The adverse vote in Convocation gave Cranbrook the opportunity to do what normal procedure, and probably his own private preference, dictated. He could have referred the whole matter back to the Selborne Commissioners, who had suggested such a move if the Senate could not produce an acceptable new Scheme. But given all that had ensued since 1888, and the fact that the Commission’s Report had been not a little equivocal, it was no surprise when the Lord President decided that the Privy Council should now consider the original petition of KCL and UCL for the grant of a new Charter to establish the Albert University.

No time was lost: the official announcement was made exactly two weeks after the Convocation vote; cases to be heard were to be delivered by 22 June; and the first hearings of counsel would take place on 29 June. Cranbrook was to chair the Committee himself, and appointed Lords Selborne, Monk Bretton, Basing and Sandford to sit with him. Selborne, as the Chairman of the previous Royal Commission, was clearly the most influential member, taking a dominant part in the questioning of counsel throughout the hearings, and in subsequent discussions, held in July. ‘Selborne is a great help’, wrote Cranbrook in the middle of the hearings, and of the penultimate session he commented that ‘We practically ended our work on the Teaching University and concurred in Selborne’s views almost entirely.’

By the beginning of August, 1891, the Privy Council Committee had blessed what it thought would be the final version of a new Charter for the Albert University. The only major difficulties which had faced the Committee concerned the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons and the Medical Schools, which had been the greatest losers – save for the Senate – from the defeat of the draft Charter in May. The Royal Colleges made a strong bid to form the Faculty of Medicine, but after intensive negotiations between them, the Medical Schools, KCL and UCL, it appeared to Lord Selborne and his colleagues that there was ‘no prospect of any arrangement being come to between them’. The Privy Council Committee therefore imposed its own terms, denying any place in the new University to the Royal Colleges but offering the Medical Schools membership as Constituent Colleges of the Faculty of Medicine.