Note 85 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

“Villani ejusd’ Gunnor’ dicunt quod prior de Mertone” held the advowson of the church of Barton. (Rot. Hund. ii. 564.)

The Bishop of Nelson points out that the scholars were called not after Walter de Merton, but after the place—Merton priory. Merton himself had no surname; he was born at Basingstoke, and was perhaps educated at the priory from which he also took his name. Beket was certainly educated at this well-known Merton, which gave its name to the “Statute of Merton” devised there in 1236, and was also the theatre of a council held by the archbishop 22 years later. At the evaluation of 1291, the priory held property in Norfolk (Index Monasticus). The Cambridge estates settled on the scholars of the domus apud Meandon (Malden) in 1270 were in Gamlingay, Merton, Over-Merton, Chesterton, etc. It is worth notice that among a number of scholars who received the king’s pardon in 1261 for the part they had taken in a riot, there is a William de Merton, servant to two of the East Anglian scholars implicated.