Wykeham, ed. Kirby, ii, 242.

page 423 note 4 I. J. Churchill, Canterbury Administration, i, 17, n. 2.

page 424 note 1 Gervasii Cantuariensis Opera Historica (Rolls Ser.), i, 171. Professor Tout (Collected Papers, iii, 56) quoted the author as ‘the continuator of Gervase’. But it is surely Gervase himself.

page 424 note 2 In the addendum to his article on the Iconography of St. Thomas of Canterbury: Archaeologia, lxxxi, pl. xxiii, fig. 3.

page 424 note 3 St. Thomas Becket in Art, pl. xxvii (p. 74).

page 424 note 4 Catalogue, i, no. 1241.

page 424 note 5 Archaeologia, lxxix, pl. xvi, fig. 5.

page 425 note 1 Ancient Deeds, B. 9829. Quitclaim by Chichele of the manor of Eselborugh (Aylesbury), dated Monday after St. John Baptist, 8 Hen. VI (26 June 1430).

page 425 note 2 A.S.C. Archives, Googy Hall, no. 34 (where it is described as ‘sigillum nostrum ad arma’); Llangenith, no. 2 (cf. supra); Newlands, Midley, Old Romney, no. 60.

page 425 note 3 Exch. Accounts (K.R.), Various, Bundle 335, no. 27: Indenture (25 Aug. 1439) between Abp. and the Treasurer, stating that the Abp. has received, as security for a loan of 200l., ‘a great ouche of gold, richly jewelled’, and giving terms of repayment.

page 425 note 4 This is very common in All Souls, though most of the examples are of the sixteenth century.

page 426 note 1 A blank space is left for it in the Arundel MS. as clause 33.

page 427 note 1 It would not let the original copy be removed. Cf. Oxford Univ. Commission's Report, 1852, p. 327 (letter of the Warden, 17 Dec. 1850).

page 427 note 2 Ibid., p. 215.