‘seven men’, (1) a University court of first instance in disciplinary cases against senior members; (2) a court of appeal against decisions of the Court of Discipline in the case of junior members. There is reference to ‘septemviri’ in the Elizabethan statutes of 1570, but the court as it survives today was first embodied in the new statutes of 1857 as a disciplinary court for senior members. It comprised six persons with the Chancellor presiding and was normally referred to as the Sex Viri (and ever so wittily as the Sex Weary). The 1926 statutes substituted the Vice-Chancellor for the Chancellor, and allowed appeal to the Chancellor, or his deputy, and two assessors. In 1939, without any necessity to revise the composition of the court, it was re-christened the ‘septemviri’.
