Regius Professor of Civil Law (Oxford)

The Regius Chair of Civil Law, founded in the 1540s, is one of the oldest of the professorships at the University of Oxford.

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 (Old English for Medicine), 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.

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