words which Freeman says that Burghley
could not have used are the words which he did use, and the
explanation is simple enough. Freeman was Freeman. Burghley was a
statesman. Burghley of course knew perfectly well that Orange was not
subject to the King of France, not part of his dominions, which is
Freeman's objection. He called it in France because it, and the Papal
possessions of Venaissin adjoining it, were surrounded by French
territory. He called it "in France," as we should call the Republic
of San Marino "in Italy" now. Freeman might have ascertained what
Burghley did write if he had cared to know. He did not care to know.
He was "belabouring Froude."

--
* Saturday Review, Nov. 24th, 1866.
--

Once Froude was weak enough to accept Freeman's correction on a small
point, only to find that Freeman was entirely in error, and that he
himself had been right all along. After much vituperative language
not worth repeating, Freeman wrote in The Saturday Review for the 5th
of February, 1870, these genial words, "As it is, there is nothing to
be done but to catch Mr. Froude whenever he comes from his hiding-
place at Simancas into places in which we can lie in wait for him."
The sneer at original research is characteristic of Freeman. One can
almost hear his self-satisfied laugh as he wrote this unlucky
sentence, "The thing is too grotesque to talk about seriously; but
can we trust a single uncertified detail from the hands of a man who
throughout his story of the Armada always calls the Ark Royal the Ark
Raleigh? ... It is the sort of blunder which so takes away one's
breath that one thinks for the time that it must be right. We do not
feel satisfied till we have turned to our Camden and seen 'Ark Regis'
staring us full in the face." Freeman did not know the meaning of
historical research as conducted by a real scholar like Froude.
Froude had not gone to Camden, who in Freeman's eyes represented the
utmost stretch of Elizabethan learning. If Freeman had had more
natural shrewdness, it might have occurred to him that the name of a
great seaman was not an unlikely name for a ship. But he could never
fall lightly, and heavily indeed did he fall on this occasion. With
almost incredible fatuity, he wrote, "The puzzle of guessing how
Mr. Froude got at so grotesque a union of words as 'Ark Raleigh'
fades before the greater puzzle of guessing what idea he attached to
the words 'Ark Raleigh' when he had got them together."