Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford) - Period of Decline

Period of Decline

Although prestigious, the Regius Chair has not always been effective for teaching purposes. In 1846, a Select Committee of the House of Commons began to inquire into the state of legal education in the United Kingdom, and its report later the same year showed the emptiness of the title of Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford at that time. Dr Joseph Phillimore, who had held the Chair since 1809 and who continued to hold it until his death in 1855 at the age of eighty, admitted in a series of evasive replies to the Select Committee that his subject had not been taught at Oxford for almost a hundred years. Dr Philip Bliss, Registrar of the University, revealed that the University had no examinations in any "legal science". Although the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law was still awarded, the "disputations" which led to such an award were an empty formality.

One of Phillimore's eighteenth century predecessors, Robert Vansittart, a noted antiquarian and rake, was appointed Regius Professor in 1767 and held the chair until his death in 1789. He published antiquarian works, was a close acquaintance of Samuel Johnson, William Hogarth and Paul Whitehead, and was a participant in the debauchery of the Hellfire Club. Vansittart's successor, Thomas Francis Wenman (1745–1796), Regius Professor from 1789 until his death, is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as "one of the few students of natural history at Oxford" and was drowned in the River Cherwell on 8 April, 1796, while collecting botanical specimens.