Second World War. He also played rugby during the war, for Blackheath, and for an England team that played against New Zealand. Cambridge career After the war, he was made chaplain and Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1947, and then Dean of Chapel. He became a university theology lecturer in 1949 and published his first book on the 5th-century monk John Cassian in 1950. In 1958 he was named Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University. He then became an honorary fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1964. A few years later, in 1968, he was elected to the position of Regius Professor of Modern History, an ancient chair, which he held until 1982, and was President of the British Academy during the early 1980s. As vice-chancellor from 1969 to 1971, he guided Cambridge through turbulent times in the late 1960s, including the Garden House riot in 1970. He was also elected president of Cambridge University RFC in 1973. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was suggested as a potential Archbishop of Canterbury, but is thought to have declined the offer of a bishop's mitre more than once. He chaired the Archbishops' Commission on Church and State (1966–1970), known as the Chadwick Commission, which recommended that Parliament should pass the regulation of the church to a General Synod rather than disestablishment. He was Hensley Henson Lecturer in Theology at Oxford University in 1975–76, and Ford Lecturer in English History at Oxford in 1980–81. He retired as Regius Professor and master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1983. He had become a fellow of the British Academy in 1962, and was its president from 1981 to 1985. He was also 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. Selwyn College, Cambridge Chadwick was elected Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1955. Installed in 1956, Chadwick was the longest-serving Master of Selwyn by the time he retired after 27 years, in 1983. During his time as master, Selwyn became a full college of Cambridge University, in 1958 (though it had been founded back in 1882), and it ceased to require its students to be communicant members (Anglicans) of the Church of England. As Master of Selwyn, Chadwick