Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and founder of Merton College, Oxford
/F. M. Powicke, FBA, Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford, Hon. Fellow of Merton College, introduces Walter de Merton, Bishop of Rochester from 1274 to 1277 and founder of Merton College in Oxford. Extract from the Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1938.
Very little is known about the early life of Walter de Merton. What is known shows that he was a young man of substance who attracted the attention of interesting and important people. His family names suggests that his ancestors came from Merton, in Surrey, and this suggestion is strengthened by the fact that he had Malden and other manors in the neighbourhood. 'The main centre of the family interest was Basingstoke, where Walter inherited property from his father in 1237. Soon after this time his name begins to appear casually in connection with the great men of the land.
The famous Oxford Franciscan, Adam Marsh, who was in touch with nearly everybody of importance from the King downwards, liked and respected him well enough to ask his friend and fellow-friar, Adam of "Bechesovere," to pay him some attention when he went to the Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, to be admitted as subdeacon. Adam of "Bechesovere" -the provenance of whose surname is uncertain - was the best-known physician in the Franciscan order in England, and it is not without significance that one of Walter de Merton's first patrons seems to have been a still more famous medical man, Nicholas of Farnham, the King's physician, who became Bishop of Durham in 1241. In Walter's days, even more than now-a-days, an attractive, competent, self-assured young man, who cared to seize opportunities as they came along, had little difficulty in making his way. He might easily engage the attention and favour of one influential person after another, each more important than the last. Walter may well have gone to court on the recommendation of the King's physician. But we do not know anything about this. What we do know is that by 1250 he was a clerk in the royal chancery, and had begun to collect the numerous preferments, rectories, and prebends, which men high up in the civil service acquired. In 1259 he received a prebend of St. Paul's, and if an entry in the Close Rolls can be accepted, he was, in 1266, Archdeacon of Bath.
An imaged portrait of Bishop Walter de Merton by Wilhelm Sonmans (1650–1708) is in the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
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One of his livings was Haltwistle, in Northumberland, on the road between Carlisle and Newcastle, and, in May 1262, King Henry gave him six oaks from the forest of Inglewood in aid of the building of the church at Haltwistle. Needless to say, Walter was a non-resident pluralist, but service at the royal court, even when the law of the Church about pluralities was more strictly enforced, would justify exemption both from it and from local duties. The work would be done by vicars or chaplains.
Walter also received additions to his secular income from manors. One of these was the manor of Doddington or Diddington, in Huntingdonshire. A certain John of Littlebury had given, or perhaps leased, this manor to Walter for life. John's son, of the same name, took the occasion, during the war of 1264, to lay hands on it, and was ordered by the government to release it promptly. The order was made in November 1264, when the King was not master of his affairs, but it does not necessarily mean that the younger John was a baronial partisan. The incident is worth mentioning, as Merton College was to have the living of Doddington.
A certain scrutiny of all the chancery and other records at this time would certainly give considerable information about Walter de Merton, which appears in none of his biographies; but the general impression which we can form of him and of his career would probably not be affected, one way or the other, by the collection of these details.
What is needed is a vivid story or two, or a few private letters, or a biographical sketch by someone who knew him; but we have nothing of the kind. It is a pity that he emerged too late from his humdrum official life to attract the attention of Matthew Paris, whose numerous little characterizations of King's clerks and others are always to the point. Yet Walter's career speaks for itself.
He rose to be the chief clerk in the very important department of the chancery, and this means that he was very efficient; it means that he was in close touch with affairs at home and abroad, and could conduct a negotiation or carry through a complicated task with knowledge. And, in Walter's case, it means that he had personality, got on with people, held his own, and inspired the King and his entourage with confidence; for, if he had not possessed these qualities, he would not have been made Chancellor at a critical time, and been entrusted with the use of the great seal. He was loyal to the King, and no doubt held royalist views about the rather clumsy efforts of the baronage to control administration, but the silence about him suggests that his main concern was to see that the daily task was done. He was trusted as a safe man: for example, he was asked to "carry on" as Chancellor after King Henry's death until King Edward returned to England; but he seems to have been rather aloof; not remote or unfriendly, but content with the life which he knew; not adverse to the companionships and comforts of this world, but solid and discreet in his outlook upon them; neither saint nor scholar, yet aware of the deeper realities behind the appearance of things. It is remarkable that his interests were domestic in the wider sense of the word. He had been mainly concerned first to live in and later to direct the big "family" of the chancery; he was at home in the great family or household of the King; and he was deeply interested in the family of kin and kindred. He founded a hospital at Basingstoke in memory of his father and mother; in his will, dated at Oxford, March 1276, he firmly attached his interests at Basing-stoke to the fortunes of his new foundation in Oxford; he thought that he might be buried at Basingstoke.
