e set
all accessories in the most telling positions. He was an advocate,
an incomparably brilliant advocate, in his mode of presenting a
case. But it was his own case, the case in which he believed, not a
case he had been retained to defend. When he came to deal with
Elizabeth he was on firmer ground. By that time the Reformation was
an accomplished fact, and the fiercest controversies lay behind him.
Disgusted as he was with the scandals invented against the virgin
queen, he did not shrink from exposing the duplicity and meanness
which tarnish the lustre of her imperishable renown. Like Knox, he
was insensible to the charms of Mary Stuart, and that is a
deficiency hard to forgive in a man. Yet who can deny that Elizabeth
only did to Mary as Mary would have done to her? The morality of the
Guises was as much a part of Mary as her scholarship, her grace, her
profound statecraft, the courage which a voluptuous life never
imparted. Froude was not thinking of her, or of any woman. He was
thinking of England. Between the fall of Wolsey and the defeat of
the Armada was decided the great question whether England should be
Catholic or Protestant, bond or free. The dazzling Queen of Scots,
like the virtuous Chancellor and the holy Bishop, were on the wrong
side. Henry and Elizabeth, with all their faults, were on the right
one. That is the pith and marrow of Froude's book. Those who think
that in history there is no side may blame him. He followed Carlyle.
"Froude is a man of genius," said Jowett: "he has been abominably
treated." "Il a vu iuste," said a young critic of our own day* in
reply to the usual charges of inaccuracy. The real object of his
attack was that ecclesiastical corruption which belongs to no Church
exclusively, and is older than Christianity itself.

--
* Arthur Strong.
--

The main portion of Froude's life for nearly twenty years was
occupied with his History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the
defeat of the Spanish Armada. It is on a large scale, in twelve
volumes. Every chapter bears ample proof of laborious study. Froude
neglected no source of information, and spared himself no pains in
pursuit of it. At the Record Office, in the British Museum, at
Hatfield, among the priceless archives preserved in the Spanish
village of Simancas, he toiled with unquenchable ardour and
unrelenting assiduity. Nine-tenths of his authorities were in
manuscript. They were in five languages. They filled nine hundred