"If the Rector will permit me," he wrote from Oxford to Clough,
"tomorrow I cease to be a Fellow of the College. But there is a
doubt if he will permit it, and will not rather try to send me out
in true heretic style. My book is therefore, as you may suppose,
out. I know little of what is said, but it sells fast, and is being
read, and is producing sorrow this time, I understand, as much as
anger, but the two feelings will speedily unite."

If he could have appealed to a court of law, the authorities would
probably have failed for want of evidence, and Froude would have
retained his Fellowship. But he was sensitive, and yielded to
pressure. He signed the paper presented to him as if he had been a
criminal, and shook the dust of the University from his feet. Within
ten years a new Rector, quite as orthodox as the old, had invited
him to replace his name on the books of the college. It was long,
however, before he returned to an Oxford where only the buildings
were the same. Twenty years from this date an atheistic treatise
might have been written with perfect impunity by any Fellow of any
college. Nobody would even have read it if atheism had been its only
recommendation. The wise indifference of the wise had relieved true
religion from the paralysis of official patronage. But in 1849 the
action of the Rector and Fellows was heartily applauded by the
Visitor, Bishop Phillpotts, the famous Henry of Exeter. Their
behaviour was conscientious, and Dr. Richards, the Rector, was a
model of dignified urbanity. It is unreasonable to blame men for not
being in advance of their age.


CHAPTER III