Froude’s faults as an historian were of a different kind, and had nothing to do with his ecclesiastical views.  He was not the only Erastian, nor was he an Erastian pure and simple.  He has left it on record that Macaulay’s unfairness to Cranmer in the celebrated review of Hallam’s Constitutional History first suggested to him the project of his own book.  His besetting sin was not so much Erastianism, or secularism, as a love of paradox.  Henry viii seemed to him not merely a great statesman and a true patriot, but a victim of persistent misrepresentation, whose lofty motives had been concealed, and displaced by vile, baseless calumnies.  More and Fisher, honoured for three centuries as saints, he suspected, and, as he thought, discovered to have been traitors who justly expiated their offences on the block.  He was not satisfied with proving that there was a case for Henry, and that the triumph of Rome would have been the end of civil as well as spiritual freedom:  he must go on to whitewash the tyrant himself, and to prove that his marriage with Anne Boleyn, like his separation from Katharine of Aragon, was simply the result of an unselfish desire to provide the country with a male heir.  The refusal of More and Fisher to acknowledge the royal supremacy may show that they were Catholics first and Englishmen afterwards, without impugning their personal integrity, or justifying the malice of Thomas Cromwell.  To judge Henry as if he were a constitutional king with a secure title, in no more danger from Catholics than Louis XIV was from Huguenots, is doubtless preposterous.  If the Catholics had got the upper hand, they would have deposed him, and put him to death.  In that fell strife of mighty opposites the voice of toleration was not raised, and would not have been heard.  Tyrant as he was himself, Henry in his battle against Rome did represent the English people, and his cause was theirs.  Froude brought out this great truth, and to bring it out was a great service.  Unfortunately he went too far the other way, and impartial readers who had no sympathy with Cardinal Campeggio were revolted by what looked like a defence of cruel persecution.  The welfare of a nation is more important in history than the observance of any marriage; and if Henry had been guided by mere desire, there was no reason why he should marry Anne Boleyn at all.  Froude’s achievement, which, despite all criticism, remains, was marred or modified by his too obvious zeal for upsetting established conclusions and reversing settled beliefs.

The moment that Froude had made up his mind, which was not till after long and careful research, he began to paint a picture.  The lights were delicately and adroitly arranged.  The artist’s eye 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