The "House of the Valley of Scholars of Blessed Nicholas", as it was originally called, has been considered by some as the first university college in England, founded two years before Merton, the earliest Oxford college. Like the early Oxford colleges, that at Salisbury was until late in the Middle Ages, called a "house" rather than a "college". After a violent argument between the entourage papal legate and Oxford students in 1238, there was an emigration of students and teachers from Oxford, mainly to Northampton and Salisbury. New Salisbury as we call it now – in reference to its eclipsing an older borough now called Old Sarum (although the former was actually a development of a manorial settlement probably as old as the latter) – had by then acquired a reputation as a centre of learning, and by the 1270s several faculties had been established there. After lectures resumed at Oxford, some of the migrants returned, some divided their time between Oxford and Salisbury, and others may have remained at Salisbury; their numbers may have swelled again when there was a renewed exodus from Oxford during the town-gown troubles of the 1260s and '70s.

It was perhaps with a view to accommodating such scholars that in 1262 Giles de Bridport, Bishop of Salisbury, founded a hospital dedicated to Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Nicholas. He may have been inspired by the University of Paris, with which his brother was associated and where he himself may have studied. The name he chose for his foundation echoes the order of Augustinians called "de Valle Scholarium", which had built a college in Paris in the 1230s; its teachers and students had relocated elsewhere in protest over the growth of Aristotelian studies at Paris. The site of the Salisbury foundation was a meadow just south of the cathedral precinct, on the northern bank of the River Avon, and across the road from St. Nicholas's Hospital, a slightly older episcopal foundation, with which there was some association, although not a close one – the two institutions were separately administered. Yet several early colleges at Paris had emerged as offshoots of hospitals originally for the sick and aged, which expanded to offering board and financial support to students.

The aim of the foundation was to maintain a warden, or master, two chaplains, and twenty poor but respectable scholars, who would be taught theology and the liberal arts. The Bishop made the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury the college's patrons, and required that all masters be chosen from the cathedral chapter. A secondary goal was to establish a chantry college, whereby the chaplains and students would pray for the souls of the founder and benefactors. The master was assisted in his duties by a steward, or proctor, an officer elected from the scholars for a year or two at a time; during the fourteenth century he played an increasing part in college administration.

The main role of the de Vaux college then was to support and teach students. The Motons were clearly a different category of resident, being provided with private accommodations and various amenities and privileges. This corrody is unusual in its degree of detail about the terms. It was rare for the college to make this type of arrangement; more common were arrangements for spiritual benefits, such as endowments in return for obits, or that by which Salisbury citizen Gervase Apothecarius and his wife Emma agreed to up the rent they paid the college for a tenement in Minster Street, in return for two candles being kept burning perpetually for their souls. The Moton arrangement was not, however, the earliest corrody granted by the college. In 1304 John de Wotton had endowed it with a piece of land in return for a corrody giving him the same support, for the rest of his life, as a fellow of the college.

A subsequent entry in the cartulary, drawn up ca.1447, is a copy of a record of a grant made in the borough court, a little later in the same year, by Roger and Christine to Gilbert Lovel, representing payment for the corrody granted by the college. This payment was in the form of an endowment to the college of the Moton's property in Minster Street and Winchester Street, including one tenement (possibly a shop) near the west gate of the college, along with 43s. in rents from other properties. Lovel, in his role as a canon of the cathedral chapter, became the feoffee of these properties, on behalf of the college, until a licence for alienation in mortmain could be obtained (1325), allowing him to transfer the property to himself, as warden, and the scholars. The income from these properties would provide the funding for the college to support the living expenses of the Motons; after their deaths, the college would be able to reallocate the income to its own uses, other than the money required for the celebration of the anniversary masses.