Francis de Zulueta

Francis de Zulueta, FBA (born Francisco Maria José de Zulueta, 12 September 1878 – 16 January 1958) was the Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford from 1919 until 1948. Biography The son of Pedro Juan de Zulueta, Count of Torre Díaz), a Spanish diplomat, by his wife Laura, daughter of Sir Justin Sheil and his wife Mary Leonora Woulfe, de Zulueta was educated at Beaumont College, The Oratory School and New College, Oxford, where he took Firsts in classical moderations (1899), literae humaniores (1901), and jurisprudence (1902). He was elected to a prize fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, in October 1902, and won the Vinerian Scholarship the following year. He was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1904. He subsequently returned to Oxford as a fellow of New College, Oxford, and of All Souls College, Oxford; he was made an Honorary Fellow of Merton College in 1937. On the outbreak of World War I, de Zulueta, who regarded himself as British rather than Spanish, was naturalized a British subject, and was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment, reaching the rank of captain. In 1919, he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at All Souls, becoming the first Roman Catholic Regius Professor since the Reformation. He was a leading Catholic figure at Oxford for many years and the first Catholic Regius Professor since the Reformation, befriending Tolkien amongst others with whom he debated the nature of good and evil prior to The Lord of the Rings. He was a cousin of Cardinal Merry del Val (Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI). His son Sir Philip de Zulueta became the Foreign Office representative at 10 Downing Street, principally under Harold Macmillan, and his grandson, also Francis, is a leading investment professional in insurance in the City of London and a Knight of Malta.