Page:A Catalogue of Graduates who have Proceeded to Degrees in the University of Dublin, vol. 1.djvu/37

 INTRODUCTION. XXXl the Caput were not obliged to state any reasons for their veto, which might have compromised the good name of the University? These enactments have been censured as contradicting the Royal Charters and Statutes. The Domus Congregationis, or the members composing such an assembly, Dr. Miller says, have not been defined; the Senior Master Non-Regent "is invested with very high authority, although it is not determined in any either of these Statutes of the University, or of the Royal Charters and Statutes of the College, what is meant by the distinction between the Regent and Non-Regent Masters."* Thus " an arbitrary power of prohibiting Degrees is entrusted to three distinct persons, one of whom is not even mentioned by the Royal Charters and Statutes." But in all these cases the terms, com- plained of as left undefined, are well known, and understood as in use at all Universities. The House of Congregation is the great congregation of the University, consisting of all graduates above the Degree of A.B., and the Yice-Chancellor, as president, is given the power of compelling their attendance by pecuniary fines. So also the Regent-Masters were those whose duty it was regere Scholas, according to the ancient method of teaching by scholastic disputation : the Non- Regents were those who, by their standing, were discharged from that duty. Moreover, the Charter of Ehzabeth speaks of the Chancellor, Vice- Chancellor, and Proctors, without defining the duties or functions of those officers, assuming that they were sufficiently well known. But the " grand incongruity," we are told, between the University Statutes and those given by the Crown, is that a Degree, to which the Provost and Senior Fellows'" had consented, might ' In Archbishop De Bicknor's Sta- pp. ix., x., from Alan's Regist. tutes for the University of Dublin in *> The distinction between Senior 1320, the words Regent-Master fre- and Junior Fellows was first made in quently occur, in such a manner as Temple's time, about 1610; and an to show that no definition or explana- elaborate argument in defence of was necessary. See Harris's Ware, it, in Temple's handwriting, exists Aniiq. p. 243 ; De Burgo. Hib. Bom. among the College papers. In Be- p. 190, viii. ; M&son, Hist, of St. Pa- dell's College Statutes this distinc- tricK's Cathedral^ Append. No. vii., tion is continued, and in the Sta-