Note 322 — Chapter IV · COLLEGIATE AND SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY

Fuller places the first vice-chancellor in the year 1417, after Stephen le Scrope and Repingale Bishop of Chichester had held the chancellorship—1414 and 1415. Men “of great employment” began then to fill the position, and hence, he says, the necessity. 1454 is however the date of the earliest vice-chancellor usually given, and there were only intermittent appointments between then and 1500. In that year Richard Fox was chancellor, and Henry Babington vice-chancellor, and was succeeded in 1501 by John Fisher who filled both offices. In 1413 a friar was chosen as “president” of the university in the absence of Chancellor Billingford sent by Henry V. with the Bishop of Ely and the chancellor of the sister university to Rome.