[78] The wording provides for the existing or any other ordinatio Merton may formulate.
[79] “Domus scolarium de Merton.” Burg. Cantebr. Rot. Hund. i. 55.
[80] Rot. Hund. ii. 360.
[81] The “Merton clerks,” clerici de Merton, are mentioned again in the next paragraph. At the same date a certain Johanna declares that she had as a marriage portion from her father a messuage given him by Cecil at the Castle, for which is paid a quit rent of twelve pence a year to “the scholars of Merton.” Rot. Hund. ii. 379. In the Hundred of Chesterton (p. 402) we find that “the scholars of Merton hold of the fee of Hervey Dunning” such and such properties. They also paid a quit rent to Edmund Crouchback for lands he held (on the death of de Montfort) as earl of Leicester.
[82] Rot. Hund. ii. 364, 407.
[83] The general rule in these Rolls is to add no qualification of origin in cases where the owner, or religious house, has another habitation in the locality to which the transaction refers. Hence we find “the prior of Anglesey,” “the prioress of Stratford,” side by side with “the scholars of Merton” in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls (cf. Rot. Hund. ii. 364).
[84] Grantchester (7th Edw. I. p. 565): et tota dicta pars alienata est scolaribus Oxon’ per dominum Walter’ de Merton’, nescit quo warranto. Gamlingay: “William of Leicester sold the whole of that holding to dominus Walter de Merton and the said Walter gave it all to the scholars of the domus de Merton Oxonie.”
[85] “Villani ejusd’ Gunnor’ dicunt quod prior de Mertone” held the advowson of the church of Barton. (Rot. Hund. ii. 564.)
The Bishop of Nelson points out that the scholars were called not after Walter de Merton, but after the place—Merton priory. Merton himself had no surname; he was born at Basingstoke, and was perhaps educated at the priory from which he also took his name. Beket was certainly educated at this well-known Merton, which gave its name to the “Statute of Merton” devised there in 1236, and was also the theatre of a council held by the archbishop 22 years later. At the evaluation of 1291, the priory held property in Norfolk (Index Monasticus). The Cambridge estates settled on the scholars of the domus apud Meandon (Malden) in 1270 were in Gamlingay, Merton, Over-Merton, Chesterton, etc. It is worth notice that among a number of scholars who received the king’s pardon in 1261 for the part they had taken in a riot, there is a William de Merton, servant to two of the East Anglian scholars implicated.
[86] For the “Ely scholars” see ii. pp. 122-3. The first to leave an endowment for scholars was William of Durham in 1249; but several years elapsed before the fund was utilised, scholars maintained, or University College Oxford founded. University College was thus the outcome of an earlier intention to endow, and Balliol College was an earlier foundation in embryo, than either Peterhouse or Merton.