against the monastic bodies.  In Wriothesley’s hand.”  “Sir Francis Bigod to Sir Robert Constable.  Very remarkable account of his unpopularity in the first rebellion from suspicion of heresy, January 18th, 1537.”  “Emperor at Paris, 1539.  War between France and England.  Secret causes why the Emperor made a secret peace with France.”  “Lord Lisle to Henry viii. on his chance of running down the French fleet as they lay at anchor, July 21st, 1545.”  “Losses of the old families by the suppression—­new foundation by Henry viii.  Bishoprics, hospitals, colleges, etc.”  “The Abbot of Coggeshall hides jewels, makes away goods, maintains Rome and consults the devil.”  “Henry viii. to Justices of the Peace, admonition for neglect of duty.  Highly in character.”  “King’s Highness having discovered all the enormities of the clergy, pardons all that is past, and exhorts them to a Christian life in all time to come.”

During the three months to which alone this list refers Froude must have read and studied more than four hundred pages of important documents.  If any one wishes to form a correct judgment of Froude as an historian, he can scarcely begin better than by reversing every statement that Freeman felt it his duty to make.  Froude came to write about the sixteenth century after careful study of previous times.  He prepared himself for his task by patient research among letters and manuscripts such as Freeman never thought of attempting.  He neglected no source of information open to him, and he obtained special privileges for searching Spanish archives which entailed upon him the severest labour.  He studied not only at Simancas, where none had been before him, but also in Paris, in Brussels, in Vienna.  The documents he read were in half a dozen languages, sometimes in the vilest scrawls.  Long afterwards he described his own experience in his own graphic way.  “Often at the end of a page,” he said, “I have felt as after descending a precipice, and have wondered how I got down.  I had to cut my way through a jungle, for no one had opened the road for me.  I have been turned into rooms piled to the window-sill with bundles of dust-covered despatches, and told to make the best of it.  Often I have found the sand glistening on the ink where it had been sprinkled when a page was turned.  There the letter had lain, never looked at again since it was read and put away.”  Out of such materials Froude wrote a History which any educated person can read with undisturbed enjoyment.  He was too good an artist to let his own difficulties be seen, and they were assumed not to exist.  Froude did not write, like Stubbs, for professional students alone; he wrote for the general public, for those whom Freeman affected to despise.  So did Macaulay, whom Freeman idolised.  So did Gibbon, the greatest historian of all time.  Froude’s History covered the most controversial period in the growth of the English Church.  Lynx-eyed critics, with