Wykeham, before he received his mitre, had been surveyor of works and architect at Windsor, and secretary to the King, in addition to holding sundry pieces of preferment in the Church. Wyclif, as a declared enemy to pluralists, and to ecclesiastics who grew wealthy by dividing the trust-funds of the Church, would have been inconsistent if he had not blamed Wykeham amongst the rest—or amongst the very first. But there is no other evidence of serious or personal animosity between these two men, whom their countrymen for ample reasons have so long agreed to honour.
Nevertheless, there is one kind of honour for churchmen who refuse their share in the trust-funds, preferring a life of apostolic poverty in order that they may preach the gospel by example as well as by precept, and another kind of honour for such as take what comes to them, perhaps restoring the bulk of it in their own time and manner. Wykeham was a magnificent founder and benefactor, to whom students of all succeeding ages have been largely indebted. Yet Stow, on the authority of Walsingham, says that in 1365, when he was made Archdeacon of Lincoln and Keeper of the Seal, Wykeham was already Provost of Wells, incumbent of a benefice in Devonshire, and the holder of no fewer than twelve prebends. In the same year, on the death of Bishop Edington of Winchester, he was made "general administrator of spiritual and temporal things pertaining to the bishopric." The Duke of Bourbon was at that time a prisoner in English hands; and, as the Pope was more easily approachable from
