MEDIEVAL AGRICULTURE. 2$ 



elaborately balanced. Every device was adopted which would 

 tend to enlarge the income of the foundation. The founder's 

 object in urging upon his fellows the duty of economizing 

 their resources, of avoiding legal procedure, and of insisting 

 that all decisions of the college authorities, as to the status 

 of its members, should be without appeal, was to continually 

 increase the number of persons who might share his bene- 

 faction. It will be seen in the Scrutiny given in the second 

 volume, pp. 670-674, how fully the fellows apprehended their 

 duty in this direction, and the archives of the society prove 

 that the injunctions of the Visitor, from very early times, were 

 issued in order to enforce the obligation. 



The fellows of Merton in the thirteenth and fourteenth 

 centuries were very shrewd and active men. They were all 

 trained to business, and they strove, as far as possible, to 

 make the most of their means. They seem to have sympa- 

 thized with the great enemy of those orders of monks, from 

 association with whom their statutes so rigidly forbad them. 

 The private history of Wiklif is very obscure. He has been 

 claimed by Queen's and Balliol, on the strength of his sur- 

 name appearing in the domestic accounts of those societies, 

 for it is very seldom that the members of any college were 

 designated by their baptismal names. It is notorious that 

 these names were often changed. But the fellows of Merton 

 believed that Wiklif was one of their body. He is specially 

 designated in a list of the fellows compiled in the first year 

 of Henry the Sixth, and the date of his election, no other 

 fellow being thus distinguished, is added to his name. In 

 the days of that regency, when John of Bedford was at the 

 head of affairs, and Lollardism was very unpopular in high 

 quarters, and the government was preparing to revolutionize 

 the franchise, by limiting its exercise to the forty-shilling 



Arabic system of numerals was adopted, is a striking illustration of the difficulty there 

 is in effecting the general use of an essential reform. The Roman method must have 

 been singularly inconvenient, and yet, though Arabic numerals are found in the latter 

 end of the thirteenth century, they were not employed familiarly for calculation 

 till the end of the sixteenth. 



