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Although Froude enjoyed with avidity the conversation of his chosen
friends, he was not satisfied with intellectual epicureanism. He was
resolved to make for himself a name, to leave behind him some not
unworthy memorial. The history of the Reformation attracted him
strongly. If an historian is a man of science, or a mere chronicler,
then certainly Froude was not an historian. He made no claim to be
impartial. He held that the Oxford Movement was not only endangering
the National Church, but injuring the national character and
corrupting men's knowledge of the past. He believed in the
Reformation first as an historic fact, and secondly as a beneficent
revolt of the laity against clerical dominion. He denied that since
the Reformation there had been one Catholic Church, and as an
Englishman he asserted in the language of the Articles that the
Bishop of Rome had no jurisdiction within this realm of England. He
wanted to vindicate the reformers, and to prove that in the struggle
against Papal Supremacy English patriots took the side of the king.
He was roused to indignation by slanders against the character of
Elizabeth; and he held, as almost every one now holds, that the
attempt to make an innocent saint of Mary Stuart was futile. Even
More and Fisher he refused to accept as candidates for the crown of
martyrdom. They were both excellent men. More was, in some respects,
a great man. They were certainly far more virtuous than the king who
put them to death. But they were executed for treason, not for
heresy, and to clear their memory it is necessary to show that they
had no part in conspiring with a foreign Power against their lawful
sovereign. That Power, the Church of Rome, a Power till 1870, Froude
cordially hated. He regarded it as an obstacle to progress, an enemy
of freedom, an enslaver of the intellect and the soul. The English