In 1868 the students of St.Andrews chose him to be Lord Rector of the University, and on the 23rd of March, 1869, he delivered his Inaugural Address on Education, which compared the plain living and high thinking of the Scottish Universities with the expensive and luxurious idleness that he remembered at Oxford.
Froude was delighted with the compliment the students had paid him, and they were equally charmed with their Rector.

In fact, his visit to St.Andrews produced in 1869 a suggestion that he should become the Parliamentary representative of that University and of Edinburgh.

But the injustice of the law as it then stood disqualified him as a candidate.

His deacon's orders, the shadowy remnant of a mistaken choice, stood in his way.

Next year, in 1870, Bouverie's Act passed, and Froude was one of the first to take advantage of it by becoming again, what he had really never ceased to be, a layman.