William of Waynflete

William Waynflete
Bishop of Winchester
Elected	April 1447
Term ended	11 August 1486
Predecessor	Henry Beaufort
Successor	Peter Courtenay
Orders
Consecration	13 July 1447
Personal details
Born	c. 1398
Died	11 August 1486 Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire
Denomination	Catholic

William Waynflete (c. 1398 – 11 August 1486), born William Patten, was Provost of Eton (1442–1447), Bishop of Winchester (1447-1486) and Lord Chancellor of England (1456-1460). He is best remembered as the founder of Magdalen College and Magdalen College School in Oxford.

William was born in Wainfleet in Lincolnshire (whence his surname) in about 1398. He was the eldest son of Richard Patten (alias Barbour), a merchant. His mother was Margery, daughter of Sir William Brereton of Brereton in Cheshire. He had a younger brother named John, who later became the dean of Chichester.

It has been suggested that he attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford, but this is improbable. Neither college claimed in his lifetime that he was one of its former students.

That he was at Oxford, and probably a scholar at one of the grammar schools there, before passing on to the higher faculties, is shown by a letter of the Chancellor addressed to him when Provost of Eton College, which speaks of the university as his mother who brought him forth into the light of knowledge and nourished him with the alimony of all the sciences.

He is probably the William Barbour who was ordained as an acolyte by Bishop Fleming of Lincoln on 21 April 1420 and subdeacon on 21 January 1421; and as William Barbour, otherwise Waynflete of Spalding, was ordained deacon on 18 March 1421, and priest on 21 January 1426, with title from Spalding Priory.

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