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|MERTON is in several respects the most interesting of the Colleges of
Oxford. In the first place, it is the oldest; for though the original
endowments of University and Balliol were bestowed a little earlier,
Merton was the first College to have a corporate existence, regulated
and defined by statute. With the granting of Merton's statutes in 1264,
a new era of University life began. From being casual sojourners in
lodgings and Halls, students from this date tended more and more to
be gathered into organised, endowed, and dignified societies, where
discipline was one of the factors of education.
Such is Oxford's debt to Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and
Bishop of Rochester, who died by a fall from his horse in fording a
river in his diocese, and was buried in Rochester Cathedral. His tomb
there has twice been renovated by the piety of the College which he
founded.
His statutes are preserved at Merton, and were consulted as precedents
when other Colleges were founded, at Cambridge as well as at Oxford. "By
the example which he set," runs the inscription on his tomb, "he is the
founder of all existing Colleges."
Another great distinction of Merton is its Library (whose interior
appears in Mrs. Waltons sketch), which was built in 1377, by William
Rede, Bishop of Chichester, and is the oldest Library in the kingdom.
In monasteries and other houses where learning took refuge, books had
hitherto been kept in chests, an arrangement which must have had its
drawbacks, considering the weight of the volumes of those days.
Mr. Matthison's first drawing shews the College as seen from Merton
Street, with the imposing tower of the Chapel in the background. A very
fine view of the buildings of Merton, in their full extent, is obtained
from Christ Church Meadow.
To speak of them in detail, the Muniment Room is the oldest collegiate
structure in Oxford, and possibly dates from the lifetime of the
Founder. The Hall gateway, with its ancient oak door and enormous iron
hinges, is of the same epoch. Of the three Quadrangles the small one
to the north (which contains the Library) is the oldest. The front
Quadrangle opens by a magnificent archway into the Inner, or Fellows'
Court, built in 1610 in the late Gothic style, its south gate surmounted
with pillars of the several Greek orders. The Common Room (1661) was the
first room of the kind to be opened in Oxford.
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The beautiful Chapel has rather the appearance of a parish Church, which
indeed it is. St. John the Baptists parish, however, is so minute as
hardly to need, in a city of many churches, a place of worship all to
itself, and the building was assigned to Merton in the last decade
of the thirteenth century, with the proviso that one of the chaplains
should discharge such parochial duties as might arise. In the
ante-chapel are the monuments of the famous Sir Thomas Bodley, Sir Henry
Savile, once Master, and Antony Wood, greatest of Oxford antiquarians.
Wood (who died in 1695) was associated with Merton all his life. He was
born in the house opposite the College entrance, called Postmasters'
Hall, and there he passed most of his days.
It is from him that we get a great deal of our information about early
Oxford. Royalty has repeatedly enjoyed the hospitality of Merton, and
here is Wood's account of a visit paid by Queen Catherine, wife of
Henry VIII. "She vouchsafed to condescend so low as to dine with the
Merton-ians, for the sake of the late Warden Rawlyns, at this time
almoner to the king, notwithstanding she was expected by other
Colleges." Elizabeth and her privy council were equally gracious,
and were entertained after dinner with disputations performed by the
Fellows. One would like to know what subjects were disputed, and what
the queen thought of her entertainment. When Charles I.'s Court came to
Oxford, Queen Henrietta Maria occupied the Warden's lodgings, which were
again tenanted by Charles II.'s queen, when the Court fled from
plague-stricken London.
Merton has had great men among her Fellows, but none greater than John
Wycliffe; and among her postmasters (so the scholars are called here) no
name captivates our sympathies more readily than that of Richard Steele,
trooper and essayist, the friend of Addison and the husband of Prue.