With the Restoration,
which was most gallantly welcomed in the old royal city, Charles II.
came to Winchester, and having been burnt out at Newmarket was,
according to Evelyn, "all the more earnest to render Winchester the
seat of his autumnal diversions for the future, designing a palace
there where the ancient castle stood.... The surveyor has already begun
the foundation for a palace estimated to cost L35,000...." But Charles
died too soon to finish this new house, which, it is said, Queen Anne
wished to complete, liking Winton well, but again death intervened.
In spite of these royal fancies, however, Winchester, which had
suffered badly in the plague of 1667, continued to decline in
importance and in population, and to depend more and more upon the two
great establishments which remained to it, the Cathedral, founded by
Kynegils in 635 and re-established under a new Protestant
administration in the sixteenth century, and the College of St Mary of
Winchester founded by William of Wykeham in connection with the College
of St Mary, Winton, in Oxford, called New College, for the education of
youth and the advancement of learning.
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