Welcoming Lord Hague as University Chancellor

February 2025

On 19th February, Oxford University got a new Chancellor. Following the resignation of the former Chancellor, Lord Patten (who said that he was resigning because he would rather have a really good farewell dinner than a memorial service!), Congregation elected William Hague as its 160th (recorded) Chancellor.

The Public Orator paid tribute to the long and distinguished contribution of Lord Patten:

Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh and one time Chancellor of Cambridge University, said that he stood down because he could no longer stand up. Were Lord Patten … to say this, I would earnestly beg to differ. Taking a well-deserved break would be a truer explanation. After all, there are precedents. If I may use academic terminology, the great Creator himself took a sabbatical – the first, indeed, after a busy week 1 of his term. (Our cosmologists are still, I think, uncertain about how he spent 0th week.)

He rehearsed some of the history and achievements of the incoming chancellor, including his biographies of William Pitt and William Wilberforce:

I thought until very recently that it was in History that you were schooled here. This was, I plead, an understandable misapprehension; you have, after all, written highly commended history books, though their very readability should been enough to suggest that you were not adversely   influenced by the profession.

The newly admitted chancellor then made a speech that was typically witty and entertaining, but also a robust, energetic and compelling articulation of the values of the University – not least, that of free speech. (See https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-02-19-lord-hagues-chancellor-admission-speech.)

And all this in the context of a ceremony that made abundantly clear the Christian origins of the University. The Vice Chancellor conveyed to the chancellor the wishes of the whole university ‘for eternal salvation in the Lord’ – in Latin, of course! And the choir of Lord Hague’s old college, Magdalen, sang Parry’s wonderful setting of Henry Vaughan’s ‘My soul, there is a country’:

My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a wingèd sentry
All skilful in the wars:

There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.

He is thy gracious Friend,
And—O my soul, awake!—
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake.

If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.

Leave then thy foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes—
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

Fine poetry, beautiful music, ardent commitment to academic rigour in a charitable spirit – all in the context of the world-view that engendered and fostered and still undergirds those commitments. It is the very ethos and vocation of Wycliffe Hall to embody and maintain those values and aspirations, as fruits of the world view that we espouse. After all, where may, for instance, the commitment to free speech be better grounded than in the doctrine of the image of God? We want to listen to other people’s perspectives, however much we may disagree with them or however inconvenient we may find them, because we know every human being to be made in the image of God, and therefore we know that we have something to learn about God from them that we can learn from no one else. As a Christian academic community, we therefore defer to no one in our commitment to free speech and to engaging with those who hold to different views from our own.

It was a hugely heartening event. As I came out of the Sheldonian, someone near me said, ‘Well, I didn’t vote for him. But I think he is probably the perfect person for the job.’

At the lunch afterwards in the impressive hall of Keble College, the new chancellor made another speech. He noted that the last chancellor from Magdalen was Cardinal Pole in 1555: ‘He went on to be Chancellor of Cambridge University and then Archbishop of Canterbury. I notice that the latter position is currently vacant!’

Wycliffe congratulates Lord Hague on becoming chancellor of the University, and looks forward to being able to welcome him to Wycliffe in the near future.