In the old buildings which so narrowly escaped destruction may have
lived John Wycliffe, who is claimed as a fellow of Merton in an
almost contemporary list; his activity in Oxford belongs rather to
the later time, when he was Master of Balliol. His is one of the
outstanding names in English history; the success of Merton in
producing great men of a more ordinary kind can be judged from the
fact that between 1294 and 1366 six out of the seven Archbishops of
Canterbury were Merton men.

In the great period of the seventeenth century, Merton had the
distinction of being one of the few colleges which were
Parliamentarian in sympathy. Hence the Warden was deposed by King
Charles, who installed in his place a really great man, William
Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. But the king
did more harm than good to the college; it was turned into lodgings
for Queen Henrietta Maria and her court, and ladies were intruded and
children born within college walls. These proceedings were
respectable, though unusual; but the college was even more humiliated
by the visit of Charles II, who installed there, among other court
ladies, the notorious Duchess of Cleveland. The college, however,
with the Revolution, returned to less courtly views, and its Whig
connection found an honourable representative in Richard Steele, the
founder of the /Tatler/. It is not surprising that so cheerful a
gentleman left Oxford without a degree, but "with the love of the
whole society." The college register specially notes his gift of his
/Tatler/; he was acting on the sound rule, by no means so universally
followed as it ought to be, that Oxford authors should present their
books to their college library.

Merton, as has been said, is the "type" college, if one may thus