theological
belief. Henceforward he turned from theology to history, from
speculation to fact. Even his friendship for Frederic Maurice could
not rouse him to any great interest in the latter's expulsion from
King's College. "As thinkers," he wrote to Clough on the 22nd of
November, 1853, "Maurice, and still more the Mauricians, appear to
me the most hopelessly imbecile that any section of the world have
been driven to believe in. I am glad you liked Job, though my
writing it was a mere accident, and I am not likely to do more of
the kind. I am going to stick to the History in spite of your
discouragement, and I believe I shall make something of it. At
any rate one has substantial stuff between one's fingers to be moulding
at, and not those slime and sea sand ladders to the moon 'opinion.'"

Froude pursued his studies, reading all the collections of original
documents in Strype and other chroniclers. Why, he asked himself
should Henry, this bloody and ferocious tyrant, have been so popular
in his own lifetime? Parliament, judges, juries, all the articulate
classes of the community, why had they stood by him? No doubt he
could dissolve Parliament, and dismiss the judges. But to submit
without a struggle, without even protest or remonstrance, was not
like Englishmen, before or since. When Erasmus visited England he
found that the laity were the best read and the best behaved in
Europe, while the clergy were gluttonous, profligate, and
avaricious. No historian ever prepared himself more thoroughly for
his task than Froude. Sir Francis Palgrave, the Deputy Keeper of the
Records under Sir John Romilly, offered to let him see the
unpublished documents in the Chapter House at Westminster which
dealt with the later years of Wolsey's Government, and to the action
of Parliament after the Cardinal' s fall. He examined them
thoroughly, and accepted Parker's proposal that he should write the
history of the period. But he had to leave Plas Gwynant. The London
Library, which Carlyle had founded, sufficed for contributions to
magazines. History was a more serious affair, and it was necessary
for him to be, if not in London, at least near a railway. He
returned to his native county, and took a house at Babbicombe, from
which, after three years, he moved to Bideford. He made frequent
visits to London, where he was the guest of his publisher, John
Parker, at whose table he met Arthur Helps, John and Richard Doyle,
Cornewall Lewis, Richa