CHURCHWARDEN'S BOOK
Itm pd to ye man that mayd the syd aulters in
wageys xijd
Itm pd to Thomas hymlyn Wyffe for meat &
dryncke too them that mayd the saide
aulters ijs viijd
Itm pd to ye man that makg. the Roode in prte
of paementt xijd"
Other interesting items are—
"Itm payd to ye players off cādylmesse day viijd
Itm payd in ye same year to ye players whytche
playd off ye Sonday next after Sant Mathyes
day vjd"
One might make quite an amusing "story of a dictionary" from the various entries in the Thorpe churchwardens' book about an Elliott's Dictionary which, in the middle of the sixteenth century the vicar bequeathed to his successors in perpetuo. It is described as "one boke called a dyxonary," and evidently exercised both vicar and wardens a good deal until one vicar bethought him of the device of "delivering" it to the parish to be kept along with various volumes of homilies, and expositions and the paraphrases of Erasmus.
But it is time to leave Thorpe; and two miles will bring us to Wainfleet which, as its name declares, though now a couple of miles from the sea, was once a haven for sea-going ships, for "Fleet" means a navigable creek. This little place gave its name in the fifteenth century to a great man, William of Wainfleet, or Waynflete, Headmaster of Winchester, and first headmaster and Provost of Eton, successor to Cardinal Beaufort as Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VI. He was a great builder, for he possibly planned, and certainly completed, Tattershall Castle, built Tattershall church, and founded Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1457, the first college to admit commoners, a wise and far-seeing innovation of Waynflete's; and in his native town erected in 1484 the Magdalen College School, a fine brick building seventy-six feet by twenty-six with its gateway flanked by polygonal towers recalling the entrance to Eton College. In the south tower is a remarkable staircase, and in the north a bell.
His adoption of St. Mary Magdalen as the patron of his
