he had no business to remain in the United Church of
England and Ireland. If he did remain in it, he was not merely
mistaken, but dishonest, and sophistry could not purge him from the
moral stain of treachery to the institution of which he was an
officer. Froude's sense of chivalry was aroused, and he warmly
defended Newman, whom he knew to be as honest as himself, besides
being saintly and pure. If he had stopped there, all might have been
well. Mr. Cleaver was himself high-minded, and could appreciate the
virtue of standing up for an absent friend. But Froude went further.
He believed Newman to be legally and historically right. The Church
of England was designed to be comprehensive. Chatham had spoken of
it, not unfairly, as having an Arminian liturgy and Calvinist
articles. When the Book of Common Prayer assumed its present shape,
every citizen had been required to conform, and the policy of
Elizabeth was to exclude no one. The result was a compromise, and
Mr. Cleaver would have found it hard to reconcile his principles
with the form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick. This was,
in Mr. Cleaver's opinion, sophistry almost as bad as Newman's, and
Froude's tutorship came to an end. There was no quarrel, and, after
a tour through the south of Ireland, where he saw superstition and
irreverence, solid churches, well-fed priests, and a starving
peasantry in rags, Froude returned for a farewell visit to Delgany.
On this occasion he met Dr. Pusey, who had been at Christ Church
with Mr. Cleaver, and was then visiting Bray. Dr. Pusey, however,
was not at his ease He was told by a clerical guest, afterwards a
Bishop, with more freedom than courtesy, that they wanted no Popery
brought to Ireland, they had enough of their own. The sequel is
curious. For while Newman justified Mr. Cleaver by going over to
Rome, his own sons, including Froude's pupil, became Puseyite
clergymen of the highest possible type. Froude returned to Oxford at
the beginning of 1842, and won the Chancellor's Prize for an English
essay on the influence of political economy in the development of
nations. In the summer he was elected to a Devonshire Fellowship at
Exeter, and his future seemed secure. But his mind was not at rest.
It was an age of ecclesiastical controversy, and Oxford was the
centre of what now seems a storm in a teacup. Froude became mixed up
in it. On the one hand was the personal influence of Newman, who
raised more doubts than he