The colleges, in contrast, are self-governing bodies with charitable status, owning their own buildings. Some have substantial endowments. In general, the governing body of a college
is composed of Fellows, who, if they are not administrators such as bursars, are statutorily required to teach or to research. Most of the tutors and lecturers in a college will be Fellows, and so will the professors attached to the college. The chairman of the governing body is the Head of the College (Master, President, Warden, Principal, Provost, Rector) elected by the Fellows to hold office until he reaches the statutory retiring age …. The Fellows form a close corporation, save for the appointment of professors, having otherwise the independent and unchallenged right to choose new Fellows within the bounds set by their statutes. The Fellows are nowadays usually elected for a term of years, but … they are commonly re-elected ….
The colleges are entirely responsible for discipline within their walls …. The colleges also possess the extremely important privilege of admission to the University. No candidate can be matriculated if he is not sponsored by a college, while the University accepts without veto all those put forward by the colleges, subject to the condition that candidates for matriculation … must have passed or be exempt from Responsions, the University entrance examination. [Brierly and Hodson, pp. 97–8]
In Tolkien’s day as now, colleges played a major role in the teaching of undergraduates, and also provided rooms for their students, who were usually resident for most of their time at Oxford, moving in their third or fourth year into outside lodgings or ‘digs’. College manservants, known as scouts, looked after the undergraduates and other residents, performing services such as laying fires, bringing breakfast and lunch and washing up afterwards, and making beds. When Tolkien returned to Merton College in 1972 *Charlie Carr and his wife performed many of these duties for him. There were strict rules governing behaviour, in particular the time in the evening by which undergraduates had to be within college, the only official entrance to which was through the Porter’s lodge.
Hannah Parham has written that at Exeter College in the early 1900s
it was a spartan life … with coal fires, chamber pots, and lukewarm tin baths. These were lit, emptied and filled by College servants. Staircase scouts polished boots, washed clothes, laid fires, and served breakfast and lunch to men in their rooms. These typically comprised a bedroom and a sitting room, the latter with dark-wood furniture, chintz curtains, wall paper and Turkish rugs. A decanter and glasses on a silver tray would usually be to hand, ready to be poured by the scout when the inhabitant hosted a private lunch party, as many often did. [‘A Turbulent Century’, in Exeter College: The First 700 Years, ed. Frances Cairncross (2013), p. 84]
When Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall opened in 1879, twenty-five women students chose not to attach themselves to either institution, and instead were taken in hand by the Association for Promoting the Education of Women at Oxford (AEW). This group was given the name Oxford Home-Students in 1891, changed to the Society of Oxford Home-Students in 1898. Judy G. Batson writes in Her Oxford (2008) – an invaluable source of information on Oxford women – that ‘the Home-Students consisted of a much more diverse population than did the two halls [Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville]. Some of the students were from illustrious academic Oxford families and lived in their own homes; others lodged with relatives, friends, or ladies’ whom the principal ‘carefully handpicked. Older women interested in the new opportunities for higher education but uninterested in hall life found the Society ideally suited to their needs, as did women not wishing to pursue a full course of study but wanting to briefly sample some of what the AEW offered’ (p. 28). *Susan Dagnall and *Elaine Griffiths, for example, were Home-Students, and as Roman Catholics lived in the hostel founded especially for Catholics in 1908 (a hostel for Anglican Home-Students was not created until twenty years later). The Society of Oxford Home-Students was later renamed St Anne’s Society, and in 1952 was incorporated as St Anne’s College.
In 1886 St Hugh’s was established in Oxford as a residential hall for women students who found the costs of residence at Oxford or Cambridge too extravagant. Another hall, St Hilda’s, opened at Oxford in 1893. Both grew in size and prestige, and like Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall, long had little direct affiliation with the other colleges at Oxford. Once women were granted full University membership in 1920, the four colleges (the Home-Students were in a different category) were forced to incorporate by royal charter or act of Parliament and to change certain elements of governance. Of the four, only Lady Margaret Hall chose to retain its original name, including ‘hall’ rather than ‘college’.
UNIVERSITY INSTITUTIONS AND OFFICIALS
The University legislative body known as Convocation consists of all recipients of the degrees of Master of Arts, Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Medicine, or Doctor of Civil Law whose names are on the college books – thousands all told. Unless the business at hand is controversial, however, only a few resident members of the University attend meetings of Convocation, and almost all of the functions of that body have passed over time to Congregation. Notable exceptions are the responsibilities to elect the Chancellor and the Professor of Poetry, and to consider statutes, and decrees containing a preamble, which have passed Congregation with a majority of less than two-thirds.
From 1913 voting rights in Congregation were restricted to academic residents, so that this body includes the teaching and administrative staff of the University and colleges, rather than past graduates in other occupations who had proved unsympathetic to various academic reforms. ‘Every enactment, whether general or particular, and most appointments to administrative offices, have to be approved by Congregation; reports and accounts are submitted to it; it elects members to the chief financial and executive committees of the University, and in particular it elects eighteen members to the Hebdomadal Council [see below], which is, roughly speaking, the Cabinet of this Parliament’ (Brierly and Hodson, p. 80). The initiation of a statute or a decree is the province of the Hebdomadal Council, a member of which introduces the measure to Congregation.
A statute always, and occasionally … a decree, contains a preamble stating shortly the principle of the measure. The preamble is submitted separately to the House [Congregation]; if it is passed the enacting clauses are submitted later. The clauses of a statute, but not those of a decree, may be amended by the House ….
Congregation elects eighteen of the twenty-three members of the [Hebdomadal] Council, and three of the twelve Curators of the [University] Chest; its approval is required for the election of the three chief university officers, the Registrar, the Secretary of the Faculties, and the Secretary to the Curators of the Chest. Congregation also has power, which it seldom exercises, to address questions to such university boards of curators and other bodies as are compelled to present annual reports to it, and it is required to approve the annual financial statement prepared by the Curators of the Chest. [Brierly and Hodson, pp. 83–4]
The Hebdomadal Council ‘proposes legislation for Congregation and in general constitutes the University cabinet, being responsible for the administration of the University and for the management of its finances and property’ (Hibbert, p. 169). During the time that Tolkien taught at Oxford the membership of the Hebdomadal Council was composed of the Chancellor (though he did not attend meetings), the Vice-Chancellor, two Proctors, either the previous Vice-Chancellor for the year following his vacation of