The Chancellor

Summary

The Chancellor has always stood first among the University officials. A list of those who have filled this distinguished post reaches back to the middle of the thirteenth century, and the office is mentioned familiarly quite early in that century. At first the Chancellors were elected annually, and this arrangement held for some three hundred years; but at the beginning of the sixteenth century the celebrated Bishop John Fisher was continued in office for more than thirty years. Afterwards the practice was commenced of choosing some distinguished outsider; the Vice-Chancellor acting as the resident head of University affairs. It may be mentioned that of the first eight Chancellors thus chosen, six perished on the scaffold.

We need not here record the method of the election of the Chancellor, which may be read in Beverley (pp. 123-5); but it may be noted that, in the Memorandum of the University Commissioners on the Proposed New Statutes made 29 January 1926, the first particular is “a method of nominating candidates for the office of Chancellor of the University.”

Dealing as we do here with Ceremonies, we may at once proceed to refer to the installation of the Chancellor, which has generally taken place at the private residence of that great official, though it has usually been followed by some public function at Cambridge.