So long as the Chancellor was normally resident, as the statutes required him to be, Vice-Chancellors were appointed only to act in his absence. When, from 1504, the Chancellor was a non-resident magnate, the election of a Vice-Chancellor took place regularly each academic year, his term of office starting on 1 November. From 1884 to 1889 he held office from January to December, and from 1889 to 1989 from 1 October, the beginning of the academic year. Vice-Chancellors from the early sixteenth-century were normally Heads of Houses, from 1587 to 1992 invariably so, and from the mid-nineteenth century normally held office for two successive years. Professor Sir David Williams, first elected in 1989, was in office when the main recommendations of the Wass Syndicate came into force in 1992 and, having been the last Vice-Chancellor elected on an annual basis, proceeded to be the first Vice-Chancellor under the new dispensation whereby the office is a permanent one for up to seven years. Under the new statutes the Vice-Chancellor can no longer be a Head of House but may hold a College Fellowship. Until 1992, the Vice-Chancellor was elected (by the Senate, and later by the Regent House) on the nomination of the Caput Senatus (or, from the 1850s, of the Council of the Senate). The appointment is now by the Council of the Senate. The Vice-Chancellor is the chief executive officer of the University.