Eton College receiving financial assistance from the school continues to increase. Eton College was founded by King Henry VI as a charity school to provide free education to 70 poor boys who would then go on to King's College, Cambridge, founded by the same King in 1441. Henry took Winchester College as his model, visiting on many occasions, borrowing its Statutes and removing its Headmaster and some of the Scholars to start his new school. When Henry VI founded the school, he granted it a large number of endowments, including much valuable land. The group of feoffees appointed by the king to
Eton College in 1861 as a Royal Commission to investigate the state of nine schools in England, including Eton. Questioned by the Commission in 1862, head master Edward Balston came under attack for his view that in the classroom little time could be spared for subjects other than classical studies. The Duke of Wellington is often incorrectly quoted as saying that "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton". Wellington was at Eton from 1781 to 1784 and was to send his sons there. According to Nevill (citing the historian Sir Edward Creasy), what Wellington said, while passing an