—­ * April 10th, 1849. —­

The immediate effect of The Nemesis, the only effect it ever had, was disastrous.  Whatever else it might be, it was undoubtedly heretical, and in the Oxford of 1849 heresy was the unpardonable sin.  The Senior Tutor of Exeter, the Reverend William Sewell, burnt the book during a lecture in the College Hall.  Sewell, afterwards founder and first Warden of Radley, was a didactic Churchman, always talking or writing, seldom thinking, who contributed popular articles to The Quarterly Review.  The editor, Lockhart, knew their value well enough.  They tell one nothing, he said, they mean nothing, they are nothing, but they go down like bottled velvet.  Sewell’s eccentricities could not hurt Froude.  But more serious consequences followed.  The Governing Body of Exeter, the Rector* and Fellows, called upon him to resign his Fellowship.  This they had no moral right to do, and Froude should have rejected the demand.  For though his name and college were on the title-page of the book, the book itself was a work of fiction, and he could not justly be held responsible for the opinions of the characters.  Expulsion was, however, held out to him as the alternative of resignation.

—­ * Dr. Richards. —­

“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

LIBERTY