Chancellor of the University of Oxford

“ He had lent money for the building of the Oxford market, the interest of which, amounting to 20l. a year, he appointed half to be given to the principal of Hertford College, and the other half to the two senior fellows, with the condition that if there should be but one senior fellow, he should receive one-third of the sum and the principal two-thirds. He served the office of vice-chancellor of the university of Oxford in 1765–6 and 1767, and in the beginning of 1767 was appointed to a prebendal stall in Canterbury. ”

“ CHANCELLOR. The chancellor of a university is an officer who seals the diplomas, or letters of degree, &c. The Chancellor of Oxford is usually one of the prime nobility, elected by the students in convocation; and he holds the office for life. He is the chief magistrate in the government of the University. The Chancellor of Cambridge is also elected from among the prime nobility. The office is biennial, or tenable for such a length of time beyond two years as the tacit consent of the University may choose to allow.—Webster. ”

“ In 1876 another commission was appointed, and in 1877 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act was passed. This act provided for the appointment of commissioners who (1882) made statutes for each college, excepting Hertford, Keble and Lincoln, the first and second of which are modern foundations, while the third is governed under statutes of 1855. The highest officer of the university is the chancellor, who is elected by the members of convocation, holds office for life, and is generally a distinguished member of the university. ”

“ The Chancellor, moreover, when he is first mentioned, proves to be elected by the masters and scholars and to derive his authority, not from any capitular or monastic body in Oxford, but from the Bishop of Lincoln. And the University buildings themselves, in their primitive form, bear silent witness to the same fact, that the schools or studium in connection with which the University grew up were in no way connected with conventual churches and monasteries. ”

“ At last, in October 1643, the Heads of Houses agreed that 40l. should be raised weekly during the next twenty weeks, by a levy on colleges and halls, in lieu of all further contributions towards new fortifications. In the same month articles were drawn up by some of the leading residents against the Earl of Pembroke, Chancellor of Oxford, whom they accused of betraying the privileges and neglecting the interests of the University, but whose real crime was complicity with the Parliament, and whom the King caused to be superseded by the Marquis of Hertford. ”

“ They are also to swear that, in future, they will furnish the scholars with provisions at a just and reasonable price; and that if they shall arrest a clerk they shall deliver him up, upon due requisition from the bishop of Lincoln or the archdeacon of Oxford, or his official, or the chancellor, or ‘him whom the bishop of Lincoln shall have deputed to this office.’ This oath is to be repeated yearly. All masters who continued to lecture after the retirement of scholars under Papal mandate are to be suspended from lecturing for three years. ”

“ The Chancellor was created Earl of Clarendon in 1661, and visited Oxford in September. Anthony a Wood says: “Creations were made in all Faculties either by the favour of His Majesty, or of Clarendon, the Chancellor of the University, when he was entertained by the University in September 1661.” John Bulteel, secretary to Edward, Earl of Clarendon, was then enrolled as Master of Arts. ”

“ Amhurst’s reasons are logical enough to convince the meanest intelligence of the true nature of the Oxford toasts. In support of them he brings up no less a second than King Charles I., who wrote officially and at some length on the question of university government to the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Cambridge commanding the suppression of women such as those in question. The reason why the good King did not treat Oxford to a similar injunction is, supposedly, that the need for it did not reach the royal ears. ”

“ The commissioners of Edward VI. were appointed under the Great Seal, and drew up the ‘Edwardine Statutes,’ by virtue of an authority independent of the University. Cardinal Pole, on the contrary, issued his Ordinances, in his capacity of Chancellor, provisionally only, until a delegacy of Convocation should decide upon the necessary alterations. Similar delegacies were appointed by the authority of Convocation, as it was then called, on several occasions during the reign of Elizabeth ”

“ If the Vice-Chancellor is responsible for order in the Congregation, and actually admits to the degree, the Proctors, as representatives of the Faculty of Arts, play an equally important part in the ceremony. These officials are to the undergraduate without doubt the most prominent figures in the University; they form the centre of a large part of Oxford mythology ”

