rights of appointment to the various committees, including boards of electors to university teaching posts, and it also nominates the Registrar, subject to the approval of Congregation. [Brierly and Hodson, p. 85]
The handling of University finances was one of the duties of the Vice-Chancellor until 1868, when it was given over to a committee, the Curators of the University Chest. The University Chest derives its name from an actual chest in which University money was kept secure in medieval times. The Curators
are the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors, two nominees of the Chancellor …, a member of Convocation elected by [the Hebdomadal] Council, three members of Council, and three members of Congregation elected by those bodies ….
The Curators of the Chest collect the revenues and pay the administrative expenses of the University; they have charge of its public buildings, estates, and other property, except whatever is specially provided for. They advise Council and other bodies on financial matters and prepare financial statements, returns, and reports …. An application by some university body for specific expenditure is made in the first place to the Hebdomadal Council, but has to be referred to the Curators of the Chest, whose sanction is likewise necessary for schemes contemplated by the Council itself. The Curators also have to prepare for Council an annual budget forecast. They appoint their Secretary, subject to the approval of Congregation. [Brierly and Hodson, p. 86]
The General Board of the Faculties was formed in 1912 and ‘later became the main forum for coordinating academic policy’ (Janet Howarth, ‘The Self-Governing University’, The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. VII: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 2 (2000), p. 600). The General Board took over from the Hebdomadal Council its ‘functions in drafting curriculum changes and also the administration of the C[ommon] U[niversity] F[und]’ (Howarth, p. 608). Its composition was adjusted at various times; it always included the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors, but the number elected by the several faculty boards and faculties as a whole, and by the Hebdomadal Council, has varied. In 1933 the other members were ‘two members of [the Hebdomadal] Council elected by Council, one member of Convocation elected by Council subject to the approval of Congregation, three persons elected by the Faculties of Science (voting together), and six by the Faculties of the Humanities (voting together) in either case from among their own members. Elected members hold office for three years’ (Brierly and Hodson, p. 90).
‘As one of its chief functions, the General Board is charged with the co-ordination and supervision of the work of the several Boards of Faculties’ (Hibbert, p. 152). It
exercises a general advisory supervision over the lecture lists …. It receives and makes proposals for the provision of facilities for advanced work and research, and for the maintenance of an adequate staff in all subjects; and it frames statutes and decrees on these matters for consideration by [the Hebdomadal] Council and the University. The Statutes lay upon the General Board certain further special duties in the same connexion, including the transmission to Council of any reports of the Boards of Faculties, with comments and recommendations, the appointment of most University readers, the advising of Council upon the regulations concerning the salaries of teachers, laboratory finances, duties of professors, &c.; and it is comprehensively authorized ‘to exercise a general supervision over the studies and examinations of the University’. [Brierly and Hodson, p. 90]
Tolkien served as an elected member of the General Board in 1929–32 and 1938–44. During 1944–7 he was on the Board not as an elected member, but on the nomination of the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors, presumably because of the difficult circumstances during the Second World War and the postwar period.
When Tolkien returned to Oxford from *Leeds in 1925 there were eight faculties in the University. In 1926 English Language and Literature, previously part of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature, including English, became a separate ninth faculty with its own executive faculty board. By 1945 there were fourteen faculties at Oxford. All teachers of the subjects of a faculty were considered members of that body, regardless of individual position or rank.
The faculty boards were required to meet at least once each term. The membership in 1925 comprised an equal number who served ex officio (professors and most readers) and members elected by the faculty; the board could also co-opt members. Elected members served two-year terms but could usually be re-elected twice. The 1945 statutes of Oxford lists the ex officio members of the English Faculty Board as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, the Merton Professor of English Literature, the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, the Professor of Poetry (though he rarely if ever attended), the Goldsmith’s Reader in English, the Vigfússon Reader in Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, and, by a decree in 1931, *C.T. Onions as long as he held the post of University Reader in English Philology.
The responsibilities of the English Faculty Board (as appropriate for the *Oxford English School) were defined in the 1945 statutes as the supervision, studies, and examinations on which it reported to and advised the General Board of Faculties; the preparing of lecture lists; receiving and considering reports and representations from the faculty and boards of examiners; presenting an annual report on its work in the previous year to the General Board of Faculties; appointing University Lecturers, and recommending to the General Board appointments of such University Readers who were not elected; making recommendations to the General Board on subjects such as the payment of University Lecturers, and the provision of faculty rooms and libraries; appointing members of various boards of electors to professorships; the general supervision of examinations, and suggesting changes in the regulations governing them (either major changes in syllabus or changes in some set book or books). On such questions the Board usually consulted the entire faculty and had to submit proposals to the General Board for approval.
The nominal head of the University of Oxford is the Chancellor, but his duties are now mainly ceremonial. He presides over occasions such as Encaenia. His former, more powerful functions, are vested instead in the Vice-Chancellor. The Chancellor is elected for life by members of Convocation, and is not required to be resident in the University. Most of the chancellors during Tolkien’s time at Oxford had studied there themselves, after which they pursued successful political careers.
The office of the Vice-Chancellor was originally, as the name suggests, that of a temporary deputy acting for the Chancellor when he was absent, but from the early sixteenth century he became the chief executive officer of the University. Although from the seventeenth century he was nominated annually by the Chancellor, by convention the office went to whichever head of the various colleges or halls had seniority of appointment. From 1923, following the report of the Asquith Commission, no Vice-Chancellor could hold office for more than three years. ‘Besides being Chairman of the [Hebdomadal] Council, of the Board of Curators of the Chest, and of all the chief boards, committees, and delegacies, the Vice-Chancellor can veto a statute or decree, though he does so only on rare occasions in order to prevent legislative errors, and he has statutory powers to rule as to their interpretation’ (Brierly and Hodson, p. 85).
*L.R. Farnell, who had been Rector of Exeter College during part of Tolkien’s time as an undergraduate (1913–1928), was Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1920 to 1923. The Vice-Chancellor who took part in the 1925 election of Tolkien to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon was Joseph Wells, Warden of Wadham. From 1938 to 1941 the office was held by *George S. Gordon, President of Magdalen and Tolkien’s former colleague at Leeds. The Vice-Chancellor at the time of Tolkien’s election to the Merton chair was Sir Richard Livingstone, President of Corpus Christi.
The Registrar of the University is nominated by the Hebdomadal Council, subject to the approval of Congregation. He is ‘secretary of [the Hebdomadal] Council, Congregation, and Convocation, and he has to keep, besides their minutes and other papers, a large number of registers and records, and see that the Statutes are regularly published. He is not secretary to the Vice-Chancellor, nor
