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In the early 1570s, a man called John Fanstone from Downton in Wiltshire claimed that he, rather than Winchester College, was the rightful owner of land in Downton. He produced a series of documents to support his claim, and these claims were contested by the College in 1581 – land in Downton was the first endowment given to Win Coll by our Founder in 1385.
As it was one of our most valuable holdings of land, our warden, Thomas Bilson, investigated the claim. He wrote that Fanstone was a very good forger of documents, ‘his order hath ben to write secretly all night longe and after to hang his writings in the smoke’. He also stated that there were ‘generall suspicions of his Deeds’, citing the thinness of the parchment, the colour of the deeds, the broken edges of the seals which meant that the names could not be read, irregular spacing of the writing, and ‘uncertaine and wavering’ handwriting.
Fanstone was arrested on charges of forgery and ‘other corrupt dealings’ in 1583 and was eventually prosecuted by the Attorney General in the Star Chamber in 1584.
Bundles of the forged documents are held in the College Archives, all of them slashed through to show that they are counterfeit.
