Note 202 — Chapter II · THE COLLEGES

See iii. p. 165 n. Dyer points out that William Byngham is called “proctor and Master of God’s House,” but not founder: he considers that Hen. VI. was the founder, Byngham being its procurator as Doket was procurator of Queens’ and Somerset of King’s colleges. The facts recorded here and in chap. iii. appear to support this conclusion. At the same time Byngham in his letter to the king in 1439 distinctly claims to have built the house: “Goddeshous the which he hath made and edified in your towne of Cambridge.” In the case of every Cambridge college the founder is the man who endows it. A college may owe its existence (as certainly in Byngham’s case) to the energies of some one else, but its founder remains the man by whom it was built and endowed. A God’s House at Ewelme in Oxfordshire was founded about the same time by William de la Pole and Alice his wife, Earl and Countess of Suffolk. “It is still in being,” writes Tanner, “but the Mastership is annexed to the King’s professor of Physic in the university of Oxford.” A God’s house was an almshouse for some object of mercy. Thirteen poor men were maintained at Ewelme.