Convocation immediately became a major force in the University’s affairs, continuing to exert the pressure which had been exercised for the previous ten years, with campaigning zeal, by the Graduates’ Committee. But the early ambition of the graduates, which had been, in effect, to make Convocation the governing body of the University, had been severely disappointed. In addition to being authorised to regulate its own business, the significant powers given to the new body were to nominate candidates for up to a quarter of the seats on the Senate: to veto the acceptance of any new Charter or the surrender of the 1858 and any subsequent Charter: and to discuss and declare its opinion on any matter relating to the University. However, the new Charter also provided that ‘Except, as expressly provided, the Convocation shall not be entitled to interfere in, or have any control over, the affairs of the University.’ In addition, some basic services to Convocation, such as registration and the fixing and collection of fees, were handled by and in conjunction with the University’s administration.

As many of those who had fought long and hard for the establishment of Convocation were to be prominent in its affairs for another twenty or thirty years, it is understandable that there was for a considerable period an underlying resentment of the relatively weak constitutional powers which the new body had been given. At the same time, the failure to achieve more, initially, probably intensified the efforts of the leaders of Convocation to make as much as they could of such opportunities as were offered to them. In fact, the considerable influence which Convocation did exert was due in part to the persistence with which they put forward demands and ideas about University policies. But perhaps it was due, even more, as we have already seen, to what might be called the infiltration of the Senate by members of Convocation, either through the electoral process, or through the increasing willingness of the Crown to appoint London graduates.

The Senate, essentially, was a small, executive group. Convocation, in contrast, was an organisation envisaged as becoming an increasingly large, representative body.