[5] Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to support it.

An important feature of de Merton's foundation was that this "college" was to be self-governing and the endowments were directly vested in the Warden and Fellows.

[6] By 1274, when Walter retired from royal service and made his final revisions to the college statutes, the community was consolidated at its present site in the south east corner of the city of Oxford, and a rapid programme of building commenced.

[2] Alumni and academics past and present include five Nobel laureates, the writer J. R. R. Tolkien, who was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959, and Liz Truss, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in September and October 2022.

Henry Savile was one notable leader who led the college to flourish in the early 17th century by extending its buildings and recruiting new fellows.

The leader of the rebels was reported to be one William de Barnby, a Yorkshireman who had been fellow and bursar of Merton College.

This was due to an earlier dispute between the Warden, Nathaniel Brent, and the Visitor of Merton and Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.

However, in 1647, a parliamentary commission (visitation) was set up by Parliament "for the correction of offences, abuses, and disorders" in the University of Oxford.

Walter also obtained permission from the king to extend from these properties south to the old city wall to form an approximately square site.

The land to the east eventually became the current Fellows' garden, while the western end was leased by Warden Richard Rawlins in 1515 for the foundation of Corpus Christi (at an annual rent of just over £4).

The window is an important example (because it is so well dated) of how the strict geometrical conventions of the Early English Period of architecture were beginning to be relaxed at the end of the 13th century.

This dual role also probably explains the enormous scale of the chapel, which in its original design was to have a nave and two aisles extending to the west.

[33] Visitors to Merton are often told that Mob Quad is the oldest quadrangle of any Oxford or Cambridge college and set the pattern for future collegiate architecture.

[37] The southern gateway is surmounted by a tower of the four Orders, probably inspired by Italian examples that Warden Savile would have seen on his European travels.

[38] Most of the other buildings are Victorian or later and include: St. Alban's Quad (or "Stubbins"), designed by Basil Champneys,[39] built on the site of the medieval St Alban Hall (elements of the older façade are incorporated into the part that faces onto Merton Street); the Grove building, built in 1864 by William Butterfield but "chastened" in the 1930s by T.H.

The foyer is illuminated by a lighting display representing three constellations that were visible on the night of 14 September 1264, the day the college was founded.

The gardens are notable for a mulberry tree planted in the early 17th century, an armillary sundial, an extensive lawn, a Herma statue, and the old Fellows' Summer House (now used as a music room and rehearsal space).

[45] Since the introduction of an official Norrington Table published by the university in 2004, Merton occupied one of the top three positions every year (often coming in 1st), until 2012 when it dropped to 14th.

"; the second, a joint toast to the sundial and the nearby mulberry tree (morus nigra), "o tempora, o more"; and the third, "long live the counter-revolution!".

The Myrmidon club is open to all members of the college in the present day, male or female, and hosts termly black tie events.

Founded in 1894 as a forum in which undergraduates delivered academic papers on literature, the club has changed form over the years, and was reformed in the 1980s as a speaker society.

It was not long before this provision was required, as the minute-book reveals in its entry for 19 October 1894: 'Owing to unpardonable slackness on the part of members, the four months of vacation proved insufficient to collect coherent ideas on any particular subject...However an agreeable and instructive evening was passed in reading Tennyson's 'Maud'.'

Several of the club's first members went on to become significant figures, including Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell and William Hamilton Fyfe.

[citation needed] In rowing, Merton College Boat Club has been Head of the River in Summer Eights once; its men's 1st VIII held the headship in 1951.

[citation needed] The college preprandial grace is amongst the longest in Oxford, and is always recited before formal dinners in Hall, usually by the senior postmaster present.

[60] Other early fellows include the Oxford Calculators, a group of 14th-century thinkers associated with Merton who took a logico-mathematical approach to philosophical problems.

[61] Another significant figure, Henry Savile, was appointed Warden some years later in 1585 (held the position until 1621) and had great influence of the development of the college.

[62][63] Other Mertonians in science include Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, mathematician Andrew Wiles[61] who proved Fermat's Last Theorem, computer scientist Tony Hoare, chemist George Radda, economist Catherine Tucker, geneticist Alec Jeffreys and cryptographer Artur Ekert.

Other alumni include the composer Lennox Berkeley, actor and singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, mountaineer Andrew Irvine, RAF pilot Leonard Cheshire, athlete and neurologist Roger Bannister (later Master of Pembroke College, Oxford), journalist Tanya Gold and Naruhito, Emperor of Japan.

Alumnae of Merton include the shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom in history Liz Truss and Princess Akiko of Mikasa.