t, had been found guilty. But he wanted to suggest that Froude
was an ignoramus, and for the purpose of beating a dog one stick is
as good as another.

Freeman's trump card, however, was the Bishop of Lexovia, and that
brilliant victory he never forgot. Froude examined the strange and
startling allegation, cited by Macaulay in his introductory chapter,
that during the reign of Henry VIII. seventy-two thousand persons
perished by the hand of the public executioner. He traced it to the
Commentaries of Cardan, an astrologer, not a very trustworthy
authority, who had himself heard it, he said, from "an unknown Bishop
of Lexovia." "Unknown," observed Freeman, with biting sarcasm, "to no
one who has studied the history of Julius Caesar or of Henry II."
Froude had not been aware that Lexovia was the ancient name for the
modern Lisieux, and for twenty years he was periodically reminded of
the fact. Had he followed Freeman's methods, he might have asked
whether his critic really supposed that there were bishops in the
time of Julius Caesar. Freeman failed to see that the point was not
the modern name of Lexovia, but the number of persons put to death by
Henry, on which Froude had shown the worthlessness of popular
tradition.

Bishop Hooper was burnt at Gloucester in the Cathedral Close. Froude
describes the scene of the execution as "an open space opposite the
College." That shows, says Freeman, that Froude did not, like
Macaulay, visit the scenes of the events he described. Perhaps he did
not visit Gloucester, or even Guisnes. That Freeman's general
conclusion was entirely wide of the mark a single letter from Froude
to Skelton is enough to show. "I want you some day," he wrote on the
12th of December, 1863, "to go with me to Loch Leven, and then to
Stirling, Perth, and Glasgow. Before I go farther I must have a
personal knowledge of Loch Leven Castle and the grounds at Langside.
Also I must look at the street at Linlithgow where Murray was shot."*
Thus Freeman's amiable inference was the exact reverse of the truth.

--
* Table Talk of Shirley, p. 131.
--

Some of Freeman's methods, however, were a good deal less scrupulous
than this. By way of bringing home to Froude "ecclesiastical
malignity of the most frantic kind," he cited the case of Bishop
Coxe. "To Hatton," Froude wrote in his text,+ "was given also the
Naboth's vineyard of his neighbour the Bishop of Ely." In a long note
he commented upon the Bishop's inclinat