History of the Rector

History

Until the mid-19th Century, the Rector had to be a minister of the Church of Scotland. Then, claiming that this was incompatible with their oath to elect a rector ‘of great worth and fame’, the students sought to break the mould by electing Sir Walter Scott in 1825 – an election which was immediately declared null and void.

One of the first rectors to be elected after the 1858 Act was John Stuart Mill, who helped himself to a concept of rector as ‘honorary president’ (more the intended style of the Chancellor’s post). He made one speech and then disappeared for all of his three year term.

For the rest of the 19th century, many of the rectors were senior politicians from conservative and liberal parties. Then there followed a succession of great public figures, including wealthy benefactors such as the Marquess of Bute and Andrew Carnegie; statesmen like Lord Avebury and the Earl of Rosebery; Field Marshall Haig during the First World War; writers such as J. M. Barrie and Rudyard Kipling in the 1920s; and Jan Christiaan Smuts and Marchese Marconi in the 1930s. These men increasingly adopted the style of Mill, appearing once only in their term as rector.

Previous Rectors

	Name	Years served
1	Sir Ralph Anstruther of Balcaskie, 4th Bt.	1859-1862
2	William Stirling-Maxwell of Keir, MP	1862-1865
3	John Stuart Mill	1865-1868
4	James Anthony Froude	1868-1871
5	Charles, Lord Neaves	1872-1874
6	Arthur Penryhn Stanley, Dean of Westminster	1874-1877
7	Roundell Palmer, Lord Selborne	1877-1880
8	Sir Theodore Martin	1880-1883
9	Donald James Mackay, 11th Lord Reay	1884-1886
10	Arthur James Balfour of Whittinghame	1886-1889
11	Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava	1889-1892
12	John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute	1892-1898
13	James Stuart, MP	1898-1901
14	Andrew Carnegie of Skibo	1901-1907
15	John Lubbock, 1st Lord Avebury	1907-1910
16	Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Roseberry	1910-1913
17	John Campbell Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen	1913-1916
18	Sir Douglas Haig	1916-1919
19	Sir James Matthew Barrie	1919-1922
20	Rudyard Kipling	1922-1925
21	Fridtjof Nansen	1925-1928
22	Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell	1928-1931
23	Jan Christian Smuts	1931-1934
24	Guglielmo Marconi, Marchese Marconi	1934-1937
25	Robert MacGregor Mitchell, Lord MacGregor Mitchell	1937-1938
26	Sir David Munro	1938-1946
27	Sir George Cunningham	1946-1949
28	David George Brownlow Cecil, Lord Burghley	1949-1952
29	David Robert Alexander Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford	1952-1955
30	David Patrick Maxwell-Fyfe, 1st Viscount of Kilmuir	1955-1958
31	Robert John Graham Boothby, Lord Boothby	1958-1961
32	Charles Percy Snow, Lord Snow	1961-1964
33	Sir John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein	1964-1967
34	Sir Learie Constantine, Lord Constantine of Maraval and Nelson	1967-1970
35	John Cleese	1970-1973
36	Alan Coren	1973-1976
37	Frank Muir	1976-1979
38	Tim Brooke-Taylor	1979-1982
39	Katharine Whitehorn	1982-1985
40	Stanley Adams	1985-1988
41	Nicholas Parsons	1988-1991
42	Nicholas Campbell	1991-1993
43	Donald Findlay	1993-1999
44	Andrew Neil	1999-2002
45	Sir Clement Freud	2002-2005
46	Simon Pepper	2005-2008
47	Kevin Dunion	2008-2011
48	Alistair Moffat	2011-2014
49	Catherine Stihler	2014-2017
50	Srdja Popovic	2017-2020
51	Leyla Hussein OBE	2020-2023
52	Stella Maris	2023-Present