Third oldest university in England debate
The title of third-oldest university in England is claimed by three institutions: Durham University as the third oldest officially recognised university (1832) and the third to confer degrees (1837), the University of London as the third university to be granted a Royal Charter (1836), and University College London as it was founded as London University (1826) and was the third oldest university institution to start teaching (1828). A fourth institution, King's College London, officially claims to be the fourth oldest university in England but is claimed by some students to be the third oldest as the third university institution to receive a Royal Charter (1829). Deciding which is truly the "third oldest university" depends largely on the definition of university status and how this is applied historically.
The debate over which is the oldest of the universities founded in the early 19th century has been going on (originally between London and Durham) since at least the mid 19th century. Durham was referred to as England's third university in 1841. In 1853, however, Lord Brougham secured London's precedence in the Charitable Trusts Act on the grounds of it having the earlier charter; but in the 1858 Medical Act Durham was given precedence. The topic also came up in the House of Commons during a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the committee stage of the Reform Act 1867, the Chancellor originally claiming that London was the older but accepting a correction that "Durham is the older University". At the opening of the Victoria University in 1880, the Duke of Devonshire (who had been the first Chancellor of the University of London, was Chancellor of Cambridge University, and was being installed as the first Chancellor of the Victoria University) was reported in Manchester and Leeds as saying in his speech that Durham predated London, but in Dundee as saying the opposite. Dod's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage stated that precedence should be given to London, giving the dates of foundation as those of the royal charters. Durham, however, was given precedence at the quatercentenary of the University of Aberdeen in 1906, and was also named as the elder in a 1905 article by Richard Claverhouse Jebb, president of the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
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