“ Meanwhile the conflicts between the students and townspeople were incessant. In 1244, after a violent attack of gownsmen on the Jewry, the chancellor of the University was given by a royal writ exclusive cognisance of all pleas arising out of contracts relating to personalty, and in 1248 the ‘mayor’s oath’ of fidelity to the privileges of the University was imposed by letters patent. ”

“ After Richard Cromwell had been elected Chancellor in July 1657, he appointed Dr. Conant, Rector of Exeter, vice-chancellor, and from this moment Conant, whose importance had long been growing, became the real governor of the University. With a firmness and zeal for reform fully equal to Owen’s, he combined a more conciliatory and statesmanlike character, and while he resisted, as the champion of academical privileges, Cromwell’s scheme for a new University at Durham, he stoutly upheld the autonomy of colleges against the project for superseding all episcopal Visitors. ”

“ The reply of the chancellor was to deny the archbishop's jurisdiction within the university, and to allow Philip Repington, another of Wycliffe's disciples, to preach on Corpus Christi day before the university. Chancellor and preacher were guarded by armed men, and Stokes wrote that his life was not safe at Oxford. ”

“ The event of the summer at Oxford was the installation of our new Chancellor, Lord Curzon, who was by no means content, like the Duke of Wellington, Lord Salisbury, and others of his not indistinguished predecessors, to be quietly inducted into office by the university officials at his own country residence. There was a great function at the Sheldonian, and a Latin harangue from my lord which was both elegant and well delivered, though it was thought by some that his emotional reference to his late wife was a little out of place. ”

“ Nor is it only the men like Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery and Mr Gladstone, who guide the country at home, or like Lord Milner and Lord Curzon, who give their best work to Greater Britain, that are the true sons of the University; it is the plain, hard-working clergymen and civilians, also, who, by their lives of honest and unselfish toil, hand on the torch of good conduct and high ideals which has been entrusted to them.
Oxford had some share in the events which led to the deposition of Edward II. The King wrote to the Chancellor, masters and scholars calling upon them to resist his enemies. ”

“ It is clear that, at this period, the great mass of students, not being inmates of religious houses, were lodged and boarded in these unendowed halls, mostly hired from the citizens by clerks, who in some cases were not even graduates, but were regularly licensed by the chancellor or his commissary on September 9, and were subject to fixed rules of discipline laid down from time to time by the governing body of the University. How many of them may have been open in the middle of the thirteenth century is a question which cannot be answered. ”

“ Of these the largest number were New College men. The loss of these scholars did not improve the state of learning at Oxford. But in 1564 the Earl of Leicester became Chancellor, and it is in some part due to him that order was restored and a regular course of studies once more established.
Queen Elizabeth had been imprisoned at Woodstock during her sister’s reign, and some of the needlework which she did when she was there is preserved at the Bodleian. The University had dispatched a deputation to her, with a present of gloves and a congratulatory address upon her accession ”

“ At Oxford the judge of the chancellor's court is the vice chancellor, who is his deputy or assessor; the court has had since 1244 civil jurisdiction, to the exclusion of the king's courts, in all matters and suits wherein a scholar or privileged person of the university is one of the parties, except in actions relating to freehold. ”

“ Educated at Oxford, he soon began to teach in the university, of which he became chancellor, probably after he had studied in Paris and in Bologna. About 1235 he became chancellor of the diocese of Canterbury under Archbishop Edmund Rich, and he was with the archbishop during his exile in France. Having returned to England some time after Edmund's death in 1240 he became vicar of Deal and chancellor of Canterbury for the second time. ”

“ Dict. Theol. i. 306 a, where he speaks of an interview with Henry VI) that the king in 1444 empowered the chancellor to expel all rebellious and contumacious persons from the precinct, extending twelve miles every way, of the university (Munim. Acad. Oxon. ii. 540) . Some years later, in November 1452, Gascoigne was appointed with others to hear an appeal from the chancellor (Register of the Univ. of Oxford, i. 18, ed. C. W. Boase, 1885) , and in the summer of the following year he once more acted as ‘cancellarius natus’ (Wood, Fasti, p. 54) . ”

