25 Facts About Owen Chadwick

Owen Chadwick was elected master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and served from 1956 to 1983.

Owen Chadwick was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1916, the third of six children of John Owen Chadwick, a barrister, and his wife Edith.

Owen Chadwick was an elder brother of the Very Reverend Henry Chadwick, a distinguished professor and historian of the early Church, and a younger brother of Sir John Chadwick KCMG, a diplomat whose senior posting was as British Ambassador to Romania.

Owen Chadwick was school captain and captain of the rugby team.

Owen Chadwick then studied classics at St John's College, Cambridge.

Owen Chadwick then attended Cuddesdon Theological College and was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood of the Church of England in 1940 and 1941, respectively.

Owen Chadwick served as a curate at St John's Church in Huddersfield for two years and was then chaplain of Wellington College in Berkshire until the end of the Second World War.

Owen Chadwick played rugby during the war, for Blackheath, and for an England team that played against New Zealand.

Owen Chadwick became a university theology lecturer in 1949 and published his first book on the 5th-century monk John Cassian in 1950.

Owen Chadwick then became an honorary fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1964.

Owen Chadwick was elected president of Cambridge University RFC in 1973.

Owen Chadwick chaired the Archbishops' Commission on Church and State, known as the Chadwick Commission, which recommended that Parliament should pass the regulation of the church to a General Synod rather than disestablishment.

Owen Chadwick retired as Regius Professor and master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1983.

Owen Chadwick had become a fellow of the British Academy in 1962, and was its president from 1981 to 1985.

Owen Chadwick was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1978 to 1994, and was chancellor of the University of East Anglia from 1984 to 1994.

Owen Chadwick served as a member of the Historical Manuscripts Commission for a period prior to 1992.

Owen Chadwick was elected master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1955.

Owen Chadwick took a keen interest in college sports and was elected to membership of the Hermes Club.

Owen Chadwick wrote about such issues as the formation of the papacy in the modern world; about Lord Acton; about the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century; about the Church of England in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and about the secularisation of Europe in thought and culture.

Owen Chadwick participated in the debate about the role of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust during World War II.

Owen Chadwick was General Editor of the Penguin History of the Church, to which he contributed the third volume, the seventh and the last two chapters of the sixth.

Owen Chadwick was appointed Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 1982 New Year Honours.

Owen Chadwick was appointed to the Order of Merit on 11 November 1983.

Owen Chadwick married Ruth Hallward in 1949; she died before him, in January 2015.

Owen Chadwick was survived by two sons and two daughters.