Winchester College Publication Winchester College War Inscriptions | Page 2

The War Cloister Inscriptions at Winchester College
Timothy Hands
Thanks be to God for the service of
these five hundred Wykehamists, who
were found faithful unto death amid
the manifold chances of the Great
T
“
he 30 years preceding the Great War were the golden age of
the public school”, comments Budge Firth in his history of
Winchester College. “There was a wave of high confidence. It all
seemed too good to be true; and alas! For us, as for the other great schools,
it could not permanently endure. ”
War. In the day of battle they
forgat not God, who created them to
do His will, nor their country, the
stronghold of freedom, nor their
school, the mother of godliness and
discipline. Strong in this threefold
faith they went forth from home and
kindred to the battle-fields of the
world, and treading the path of duty
and sacrifice laid down their lives for
mankind. Thou therefore, for whom
they died, seek not thine own, but
serve as they served, and in peace or
in war bear thyself ever as Christ’s
soldier, gentle in all things, valiant
in action, steadfast in adversity.
Raymond Asquith, College, 1892-97.
Killed in action, September 1916.
Herbert Asquith, Trant’s, 1894-1900.
On 4th August 1914 the Prime Minister, Asquith, described by Firth as “a
symbol and safeguard alike”, declared war. Asquith had five sons at
Winchester. Four of his children, two of them Scholars, had by that time left
the College; the last, Anthony, also a Scholar, was yet to arrive. The oldest,
Raymond, is commemorated in the War Cloister.
His younger brother, the poet Herbert, greeted the outbreak of war with a
poem of unashamed mediaeval and chivalric resonances:
Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
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