Merton is a village and civil parish near the River Ray, about 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Bicester in Oxfordshire, England.

[1] In 1978 a Middle Bronze Age spearhead was found at West End Farm on the northwestern side of the village.

[5] The Domesday Book records that by 1086 Countess Judith of Lens, a niece of William I of England held the manor.

[3] Countess Judith was betrothed to Simon I de Senlis but refused to marry him and fled England.

William I confiscated her estates and allowed Simon to marry Judith's eldest daughter Maud.

[3] In 1312 Pope Clement V ordered the Templars' dissolution and their English estates were confiscated by Edward II, who granted Merton to the Knights Hospitaller in 1313.

[3] In 1540 the Hospitallers were suppressed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and surrendered Merton to the Crown, which left it in the possession of the Templars' tenant, William Mablyston of Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire.

[3] In 1554 the Mablystons' lease expired and Robert Doyley of Chiselhampton and his son John acquired the manor.

[3] Sir James was a Member of Parliament from 1646 until 1655 and during the English Civil War he served as a major-general in the Parliamentarian army.

[3] Sir James' father-in-law had remained a Royalist throughout the Civil War and Commonwealth, which helped Lady Katherine to claim she did not share her husband's politics.

[3] In 1860 the house was modernised and its Elizabethan porch, gables, stone roof and mullioned windows were all removed.

[3] St Swithun's had been decorated with medieval wall paintings, once brightly coloured but by 1823 described as "dim with age".

[3] In 1565 the Crown sold the advowson and rectory to William Petre, who in 1572 gave both to Exeter College, Oxford.

[14] There were small enclosures of land in the parish in the 14th and 16th centuries but an open field system of farming prevailed until 1763.

[3] In the 1761 Parliamentary election Sir Edward Turner entered the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Penryn in Cornwall.

[16] Stagecoach in Oxfordshire route H5 links Merton with the John Radcliffe Hospital via Islip and Barton, and with Bicester via Ambrosden.