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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. Walton's 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.