The college is sometimes described as being different from other colleges in being merely a large chantry to pray for the souls of the dead warriors.
But it was no more a chantry than the other colleges, all of which, like the monasteries and collegiate churches, were to pray for their founders' and other specified souls.
The grammar school was founded by Dr Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College, in 1528, but as it was connected with a chantry it was suppressed by Henry VIII., to be refounded in 1551 by Edward VI.; it now takes rank among the important public schools.
On St Thomas's Hill, where Thomas, earl of Lancaster, was beheaded in 1322, a chantry was erected in 1373, the site of which is now occupied by a windmill built of its stones.
It lay afterwards under the Villiers monument, and in 1878 was re-buried in Henry V.'s chantry.