without assistance, he should sometimes fall into error was
unavoidable. But he never spared himself. He was the most laborious of
students, and his History was as difficult to write as it is easy to
read. He had, as this hostile reviewer says, a "genuine love of
historical research," and there is point in the same critic's
complaint that his pages are "over-loaded with long quotations from
State Papers."

What, then, it will be asked, was the real gist of the charges made
against Froude by The Edinburgh Review? The question at issue was
nothing less than the whole policy of Henry's reign, and the motives
of the King. The character of Henry is one of the most puzzling in
historical literature, and Froude had to deal with the most
difficult part of it. To the virtues of his earlier days Erasmus is
an unimpeachable witness. The power of his mind and the excellence
of his education are beyond dispute. He held the Catholic faith, he
was not naturally cruel, and, compared with Francis I., or with
Henry of Navarre, he was not licentious. But he was brought up to
believe that the ordinary rules of morality do not govern kings.
That the king can do no wrong is now a maxim of the Constitution,
and merely means that Ministers are responsible for the acts of the
Crown. Henry could scarcely have been made to understand, even if
there had been any one to tell him, what a constitutional monarch
was. Though forced to admit, and taught by experience, that he could
not safely tax his subjects without the formal sanction of
Parliament, he was in theory absolute, and he held it his duty to
rule as well as to reign. When Charles I. argued, a century later,
that a king was not bound to keep faith with his subjects, it may be
doubted whether he deceived himself. The thoughts of men are widened
with the process of the suns. His duty to God Henry would always