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 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.

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.

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.

[4] 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.

Subsequent visits to Winchester inspired Henry with the idea of rebuilding Eton church on cathedral dimensions.

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.

[16][17] When Jack Cade's rebellion broke out in 1450 Waynflete was employed with Archbishop Stafford, the Chancellor, to negotiate with the rebels at St Margaret's Church, Southwark, close to Winchester House.

On 7 May 1451 Waynflete, from le peynted chambre in his manor house at Southwark, asserting that his bishopric was canonically obtained and that he laboured under no disqualification, but feared some grievous attempt against himself and his see, appealed to the protection of the pope.

When in November the Duke of York encamped near Dartford, Waynflete with three others was sent from the King's camp at Blackheath to propose terms, which were accepted.

That year Waynflete acquired the reversion of the manor of Stanswick, Berks, from Lady Danvers for Magdalen Hall.

The Chancellor, John Kemp, Archbishop of Canterbury, died during the sitting of parliament, presided over by the Duke of York.

[16] During York's regency, both before and after the First Battle of St Albans, Waynflete took an active part in the proceedings of the Privy Council.

[16] Meanwhile, Waynflete himself had been advanced to the highest office in the state, the Chancellorship, the seals being delivered to him on 11 October 1456[22] by the King in the priory of Coventry in the presence of the Duke of York, apparently as a person acceptable to both parties.

As the heresy consisted chiefly in defending the clergy on grounds of reason instead of authority, the proceeding does not show any great enlightenment on Waynflete's part.

It must have been at this time that an addition was made by Waynflete to the Eton College statutes, compelling the Fellows to forswear the heresies of John Wycliffe and Pecock.

[24] Complaints of wrongful exaction of manorial rights laid before Edward IV himself in August 1461 by the tenants of the episcopal manor of East Meon, Hampshire, were decided in the bishop's favour in parliament the following December.

[25] A general charter of confirmation to him and his successors of the property and rights of the bishopric of Winchester on 1 July 1462 points in the same direction.

In the earliest Audit Rolls after the restoration of the college in 1467 there are many entries of visits of Provost Westbury to the lord of Winchester, which in January 1468–69 were for beginning the work of the church and providing money for them.

[28] In the years 1471–1472 to 1474 Waynflete was largely engaged in completing the church, now called the chapel, at Eton: his glazier supplied the windows, and he contracted on 15 August 1475 for the rood-loft to be made on one side "like to the rode bite" in Bishop Wykeham's college at Winchester, and on the other like that of the college of St Thomas of Acre in London.

[16] In 1474 Waynflete, being the principal executor of Sir John Fastolf, who died in 1459 leaving a much-contested will, procured the conversion of his bequest for a collegiate church of seven priests and seven almsmen at Caistor, Norfolk, into one for seven fellows and seven poor scholars at Magdalen.

In the same year the college took possession of the alien priory of Sele, in what is now Upper Beeding, Sussex, the proceedings for the suppression of which had been going on since 1469.

The renewal of interest in classical literature was shown in the prohibition of the study of sophistry by any scholar under the age of eighteen, unless he had been pronounced proficient in grammaticals.