hurch. At
this time he was offered the cardinal's hat by Martin V. and appointed
papal legate, but the bestowal of this dignity on him was resented by
the English monarch, who commanded him to surrender his office at
Winchester, which he declared was forfeited by his becoming a cardinal.
The dispute, however, was arranged, and "the haughty cardinal, more like
a soldier than a man of the church," formally received his hat at Calais
in 1426. In the following year he led a crusade against the followers of
Huss in Bohemia, where, during the retreat of the great army from Mies,
he alone at the head of a band of English crusaders endeavoured, but in
vain, to arrest the utter rout. The death of Henry V. brought about a
fierce rivalry between the two great uncles, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester
and the cardinal bishop of Winchester, lasting until the death of the
former, which only occurred six weeks before that of Beaufort himself.
During the half-century of his rule at Winchester he rebuilt St Cross
and founded the "Almshouse of Noble Poverty." Shakespeare has made
Beaufort a prominent figure in Parts I. and II. of "Henry VI.," but, for
dramatic reasons, perhaps, he is painted very much blacker than he
deserved. That he was a militant ecclesiastic, scheming and
unscrupulous, is no doubt true; but he was a statesman and possessed
firmness of purpose, fertility of resource, and confidence in those whom
he selected to carry out his designs. His wealth was very great, for he
was able to lend his nephew the king L20,000, besides spending an
enormous amount in charities, including L400,000 devoted to the inmates
of London prisons.

#William of Waynfleete# (1447-1486), a student in Wykeham's colleges at
Winchester and Oxford, was first master of Winchester College, then made
provost of Eton in 1443, and in 1447 succeeded Beaufort in the bishopric
of Winchester. From 1449 to 1459, like his predecessor, he held the
chancellor's seal, and during the Wars of the Roses was a firm adherent
of Henry VI. His death took place in 1486. He founded Magdalen College,
Oxford, and possibly influenced Henry in his endowment of King's
College, Cambridge, and Eton. Waynfleete appears to have been a man of
great piety and learning, and, as Milman observes, his actions, in
advancing non-monastic institutions, reveal a sagacious fore-knowledge
of the coming changes in the temporal power of the church, and were
planned to maintain its supremacy in ways bett