Historians Reconsidered: Froude

James Anthony Froude described the greatest collision of principles in English history. His interest in the Reformation was both the cause and the result of the struggle in his own life. He. was a fighter, without bitterness or malice, for what he believed to be truth; and from boyhood to the final honour of the Regius Professorship his life—outwardly that of a successful country gentleman in the most successful country on earth—was, in fact, an incessant conflict. Of the History of England, A. F. Pollard wrote: “The book at once established Froude’s claim to rank among the greatest English prose writers of the nineteenth century; its value as history is more open to question.” My purpose is to re-open that question; and my concern will be with the historian and not with the several other Froudes: the brilliant biographer of Thomas Carlyle, the political propagandist of The English in Ireland, or the Apostle of Empire.