Nobody knows quite how Oxford University originated, though many believe it to have been started by teachers and students expelled from the University of Paris.

For many years University College maintained a claim to have been founded by King Alfred, and to have been the original college. Merton also has strong claim to this distinction.

To this day University and Merton are kept apart at matriculation ceremonies, as there has been some trouble in the past when more than one Dean has claimed the right, as Dean of the oldest college represented, to make the address.

In any case, Oxford was well established as an academic centre by the end of the twelfth century; a prior of Worcester, writing in 1190, described it as "abounding in men skilled in mystic eloquence, weighing the words of the law, bringing forth from their treasures things new and old."