The great series runs of Hall Books , Registers of Scholars , and of Bursars ’ Books and Account Rolls are mostly filled with more humdrum stuff than this , though their continuity makes them probably the most valuable of all the Domus records for the systematic historian . The registers are a great repertory of Wiccamical names , and so are the early Hall Books : down to the late seventeenth century these offer the only ( and very incomplete ) indications that we have of the names of commoners attending the school . The Bursars ’ Books , and the records associated with them ( for example , bundles of vouchers presented at the audit ), are a mine of information for the economic historian , with their detailed record of annual receipts and expenditure ; and for the social historian too , through all the light they shed on school diet , entertainment , college servants , brewing and milling . There are some lively items and asides interspersed among these records , moreover . The first payment recorded after Michaelmas 1415 ( of 6s 8d ) is to John Cowdray son of Edward Cowdray esquire , who brought to the College the news of King Henry V ’ s victory at Agincourt on St Crispin ’ s day ( 25 October ). In 1642 / 3 the Bursars ’ Book notes the expenses incurred when the Parliamentarian officer Nathaniel Fiennes was billeted for a night in College with his troopers (£ 20 for Fiennes , £ 7 for the soldiers ). Fiennes was an Old Wykehamist , and his presence probably saved the Chapel and Chantry from the vandalism that occurred elsewhere in the city , notably in the cathedral . Marginal notes by the names of scholars in the Registers likewise often tell us things of human interest , concerning scholars ’ subsequent careers . Occasionally they reveal attempts to distort the record . Henry Garnett , the Jesuit missionary executed for High Treason in 1606 , was admitted a scholar in 1567 . A later hand notes ( perhaps with a dash of recusant sympathy ?) that he was afterwards Provincial of the Jesuits ; a still later hand ( of the age of no-popery ) has added that “ he left the College in great disgrace ”. There is no shred of evidence to support this , but the story came to be widely credited : even Kirby , who should have known better , swallowed it whole .
For many people , the most interesting items in the Domus class of the Winchester archives will be the schoolboys ’ letters , diaries and other papers that have found their way there more by accident than by design , some by sheer good luck , some in consequence of deposit by Wykehamist families , some , more recently , by acquisition . Best known among these are the schoolboy letters of Thomas Arnold , future educationalist and Headmaster of Rugby , and model for ‘ the Doctor ’ of Tom Brown ’ s Schooldays . Some of them are a little sententious , as one might expect from the great man to-be , but he was
nicely grateful for a cake that his aunt sent him (“ suited my purpose ” better than money , he said , ( fig . 6 )). Altogether , there is much of lively and human interest in this section of the archives . There is quite good documentation of the school rebellions of 1793 and 1818 . A spirited letter from M . S . Forster
fig 6 . Letter of Thomas Arnold to his aunt , Susan Delafield , from College , 10 June , 1809 .
( scholar , 1857-62 ) describes the “ great excitement ” when the Public School Commissioners arrived to investigate Winchester in 1862 , and the dismay among the dons . “ Poor wretched Mr Whale said he sat up nearly all night looking up his algebra , and after all was not sent for . Mr Walford cannot bear any alterations , so when they sent for him the only account his old house-
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