For a time he was enthusiastic about a cathedral life, devoted to the pursuit of learning and to the development of opportunities for the religious and intellectual benefit of the diocese. But the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge fell vacant, and J. B. Lightfoot, who was then Hulsean Professor, refused it in favour of Westcott. It was due to Lightfoot's support almost as much as to his own great merits that Westcott was elected to the chair on 1 November 1870.