y was
imperfectly understood. Froude was especially attracted by the age
of Elizabeth, who admired her father as a monarch, whatever she may
have thought of him as a man. It was an age of mighty dramatists, of
divine poets, of statesmen wise and magnanimous, if not great, of
seamen who made England, not Spain, the ruler of the seas. It was
with the seamen that Froude began. His essay on England's Forgotten
Worthies, which appeared in The Westminster Review for 1852, was
suggested by a new, and very bad, edition of Hakluyt. It inspired
Kingsley with the idea of his historical novel, Westward Ho! and
Tennyson drew from it, many years later, the story of his noble
poem, The Revenge. The eloquence is splendid, and the patriotic
fervour stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. The cruelties
of the Spaniards in South America, perpetrated in the name of Holy
Church, are described with unflinching fidelity and unsparing truth.
For instance, four hundred French Huguenots were massacred in cold
blood by Spaniards, who invaded their settlement in Florida at a
time when France was at peace with Spain. These Protestants were
flayed alive, and, to show that it was done in the cause of
religion, an inscription was suspended over their bodies, "Not as
Frenchmen, but as heretics." Even at this distance of time it is
satisfactory to reflect that these defenders of the faith were not
left to the slow judgment of God. A French privateer, Dominique de
Gourges, whose name deserves to be held in honour and remembrance,
sailed from Rochelle, collected a body of American Indians, swooped
down upon the Spanish forts, and hanged their pious inmates,
wretches not less guilty than the authors of St. Bartholomew, with
the appropriate legend, "Not as Spaniards, but as murderers." "It
was at such a time," says Froude, "and to take their part amidst
such scenes as these, that the English navigators appeared along the
shores of South America as the armed soldiers of the Reformation,
and as the avengers of humanity." Hawkins, Drake, Raleigh, Davis,
Grenville, are bright names in the annals of British seamanship. But
they were not merely staunch patriots, and loyal subjects of the
great Queen; they were pioneers of civil and religious freedom from
the most grievous yoke and most intolerable bondage that had ever
oppressed mankind.

In The Westminster for 1853 appeared Froude's essay on the Book of
Job, which may be taken as his final expression of