Convocation met for the first time on 4 May 1858. A list of signatures of those present contains 153 names, but whether there were others at the gathering is uncertain. Charles James Foster was elected Chairman, William Shaen Acting Clerk, and a committee of twelve members was set up to prepare Standing Orders and other organisational proposals to lay before a meeting to be held on 10 November. During the following months, that Committee, on its own and in co-operation with a parallel body appointed by the Senate, worked out the details within the overall provisions of the Charter, which included the responsibility of the Senate for keeping the Register, resolving problems of membership, and convening meetings. So far as the great bulk of routine arrangements were concerned, this was, apparently, an exercise carried through harmoniously, and the proposals which emanated from it were accepted by Convocation without any major opposition. But far from ushering in a new regime in a spirit of goodwill, the second and subsequent early meetings of Convocation produced some violent disagreement which reflected past, and foreshadowed future, problems in the relations between and within the University, Convocation, and the medical profession.

While the introduction of a new element – Convocation – into the University’s constitutional system was celebrated as a major achievement, it was not received, by Convocation itself, with wholehearted enthusiasm. The high expectations which had been entertained, as far back as 1840, by some of the Fellows, that the University should have, in a decade, a Senate wholly elected by its graduates, had been steadily eroded over the following years. The limited power conferred on Convocation by the 1858 Charter was a bitter disappointment to many of those who had fought so long for recognition. It is not surprising, therefore, that the establishment of Convocation was followed by a somewhat turbulent period in which resentment and frustration arose on a number of issues. Some short-term turbulence might be regarded as the inevitable price of re-adjustment to a new legal and political reality. Some of the major issues, however, had a long history, and were to remain controversial for the rest of the century. What happened in the context of those issues in the first few years after 1858 was very relevant to subsequent events.