That essentially English but somewhat misleadingly named institution, the Public School, had its origins in a liberally endowed grammar school founded at Winchester in the fourteenth century. As early as 1369 William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England, planned the establishment of a college at Oxford in close connection with a new school at Winchester. The joint enterprise was in fact delayed for some years by his political disgrace and downfall, but with the accession of Richard II in 1377, the bishop received a royal pardon and both projects went ahead. Within a few years what became known as New College, Oxford, and ‘Seint Marie College of Wynchestre’ were both established on a magnificent scale; the former with seventy youthful scholars to study law, philosophy, and theology, the latter with an equal number of boys from the middle classes ‘suffering from want of money’ who were to be taught grammar. In addition, there were places in the school for ten commoners, ‘sons of noble and powerful persons’. It was this last feature of the school's constitution, together with its independent and self-governing status, that separated it from other grammar schools of the day and led to the claim that here was to be found the ‘germ of the public school system’.