William Waynflete (c. 1398 – 11 August 1486), born William Patten, was Headmaster of Winchester College (1429–1441), Provost of Eton College (1442–1447), Bishop of Winchester (1447–1486) and Lord Chancellor of England (1456–1460). He founded Magdalen College, Oxford, and three subsidiary schools, namely Magdalen College School in Oxford, Magdalen College School, Brackley in Northamptonshire and Wainfleet All Saints in Lincolnshire.
Waynflete was born in Wainfleet in Lincolnshire (whence his surname) in about 1398. He was the eldest son of Richard Patten (alias Barbour), a merchant. His mother was Margery, daughter of Sir William Brereton of Brereton, Cheshire. He had a younger brother named John, who later became the dean of Chichester.
It has been suggested that Waynflete attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford, but this is improbable. Neither college claimed in his lifetime that he was one of its former students. However, that Waynflete was at the University of Oxford, and probably a scholar at one of the grammar schools there, before passing on to the higher faculties, is shown by a letter of the Chancellor addressed to him when Provost of Eton College, which speaks of the university as his mother who brought him forth into the light of knowledge and nourished him with the alimony of all the sciences.
Waynflete is probably the William Barbour who was ordained as an acolyte by Bishop Fleming of Lincoln on 21 April 1420 and subdeacon on 21 January 1421; and as William Barbour, otherwise Waynflete of Spalding, was ordained deacon on 18 March 1421, and priest on 21 January 1426, with entitlement from Spalding Priory.
Waynflete may have been the William Waynflete who was admitted a "scholar" of the King's Hall, Cambridge, on 6 March 1428, and was described as LL.B. when receiving letters of protection on 13 July 1429 to enable him to accompany Robert FitzHugh, Warden of the hall, on an embassy to Rome. The "scholars" of the King's Hall were what are now called Fellows, as may be seen by the appointment to the hall on 3 April 1360 of Nicholas of Drayton, B.C.L., and John Kent, B.A., in place of two scholars who had gone off to the French wars without the Warden's leave. The William Waynflete who was presented to the vicarage of Skendleby, Lincolnshire, by the Priory of Bardney on 14 June 1430, may also have been our Waynflete. There was, however, another William Waynflete, who was instituted rector of Wraxall, Somerset, on 17 May 1433 and was dead when his successor was appointed on 18 November 1436. A successor to the William Waynflete at the King's Hall was admitted on 3 April 1434.
In 1429, Waynflete became headmaster of Winchester College, a position which he held until 1441.
During this time, Waynflete was appointed by Bishop Beaufort to the mastership of St Mary Magdalen's Hospital, a leper hospital on St Giles Hill, just outside the city of Winchester. The first recorded headmaster after the foundation of the college, John Melton, had been presented by William of Wykeham to the mastership of this hospital in 1393 shortly before his retirement.
On 3 July 1441 Henry VI went for a weekend visit to Winchester College to see the school for himself. Here he seems to have been so much impressed with Waynflete that by the autumn Waynflete had ceased to be headmaster of Winchester. In October he was dining in the hall there as a guest, and at Christmas 1442 he received a royal livery, five yards of violet cloth, as provost of Eton.
Under the influence of Archbishop Chichele (who had himself founded two colleges in imitation of Wykeham); Thomas Bekynton, the king's secretary and privy seal; and other Wykehamists, Henry VI, on 11 October 1440, founded, in imitation of Winchester College, a college in the parish church of Eton by Windsor (not far from his own birthplace) called the King's College of the Blessed Mary of Eton by Windsor, as a sort of first-fruits of his taking the government on himself. The college was to consist of a provost, 10 priests, 6 choristers, 70 poor and needy scholars, 25 almsmen and a magister informator (later "headmaster") to teach (Latin) grammar to the foundation scholars and to all others coming from any part of England, at no cost. On 5 March 1440/41, the king endowed the college with some £500 a year taken from the alien priories: almost exactly the amount of the original endowment of Winchester.
Though reckoned first headmaster of Eton, there is no definite evidence that Waynflete acted as such. The school building was not begun until May 1442. William Westbury left New College, Oxford, in May 1442, transferring himself to the king's service. He appears in the first extant "Eton Audit Roll 1444–1445" as magister informator, and was probably such from May 1442. If Waynflete was headmaster from October 1441 to May 1442, his duties must have been little more than nominal. As Provost, Waynflete procured the exemption of the college from archidiaconal authority on 2 May, and made the contract for completion of the carpenter's work on the eastern side of the quadrangle on 30 November 1443.
On 21 December 1443 Waynflete was sworn to observe the statutes by Bishop Bekynton and the Earl of Suffolk, the king's commissioners, and he himself administered the oath to the other members of the foundation: then only five fellows and eleven scholars over 15 years of age. (Younger scholars were not required to take an oath.) It is said that he took half the Fellows and scholars of Winchester College to Eton to start the school there. However, only five scholars and perhaps one commoner (pupil not on the foundation) left Winchester for Eton in 1443, probably in July, just before the election. Three of them were admitted scholars of King's College, Cambridge, on 19 July. That college, by its second charter of 10 July 1443, had been placed in the same relation to Eton that New College bore to Winchester: i.e. it was to be recruited entirely from Eton.
The chief part of Waynflete's duties as Provost was the financing and completion of the buildings and establishment. The number of scholars was considerably increased by an election of 25 new foundation scholars on 26 September 1444. The college's annual income was then £946, of which the king contributed £120 and Waynflete £18, or more than half his stipend of £30 a year. The full number of 70 scholars was not filled up until Waynflete's last year as Provost, 1446–1447 (Eton Audit Roll).
So greatly did Waynflete ingratiate himself with Henry that when Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Henry's uncle, died on 11 April 1447, the king wrote to the chapter of Winchester, instructing them to elect Waynflete as bishop. On 12 April he was given the custody of the temporalities, between 15 and 17 April he was elected, and on 10 May provided to the see by a papal bull. On 13 July 1447 he was consecrated in Eton church, when the Warden and Fellows and others of his old college gave him a horse at a cost of 10 marks (£6 13s 4d), and one mark (13s 4d) to the boys. Subsequent visits to Winchester inspired Henry with the idea of rebuilding Eton church on cathedral dimensions. Waynflete was assigned as the principal executor of his will for that purpose, and if there was any variance between the executors, he was to determine it. From 1448 to 1450 £3336 was spent on the church, of which Waynflete with the Marquis of Suffolk and the Bishop of Salisbury contributed £100 or £1,000 according to interpretation. The troubles which began in 1450 put a stop to the work.
Waynflete, as bishop, lost no time in following the example of Wykeham and his royal patron in becoming a college founder. On 6 May 1448 he obtained licence in mortmain and on 20 August founded at Oxford for the extirpation of heresies and errors, the increase of the clerical order and the adornment of holy mother church, a perpetual hall, called Seint Marie Maudeleyn Halle, for study in sacred theology and philosophy, to consist of a president and 50 scholars. Its site was not that of the present college, but that of two earlier halls called Bostar Hall and Hare Hall, where the Examination Schools now are. Thirteen M.A.s and seven bachelors, besides the president, John Hornley, B.D., were named in the charter. The dedication to St Mary Magdalen was no doubt derived from the hospital at Winchester of which the founder had been Master. On St Wolstan's Day, 19 January 1448/49, Waynflete was enthroned in Winchester Cathedral in the presence of the king; and, probably partly for his sake, parliament was held there in June and July 1449, when the king frequently attended the college chapel, Waynflete officiating.