the sacrifice made to loyalty was not so great as might be imagined. No College order directing the surrender is extant, and two of the Fellows afterwards mutually accused each other of having thus misappropriated the College property.
Other notices of the great struggle then convulsing the nation are few and far between in the minutes of the College Register. It is remarkable that, so far back as August 1641, the College directed twelve muskets and as many pikes to be purchased, bello ingruente, for the purpose of repelling any roving soldiers who might break in for the sake of plunder. Anthony Wood particularly observes, that during the Queen’s stay at Merton there were divers marriages, christenings, and burials in the Chapel, of which all record has been lost, as the private register in which the Chaplain had noted them was stolen out of his room when Oxford was finally surrendered to Fairfax. The confusion that prevailed during the Royalist occupation of Oxford is, however, officially recognized by the College. It is duly chronicled, for instance, that on August 1st, 1645, the College meeting was held in the Library, neither the Hall nor the Warden’s Lodgings being then available for the purpose; and several entries attest the pecuniary straits to which the College was reduced. At last it is solemnly recorded, under the date of October 19th, 1646, that by the Divine goodness the war had at last been stayed, and the Warden (Brent) with most of the Fellows had returned, but that as there were no Bachelors, hardly any Scholars, and few Masters, it was decided to elect but one Bursar and one Dean. It is added that, as the Hall still lay situ et ruinis squalida, the College meeting was held in the Warden’s Lodgings.
When the scenes were shifted, and a solemn Visitation of the University was instituted by “The Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament,” Merton College may be said to have set the example of conformity to the new order in Church and State. Sir Nathaniel Brent himself was President of the Commission. Among his colleagues were three Fellows of Merton, Reynolds, Cheynell, and Corbet, who had already been appointed with four other preachers to convert the gownsmen through Presbyterian sermons. The earlier sittings of the Commission were held in the Warden’s dining-room, or, during his absence, in Cheynell’s apartments. When the members of the College, including servants, were called before the Visitors and required to make their submission, about half of them, according to Anthony Wood, openly complied: most of the others made answers more or less evasive, declaring their readiness to obey the Warden, or submitting in so far as the Visitors had authority from the King. French, who, as official guardian of the University Register, had refused to give it up, now made his submission, but justified it on the strange ground that he was bound by the capitulation of Oxford to Fairfax. One Fellow only, Nicholas Howson, boldly refused submission, declaring that he could not reconcile it with his allegiance to the King, the University, and the College. He was of course removed; and the same fate befell Turner, Greaves, French, and one other Fellow, with a larger number of Postmasters, of whom, however, some were condemned as improperly elected, and some were afterwards restored through Brent’s influence. Even while the Commission was sitting, a Royalist spirit must have lingered in the College, since we read that four of the Fellows, three of whom had submitted, were put out of commons for a week and publicly admonished by the Warden for drinking the King’s health with a tertiavit, and uncovered heads. Brent resigned the Wardenship in 1651; whereupon the Parliamentary Visitors proceeded to appoint, by their own authority, but on the express nomination of the Protector, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, who had been head physician to Cromwell’s army in Ireland and Scotland—thereby improving on Charles I.’s paternal but constitutional recommendation of Harvey.
With the suspension of this great Visitation, shortly to be followed by the Restoration of Charles II., the short-lived connection of Merton College with general history may be said to have closed. It had the honour of lodging the Queen and favourite ladies of Charles II. in the plague-year, 1665; it cashiered a Probationer-Fellow in 1681 for maintaining that Charles I. died justly; it took part in the enlistment of volunteers for the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion; and it joined other Colleges in the half-hearted reception of William III. But its records are devoid of political interest, except so far as it became a chief stronghold of Whig principles in the University during the Jacobite re-action which followed the Revolution, was encouraged by the avowed Toryism of Queen Anne, and almost broke out into civil war on the accession of George I. Charles Wesley expressly mentions it with Christ Church, Exeter, and Wadham, as an anti-Jacobite society; and Meadowcourt, a leading member of the College, was the hero of a famous scene at the Whig “Constitution Club,” when the Proctor, breaking in, was reluctantly obliged to drink King George’s health. Shortly afterwards the following entry appeared in the University “Black Book”:—“Let Mr. Meadowcourt, of Merton College, be kept back from the degree for which he next stands, for the space of two years; nor be admitted to supplicate for his grace, until he confesses his manifold crimes, and asks pardon on his knees”—a penalty, however, which he managed to evade, being afterwards thanked for his loyalty by the Whig government.
In the absence of contemporary letters or biographies, it is only from casual notices in Visitors’ Injunctions, Bursars’ Rolls, and (after 1482) the College Register, that we can obtain any light on the life and manners of Merton scholars, whether senior or junior, before the Reformation-period. That it was a haven of rest for quiet students, and a model of academical discipline to extra-collegiate inmates of halls and lodgings, during the incessant tumults of the fourteenth century, admits of no doubt whatever. A notable proof of this is the special exemption of Merton “et aularum consimilium”—probably University, Balliol, Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s Colleges—from the general rustication of students which followed the sanguinary riot on St. Scholastica’s day in 1354. But the rules laid down by the Founder, and enforced by successive Visitors, were expressly directed to secure good order in the Society. By the Statutes of 1274, summary expulsion was to be the penalty of persistence in quarrelsome or disorderly behaviour. By the Ordinances of Archbishop Peckham and several other Visitors, the inmates of the College are strictly prohibited from taking meals in the town or entering it alone, and enjoined always to walk about in a body, returning before nightfall. Other Regulations, of great antiquity, but of somewhat uncertain date, emphatically warn the Fellows against aiding and abetting, even in jest, the squabbles between the Northern and Southern “Nations,” or between rival “Faculties.” In 1508, the College itself legislated directly against the growing practice of giving out-College parties in the city and coming in late, “even after ten o’clock.” By the Injunctions of Archbishop Laud, it was ordered that the College gates should be closed at half-past nine and the keys given to the Warden, none being allowed to sleep in Oxford outside the College walls, or even to breakfast or dine, except in the College Hall, carefully separated according to their degrees. Whether the scholars of Merton, old and young, originally slept in large dormitories, or were grouped together by threes and fours in sets of rooms, like those occupied singly by modern students, is a question which cannot be determined with certainty. The structure of “Mob Quadrangle,” however, together with the earliest notices in the Register, justifies the belief that most of them lived in College rooms, and that in those days the College Library, far larger than could be required for the custody of a few hundred or thousand manuscripts, was the one common study of the whole College, perhaps serving also as a covered ambulatory. This building is known to have been constructed, or converted to its present use, about 1376; but the dormer windows in the roof were not thrown out until more than a century later; and in the meantime readers can scarcely have deciphered manuscripts on winter-days, in so dark a chamber, without the aid of oil lamps. Fires were probably unknown, except in the Hall, whither inmates of the College doubtless resorted to warm themselves at all hours of the day. It is to be hoped that, at such casual gatherings, they were relieved from the obligation to converse in Latin imposed upon them during the regular meals in Hall. But intimacy between juniors and seniors was strictly prohibited; and though Archbishop Cranmer allowed the College to dispense with the practice of Bachelors “capping” Masters in the Quadrangle, it was thought necessary to revive it. As for manly pastimes, which occupy so large a space in modern University life, they are scarcely to be traced in the domestic history of Merton, though a ball-court is known to have existed at the west-end of the Chapel. Football, cudgel-play, and other rough games, were certainly played by the citizens in the open fields on the north of Oxford; but if Merton men took part in them, it was against
