THE LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, I rise for the purpose of presenting to your Lordships a Bill which I sincerely trust will meet with a favourable reception from the House. It is a Bill for the better endowment of the Regius Professorship of Greek in the University of Oxford. As your Lordships are aware, in the time of King Henry VIII., five Royal Professorships were founded in that University, and the Regius Professorship of Greek was one of the number. Similar foundations were also made in the University of Cambridge. The holders of the other four Regius Professorships at Oxford which accompanied the Regius Professorship of Greek have been more fortunate than the occupiers of that chair. To every one of them has been attached some ecclesiastical preferment, or some mastership or other endowment. To the Greek Professor there is nothing but the original stipend of £40 a year. That sum was at that time adequate, but it continues to the present moment, the only remuneration given for the Professor's labours and exertions in the cause of Greek literature. To each of the Regius Professorships of Greek and Hebrew in the University of Cambridge a statute, passed in the year 1840, has annexed a canonry in Ely Cathedral. Now, your Lordships are aware that in the ecclesiastical patronage of the Lord Chancellor are included several canonries—I think they are twelve in number—in the cathedral churches of Norwich, Rochester, Bristol, and Gloucester. The average vacancies are generally one in every six years; and as there has not been a vacancy for four years, there would be, according to the average, a vacancy in somewhat more than a twelvemonth from the present time. In consequence of recent circumstances, to which I will not further allude, it appears to me that it would be an act of justice, and also an act of general expediency, if one of those canonries in the patronage of the Lord Chancellor were annexed to the Greek Professorship at Oxford University. But in bringing in this measure I have not for a moment presumed to attempt to come to any understanding—much less to make any bargain—with the University of Oxford. In that body, and in its sense of justice, I have the greatest confidence; to it I bear the highest possible reverence and grati- 721 tude, and I have no doubt that a Bill which proposes to accomplish this endowment will be received by the University in the same spirit in which it is offered by the Crown and by the Ministers of the Crown; and I may be permitted to express a hope, and even an expectation, that the University of Oxford will, if this measure passes, hasten to provide for the present Regius Professor of Greek an adequate endowment until that canonry shall have fallen vacant, which, by the passing of this measure, I trust he will receive. In conclusion, I beg leave, my Lords, to move the first reading of the Bill.
§ Bill for the better Endowment of the Regius Professorship of Greek in the University of Oxford, presented and read 1a. [No. 44.]