fishing rights of the townsmen. “A servant of the House of the Merton scholars[79] had appropriated to his masters’ use a certain foss common to the whole town.” In the later inquisitions of the 7th of Edward I.
A.D. 1278-9.
we find them figuring among the most considerable Cambridge landlords, one entry showing them to us as purchasers of land from Manfield: Item scolares de Merton tenent unum mesuagium cum quadraginta et quinque acris terre ... quas emerunt de Willelmo de Manefeld.[80]
A.D. 1278-9.
Three of these entries point to tenure of no very recent date. Thus Eustace Dunning sold to Walter Howe a messuage with a croft which Eustace had inherited from his father Hervey Dunning, and for which the Howes, in accordance with an assignment made by Eustace Dunning, gave twelve pence a year to the clerks of Merton (per assignationem praedicti Eustachi clericis de Merton xiid).[81] The declaration is made by John son and heir of Walter Howe, so that Eustace Dunning’s appointment in favour of the
A.D. 1278-9.
Merton clerks refers to some time back. Again, Agnes daughter of the tailor Philip inherited a messuage in the parish of S. Peter which her father “had held of the Merton scholars.” In the last place the Cambridge jurymen affirm that two annual attendances should have been made at the court of Chesterton for a holding of Eustace Dunning’s, but that the scholars of Merton had failed to put in an appearance for the past six years.[82]
These transactions cannot be held to relate to an estate managed for the Oxford college founded in 1274, and to a period covering not more than four or five years. From 1274, which is also the date of the earliest Hundred Rolls, the Merton scholars were definitely and finally established at Oxford; and when John Howe and Agnes Taylor gave their evidence it is probable that there were no longer Merton scholars in Cambridge: what their depositions seem to indicate is a concurrent antiquity for Merton scholars at both universities. If these scholars had not been settled among them when these land transactions occurred the references would certainly have been to scholares de Merton Oxoniae,[83] and it is well worthy of notice that the only two instances in the Cambridge Hundred Rolls where “the Merton scholars at Oxford” are referred to are two instances where Walter de Merton is said to have “alienated” land in Cambridge for the use of the scholars in Oxford.[84]
No doubt it had always been part of Merton’s design to found a residential college for his scholars at one of the universities; and he had perhaps strong reasons for establishing this at Cambridge. His great patron was Chief-Justice Bassett, and the Bassetts were Cambridge landowners. His patron in the original assignment of Malden manor was Gilbert de Clare whose family gave its name in the next century to the eponymous college at the same university. Was the domus de Merton of “the scholars and brethren” (p. 39) in fact at one time such a residence? where poor scholars, some of them perchance from Merton priory school itself, lived under the auspices of the Merton brethren? Certain it is that a prior of Merton intrudes himself and his affairs into the Cambridge Hundred Rolls.[85] It is also certain that the House of Scholars of Merton is first heard of not at Oxford but at Cambridge. Mr. J. W. Clark has pointed out in another connexion that the words domus and aula were employed when a building was “appropriated by endowment as a fixed residence for a body of scholars.” Our domus scholarium de Merton on which Cambridge lands were bestowed—to which Cambridge lands were confirmed—in 1269, could not have been either in Surrey or at Oxford.
Whether there was a house of Merton scholars at Cambridge before there was a house of Merton scholars at Oxford, or not, it would appear that a like antiquity must be claimed for the scholars themselves at both universities.[86]