"Our founder's object I conceive to have been to secure for his own order in the Church, for the secular priesthood, the academical benefit which the religious orders were so largely enjoying, and to this end I think all his provisions are found to be consistently framed. He borrowed from the monastic institutions the idea of an aggregate body living by common rule, under a common head, provided with all things needful for a corporate and perpetual life, fed by its secured endowments, fenced from all external interference, except that of its lawful patron; but after borrowing thus much, he differenced his institution by giving his beneficiaries quite a distinct employment, and keeping them free from all those perpetual obligations which constituted the essence of the religious life.... His beneficiaries are from the first designated as _Scholares in scholis degentes_; their employment was study, not what was technically called "the religious life" (_i.e._ the life of a monk).... He forbade his scholars even to take vows, they were to keep themselves free of every other institution, to render no one else's _obsequium_. He looked forward to their going forth to labour _in seculo_, and acquiring preferment and property.... Study being the function of the inmates of his house, their time was not to be taken up by ritual or ceremonial duties, for which special chaplains were appointed; neither was it to be bestowed on any handicrafts, as in some monastic orders. Voluntary poverty was not enjoined, though poor circumstances were a qualification for a fellowship. No austerity was required, though contentment with simple fare was enforced as a duty, and the system of enlarging the number of inmates according to the means of the house was framed to keep the allowance to each at the very moderate rate which the founder fixed. The proofs of his design to benefit the Church through a better educated secular priesthood are to be found, not in the letter of their statutes, but in the tenour of their provisions, especially as to studies, in the direct averments of some of the subsidiary documents, in the fact of his providing Church patronage as part of his system, and in the readiness of prelates and chapters to grant him impropriation of the rectorial endowments of the Church." Such was the _Regula Mertonensis_, the Rule of Merton, as it came to be called, which served as the model for so many subsequent statutes. This _Regula_ Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely (1257-1286), evidently had before him, when some twenty years after his consecration to the bishopric, he proceeded, by giving a new form to an earlier benefaction of his own, to open a new chapter in the history of the University of Cambridge.