Merton's chief title to fame is the foundation of Merton College, Oxford, and therefore, in a sense, of the collegiate system of the English universities. In 1261 he obtained a charter from Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester, empowering him to assign his manors at Farley and Malden in Surrey to the priory of Merton, for the support of ‘scholars residing at the schools,’ an expression which probably means scholars at Oxford. A little later, probably in September 1263, he published a deed of assignation of these and other lands. Under this deed special provision was made for the education of eight nephews under a warden and chaplains; the care of his nephews, who are here spoken of as ‘scholares in scholis degentes,’ appears indeed to have been the first object of Merton's foundation. On 7 Jan. 1264 there came a regular charter of incorporation, which established the ‘House of the Scholars of Merton’ at Malden in Surrey, under a warden and bailiffs, with ministers of the altar, and with power to maintain twenty scholars at Oxford or any other place of general learning. During the next few years Merton acquired the site of the present college, together with the advowson of St. John's Church, and other property at Oxford. In 1270 the statutes of 1264 were reissued without any material alteration, but eventually, in August 1274, Merton put forth his final statutes, transferring the warden, bailiffs, and ministers to Oxford, and designating Oxford as the exclusive and permanent home of the scholars. Under these statutes provision was made for such a number of scholars as the college revenues would support, and for their common life as a corporate body under the rule of a superior called the warden. Merton's intention appears to have been to provide for the training of secular clergy, and though he borrowed from monasticism the idea of a corporate life under a common rule and head, he expressly prohibited his scholars from taking vows, and provided that any who entered one of the regular orders should forfeit his scholarship. Above all, the college was to be a place of study, in the first place of philosophy and the liberal arts, and afterwards of theology. The Rochester chronicler describes the college as established for the perpetual sustenance of students ‘in arte dialectica et theologia’ (Flores Historiarum, iii. 44). The establishment of Merton College was the beginning of the true collegiate system, for though the benefactions of William of Durham and of John and Devorguila de Balliol are of earlier date, they did not provide for the formation of regular corporate bodies, and the establishment of University and Balliol colleges followed, and did not precede, that of Merton. At Cambridge, Merton College was avowedly the model of the collegiate system, for when Hugh de Balsham [q. v.] obtained license for the foundation of Peterhouse, it was expressly stated to be for ‘studious scholars who shall in everything live together as students in the university of Cambridge, according to the rule of the scholars of Oxford who are called of Merton.’ So in the statutes actually drawn up for Peterhouse by Simon Montague in 1284 constant reference is made to the fact that they are ‘ad instar aulæ de Merton.’ It is needless to add that the system initiated by Walter de Merton has moulded the whole history of both universities, and thus fully justifies the words of Savile's epitaph:—
Re, unius
Exemplo, omnium quoquot extant
Collegiorum, fundatori.
[Annales Monastici; Flores Historiarum (both in Rolls Ser.); Hobhouse's Sketch of the Life of Walter de Merton, 1859; Percival's Foundation Statutes of Merton College; Brodrick's Memorials of Merton College, Oxf. Hist. Soc. (a translation of the statutes of 1274 is given on pp. 317–40); Lyte's Hist. of Univ. of Oxford; Foss's Judges of England, iii. 129–31.]
MERVIN or MERVYN, AUDLEY (d. 1675), soldier, lawyer, and politician, was second son of Admiral Sir Henry Mervyn of Petersfield, Hampshire, by Christian, daughter of George Touchet, baron Audley and Earl of Castlehaven [q. v.] Mervyn acquired a considerable portion of the lands in Ulster, which his uncle Lord Castlehaven had undertaken to ‘plant.’ For a time he was captain of a regiment raised by Sir Henry Tichborne and established himself in the castle of Trillick in the county of Tyrone. In 1639–1640 Mervyn was elected member for Tyrone in the House of Commons at Dublin, where, according to Carte, he became ‘the most tiresome and continual speech-maker of the puritan party.’ On behalf of the commons he in 1641 presented to the peers articles of impeachment against Sir Richard Bolton [q. v.] and others. The speech delivered by Mervyn on this occasion was printed in 1641 and republished in 1764.
Immediately after the commencement of the rising in Ulster in October 1641, Colonel Rory Maguire, M.P. for Fermanagh, who had married Mervyn's sister and was brother of Lord Maguire, apprised Mervyn of the project of the Irish then in arms to employ him to wait upon Charles I with a statement of their grievances and suggestions for a satisfactory settlement. Mervyn, however,
