St. George’s Chapel, Windsordetails

“In the castle here was an old free chapel, dedicated to King Edward the Confessor, in which King Henry I. placed eight secular priests, who seem never to have been incorporated nor endowed with lands, but to have been maintained by pensions yearly out of the king’s exchequer. And in the park here was, in the beginning of Edward II.’s reign, a royal chapel for thirteen chaplains and four clerks, who had yearly salaries out of the manors of Langley mark and Sippenham, in Bucks [Buckinghamshire]. King Edward III. anno regni IV. removed those chaplains and clerks out of the parks into the castle; and shortly after added four more chaplains and to clerks to them. But this victorious prince, being afterwards desirous of raising this place of his nativity to much greater splendor, refounded this ancient free chapel royal, and in A. D. 1352 established it as a collegiate church, to the honour of the Virgin Mary, St. George, and St. Edward, King and Confessor, consisting of a custos (since called a dean) twelve great canons, or prebendaries, thirteen vicars, or minor canons, four clerks, six choristers, twenty-six poor alms-knights, besides other officers; their yearly revenues were rated, 26 Henry VIII. at 1602l. 2s. 1d. ob. 9. This free chapel was particularly excepted out of the act for suppressing colleges, &c. 1. Edward VI. c. 14. and still subsists in a flourishing condition.” (p. 9)