Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford) - Foundation

Foundation

The Regius Chair of Civil Law at Oxford was founded by King Henry VIII, who established five such Regius Professorships in the University, the others being the chairs of Divinity, Physic, Hebrew and Greek. The stipend attached to the position was then forty pounds a year. Henry VIII put an end to the teaching of Canon law at both Oxford and Cambridge. Under statutes of 1549, the Regius Professor of Civil Law was to lecture four times a week between the hours of eight and nine in the morning on the Pandects, on the Code, or on the ecclesiastical laws of England. The requirement to give four lectures a week was repeated in the statutes of 1564 and of 1576. The professor was also to moderate at disputations in law.

The exact date of the chair's foundation is uncertain. Some sources say that John Story, the first professor, was appointed in about 1541. No foundation document survives, but in 1544 Robert Weston was recorded as acting as Story's deputy.

The holder of the Regius Professorship is still chosen by The Crown and is still appointed to teach Roman law, its principles and history, and some other branches of the law.

Read more about this topic:  Regius Professor Of Civil Law (Oxford)

Famous quotes containing the word foundation:

    A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.
    William Cobbett (1762–1835)

    Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
    William Morris (1834–1896)

    The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.... God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.
    Pierre Charron (1541–1603)