Sick or infirm scholars of his College were to be sent to the hospital, and the records of the College show that they were sent. The scholats of Merton were enjoined, as they prospered, to further the welfare of college and hospital alike. Indeed, Walter's main concern in the foundation of his College was for his own kinsfolk. He took a large view, but his kin had the prior claim and were not to be overlooked. The College was in a real sense a domestic or family foundation. He planned this provision for scholars as soon as he was sure of his position, and it engaged his earnest attention throughout the last fifteen years of his life (1262-1277), while he was so deeply involved in affairs of State and England passed through one of the greatest crises in its history. The monks of Rochester felt that he was not as interested in them as he might have been.
"Although he had very great influence and power," writes the author of the Rochester annals, nothing for the prior and convent, and procured no benefits for them worthy of notice."
This is not quite fair, for Walter made bequests of them, his fine crozier to the Abbey, a palfrey to the prior, and ten marks to the building fund; but the convent felt, and no doubt with justice, that his mind and heart were elsewhere.
After all, he had not had much time to adjust himself to his latest family, for, when he died on October 27th, 1277, as a result of an accident to his horse as he was fording the Medway, he had been Bishop for only three years.
His interests were centred in Basingstoke and Oxford, and his bequests to Rochester must have seemed very meagre when compared with the 1,000 marks left to his College.
The plans for his College were made, as had been said, during his busiest and most responsible years of office. Possibly there was a closer relation than one might think between his activities as Chancellor and his endeavours for poor scholars, although it is not right to suppose that he intended his scholars to become "civil"' servants.
As the leading clerk in the chancery Walter had, on two occasions, had temporary charge of the great seal, when, in November 1259, he was put in charge of the chancery, with the power to use the exchequer seal for public business while the King and Chancellor and Great Seal were abroad. The change from royal control to the system arranged by the barons in 1258 had so far made no difference to him. In May 1261, he became Chancellor, displacing the official, Nicholas of Ely, who had been nominated by the barons. He held office for rather more than two years, when the baronial nominee again took office, but in all proba-bility he resumed his old position in the chancery, for it has been surmised that he was with King Henry in France in the winter of 1263-64, when the Chancellor was in England.
His second tenure of office as Chancellor was 1272-1274, during the interval between the King's death and the arrival of Edward I in England. Now it is at least worthy of notice that in this very period, to be precise between the years 1257-1270, the famous foundation of Robert de Sorbon in the University of Paris was carried to fruition. The Sorbonne in Paris was in several respects the counterpart of Merton College in Oxford. Walter's scholars were to be bachelors of art, who could proceed to the mastership and then to theology; Robert's were masters of arts who could go on to theology.
The scholars in both places were secular clerks, that is to say, did not belong to any monastic order. Both endowments lacked precision in their earlier stages, and their scope was not clearly defined until some years had passed. Walter de Merton, if anyone, was in a position to know what was going on in Paris, and Robert de Sorbon's enterprise may well have turned his practical mind to a similar plan in England.
The confusing and difficult story of the foundation of Merton College may be studied elsewhere. It takes us to Malden and Cambridge, as well as to Oxford.
Walter's final statutes were issued in the interval between the King's return on the 2nd August, 1274, and his own consecration as Bishop of Rochester in October. In the time of one of its greatest Wardens, Sir Henry Savile, the College rebuilt his tomb in Rochester (1598), and Savile's inscription com- memorated him as the founder, by his example, of the colleges in English universities. In 1852 a third tomb, designed, as far as possible, on the lines of that erected by Walter's executors, was built at the expense of the College.
3D model of the third tomb of Bishop Walter de Merton constructed in 1852.
So, after all, Oxford and Rochester came together in commemoration of a good man who worked even better than he could have hoped or intended.
F. M. Powicke, FBA
Extract from the Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1938
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Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Reports
The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.
