ion to resist, and showed how
the "proud prelate" was "brought to reason by means so instructive on
Elizabeth's mode of conducting business when she had not Burghley or
Walsingham to keep her in order that" the whole account is given at
length in the words of Lord North, whom she employed for the purpose.
This letter from Lord North is extremely valuable evidence. Froude
read it and transcribed it from the collection of manuscripts at
Hatfield. As an idle rumour that Froude spent only one day at
Hatfield obtained currency after his death, it may be convenient to
mention here that the work which he did there in copying manuscripts
alone must have occupied him at least a month. Now let us see what
use Freeman made of the information thus given him by Froude.
"Meanwhile," he says in The Saturday Review for the 22nd of January,
1870, "Mr. Froude is conveniently silent as to the infamous tricks
played by Elizabeth and her courtiers in order to make estates for
court favourites out of Episcopal lands. A line or two of text is
indeed given to the swindling transaction by which Bishop Coxe of Ely
was driven to surrender his London house to Sir Christopher Hatton.
But why? Because the story gives Mr. Froude an opportunity of quoting
at full length a letter from Lord North to the Bishop in which all
the Bishop's real or pretended enormities are strongly set forth."
Here follows a short extract from the letter, in which North accused
Coxe of grasping covetousness. Now it is perfectly obvious to any one
having the whole letter before him, as Freeman had, that Froude
quoted it with the precisely opposite aim of denouncing the conduct
of Elizabeth to the Bishop, whom he compares with Naboth. Freeman
must have heard of Naboth. He must have known what Froude meant. Yet
the whole effect of his comments must have been to make the readers
of The Saturday Review think that Froude was attacking the Church,
when he was attacking the Crown for its conduct to the Church.

--
+ History of England, vol. xi. p. 321.
--

Freeman seemed to glory in his own deficiencies, and was almost as
proud of what he did not know as of what he did. Thus, for instance,
Froude, a born man of letters, was skilful and accomplished in the
employment of metaphors. Freeman could no more handle a metaphor than
he could fish with a dry fly. He therefore, without the smallest
consciousness of being absurd, condemned Froude for doing what he was
unable to do himself,