 He was also, from 1665, Rector and Governor of Edinburgh University, where he had corporal punishment abolished.In 1662 he was again elected Provost by the council, this time for eleven years.He found the council this time almost bankrupt and engaged in wide-ranging measures to rectify that (Mackenzie says he was "tyrannical"), one being the council's dismissal in 1665 of Sir William Thomson, the Town Clerk, for corruption.