e modern writers, degrade her to the level of a kitchen
wench. Froude's Elizabeth was the subject of bitter, hostile,
sometimes violent, criticism in The Saturday Review, the property of
an ardent High Churchman, Beresford Hope. In the next chapter I
shall deal with these articles at more length. It is enough to say
here that they were directed not merely at Froude's accuracy as an
historian, but at his truthfulness as a man, suggesting that the
mode in which he had manipulated authorities accessible to every one
threw grave doubts upon his version of what he read at Simancas.
Froude knew very well that he should make enemies. His belief that
history had been cericalised, and required to be laicised, was
regarded as peculiarly offensive in one who had been himself
ordained.

Mary Stuart, moreover, had stalwart champions beyond the border who
were neither clerical nor ecclesiastical. "I fear," Froude wrote on
the 22nd of May, 1862, to his Scottish friend Skelton, who was
himself much interested in the subject--"I fear my book will bring
all your people about my ears. Mary Stuart, from my point of view,
was something between Rachel and a pantheress."

The success of the History had been long since assured, and each
successive pair of volumes met with a cordial welcome. Many people
disagreed with Froude on many points. He expected disagreement, and
did not mind it. But no one could fail to see the evidence of patient,
thorough research which every chapter, almost every page,
contains. Indeed, it might be said with justice, or at least with
some plausibility, that the long and frequent extracts from the
despatches of De Feria, de Quadra, de Silva, and Don Guereau,
successively Ambassadors from Philip to Elizabeth, water-log the
book, and make it too like a series of extracts with explanatory
comments. Of Froude's own style there could not be two opinions. His
bitterest antagonists were forced to admit that it was the
perfection of easy, graceful narrative, without the majestic
splendour of Gibbon, but also without the mechanical hardness of
Macaulay. Froude did not stop deliberately, as other historians have
stopped, to paint pictures or draw portraits, and there are few
writers from whom it is more difficult to make typical or
characteristic extracts. Yet, as I have already quoted from his
account of Cranmer's execution, it may not be inappropriate that I
should cite some of the thoughts suggested to him by the death o