From an educational point of view no doubt the University was right in insisting on the preliminary training in Arts.
Roger Bacon speaks with contempt of the class that was springing up in his day—people who studied theology and nothing but theology, “and had never learnt anything of real value. Ignorant of all parts and sciences of mundane philosophy, they venture on the study of philosophy which demands all human wisdom. So they have become masters in theology and philosophy before they were disciples.”
The tendency and the danger of our modern educational system is to specialise, not in theology but in science, without any proper previous training in the humanities.
Whilst the University was engaged in desperate combat with the friars in defence of its system, the regulars had succeeded in securing almost a monopoly of learning. The same fight and the same state of affairs prevailed at Paris. And just as at Paris in order to save the class of secular theologians from extinction, Robert de Sorbonne established his college (1257) for secular clerks, so now at Oxford, Walter de Merton took the most momentous step in the history of our national education by founding a college for twenty students of Theology or Canon Law, who not only were not friars or monks, but who forfeited their claims to his bounty if they entered any of the regular Orders. And that his object was achieved the names of Walter Burley, the Doctor Perspicuus, Thomas Bradwardine, the profound doctor, and perhaps John Wycliffe stand forth to prove.
As an institution for the promotion of academical education under a collegiate discipline but secular guidance, the foundation of Merton College was the expression of a conception entirely new in England. It deserves special consideration, for it became the model of all other collegiate foundations, and determined the future constitution of both the English Universities.
Walter de Merton was born at Merton in Surrey. He studied at Oxford and won such high honour with the King that he was made Chancellor of the kingdom. Ranged on the side opposite to that of Simon de Montford, he was enabled perhaps by the very success of his opponent and the leisure that so came to him, to perfect the scheme which he had early begun to develop. At first he set aside his estates of Malden, Farleigh and Chessington to support eight of his young kinsmen in study at the University.
But in 1263 he made over his manor-house and estate of Malden to a “house of Scholars of Merton,” with the object of supporting twenty students preferably at Oxford.
The first statutes were granted in the following year. The scholars in whom the property of this house was vested were not allowed to reside within its walls for more than one week in the year, at the annual audit. The house was to be occupied by a Warden and certain brethren or Stewards. It was their business to