“ He resigned this living in 1470, and on 15 Aug. 1471 was collated to the prebend of Cadington Major in St. Paul's Cathedral. He gave up this prebend in 1472, and on 4 June was re-elected chancellor of Oxford University, George Neville having sided against Edward IV during Warwick's revolt. ”

“ He took a large part in university affairs, was the first secretary of the Oxford local examinations delegacy, and from 1874 to 1878 was vice-chancellor. He actively aided in the preservation and arrangement of the MS. records in the library of the college. ”

“ Another change made by Leicester in the same year (1569) , though dictated by a like spirit, cannot be regarded as an innovation, but rather as the restoration of an ancient usage. From the earliest times Chancellors of the University had been assisted by deputies, whom they appointed either periodically, or, more probably, as occasion might require. By the statutes of 1549, issued by Edward VI.’s Visitors, the right of electing these commissaries, or ‘vice-chancellors,’ as they came to be called, was vested in the House of Congregation. ”

“ In England the chancellorship of the universities is now a more or less ornamental office and is conferred on noblemen or statesmen of distinction, whose principal function is to look after the general interests of the university, especially in its relations with the government. ”

“ The University Commissioners at Oxford could end a miserable state of affairs and make Oxford worth its name only by pruning the authority of the Colleges and making them contribute to the building up of centralised University research. ”

“ Each university has still its chancellor, and sometimes a high State dignitary accepts of the office. It was of old a very peculiar one, for it was the link which allied the semi-republican institutions of the universities to the hierarchy of St Peter. The bishop was almost invariably the chancellor, unless the university were subordinated to some great monastic institution, when its head was the chancellor—as in Paris the Prior of St Genevieve exercised the high office. ”

“ And here at Oxford I was told that the Government did not know Oxford, nor Oxford the Government, that the only ruling power consisted in the Statutes of the University, that professors and tutors were perfectly free so long as they conformed to these statutes, and that certainly no minister could ever appoint or dismiss a professor, except the Regius professors. “If we want a thing done,” my friends used to explain to me, “we do it ourselves, as long as it does not run counter to the statutes.”
But Oxford changes with every generation. ”

“ Whatever may have been the shortcomings of Oxford in the generation which preceded the Civil War, it certainly produced a number of men whose learning and piety might have adorned a happier and more peaceful age. Among the Heads of colleges who held office under Laud’s short chancellorship were John Prideaux, Sir Nathaniel Brent, Gilbert Sheldon, Brian Duppa, Samuel Fell, and Juxon, and while the headships of colleges were filled by such men as these, others not less eminent represented the University in other capacities. ”

“ To the thousands of native scholars were added those who, after the fashion of the times, resorted to Oxford from other countries, no man being then content with studying at a single academy, or thinking he had qualified himself for the post of doctor till he had passed some years in foreign schools. It was no easy matter to preserve discipline in such a motley society; the chancellor was the only recognised authority, and when his single arm proved insufficient for the task of government, he was assisted by an officer named the Hebdomadarius, now represented by the Hebdomadal Board. ”

“ In Oxford the University does not know the Ministry, nor the Ministry the University. The acts of the Government, be it Liberal or Conservative, are freely discussed, and often powerfully resisted by the academic constituencies, and the personal dislike of a Minister or Ministerial Councillor could as little injure a professor or tutor as his favour could add one penny to his salary. ”

“ In order at once to secure a chief whose loyalty to the church of England could be absolutely depended upon, the convocation at Oxford without delay elected by a majority the young Duke of Ormonde successor to his grandfather in the chancellorship of the university. ”

“ When an ardent Wycliffite had declared in the schools that there was no idolatry like the sacrament of the altar, the chancellor had contented himself with the protest, ‘Now you are speaking as a philosopher.’ It is also interesting to note the formal statement that not only the chancellor and proctors, but the majority of the regents in arts (i.e. the masters actually teaching at Oxford) , were ‘not amicable or benevolent to those who determined against Nicholas Hereford and Philip Repington, but were most hostile to them, though before they were friends. ”