On the 16th of March, 1892, Froude’s old antagonist, Freeman, who had been Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford since Stubbs’s elevation to the Episcopal Bench in 1884, died suddenly in Spain.  The Prime Minister, who was also Chancellor of the University, offered the vacant Chair to Froude, and after some hesitation Froude accepted it.  The doubt was due to his age.  “There are seventy-four reasons against it,” he said.  Fortunately he yielded.  “The temptation of going back to Oxford in a respectable way,” he wrote to Skelton, “was too much for me.  I must just do the best I can, and trust that I shall not be haunted by Freeman’s ghost.”  Lord Salisbury did a bold thing when he appointed Froude successor to Freeman.  Froude had indeed a more than European reputation as a man of letters, and was acknowledged to be a master of English prose.  But he was seventy-four, five years older than Freeman, and he had never taught in his life, except as tutor for a very brief time in two private families.  The Historical School at Oxford had been trained to believe that Stubbs was the great historian, that Freeman was his prophet, and that Froude was not an historian at all.  Lord Salisbury of course knew better, for it was at Hatfield that some of Froude’s most thorough historical work had been done.  Still, it required some courage to fly in the face of all that was pedantic in Oxford, and to nominate in Freeman’s room the writer that Freeman had spent the best years of his life in “belabouring.”  Some critics attributed the selection to Lord Salisbury’s sardonic humour, or pronounced that, as Lamb said of Coleridge’s metaphysics, “it was only his fun.”  Some stigmatised it as a party job.  Gladstone’s nominee Freeman, had been a Home Ruler, Froude was a Unionist; what could be clearer than the motive?  But both nominations could be defended on their own merits, and a Regius Professorship should not be the monopoly of a clique.

Lord Salisbury’s choice of Froude was indeed, like Lord Rosebery’s subsequent choice of Lord Acton for Cambridge, an example which justified the patronage of the Crown.  A Prime Minister has more courage than an academic board, and is guided by larger considerations.  Froude was one of the most distinguished living Oxonians, and yet Oxford had not even given him an honorary degree.  Membership the Scottish Universities Commission in 1876 was the only official acknowledgment of his services to culture that he had ever received, and that was more of an obligation than a compliment.  “Froude,” said Jowett, “is a man of genius.  He has been abominably treated.”  Lord Salisbury had made amends.  Himself a man of the highest intellectual distinction, apart from the offices he happened to hold, he had promoted Froude to great honour in the place he loved best, and the most eminent of living English historians returned to Oxford in the character which was his due.