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supervise large repairs done by the sheriff in the castle of Winchesterand royal manor of Woliner. The Bishop of St. David’s was masterof the works at King’s College. Alcock, Bishop of Ely, was comp-troller of the royal buildings under Henry VII. * He, like Wyke-ham, was a great builder, but not, therefore, an architect. RichardWilliams, Dean of Lichfield and chaplain to Henry VIII. , bore the sameoffice; and Nicholas Townley, clerk, was master of the works at CardinalCollege.

A passage in Wickliff’s tract, entitled, “ Why Poor Priests have noBenefices,” shows that William Wykeham had at least the reputation ofarchitectural knowledge : “ And yet they [lords] wolen not present aclerk able of kunning of God ’s law, but a kitchen clerk, or a penny clerk,or [one] wise in building castles, or worldly doing, though he kunne notreade well his Sauter.” “ Here,” says Warton, “ is a manifest piece ofsatire on Wykeham , Bishop of Winchester, Wickliff’s contemporary, whois supposed to have recommended himself to Edward III. by rebuildingthe castle of Windsor.f This was a recent and notorious instance.But in this appointment the king probably paid a compliment to that

* Warton’s History of English Poetry.

f “ It is to be lamented,” says John Gwynn , who published a work in 1766, called London and Westminster Improved, “ that this great man (Wykeham ) did not pay more regard to thescience to which he owed the greatness of his fortune, by establishing a foundation for thestudy of his own art, and others that depend upon it. Had he fortunately done this, there isno saying what the consequence might have been : possibly by this time it would have beenthe fashion for ingenious men to come from Rome hither to perfect themselves in the arts, andhave bartered Italian for English performances.”

It is a singular fact, that in this work John Gwynn pointed out almost all the designs forthe improvement of London which have been devised by the civil and military architects of thepresent day. Since this discovery was made by the Literary Gazette, the work has becomescarce and expensive.