October 16th, 1864.—­“I cannot say beforehand the papers which I wish to examine, as I cannot tell what the collection may contain.  My object is to have everything which admits of being learnt about the period—­especially what may throw light on Lord Burleigh’s character.  He, it is more and more clear to me, was the solitary author of Elizabeth’s and England’s greatness.”

“I shall return from Simancas,” he writes from Valladolid, “more a Cecil maniac than ever.  In the Duke of Norfolk’s conspiracy, the Queen seems to have fairly given up the reins to him.  It is impossible to read the correspondence between Philip, Alva, the Pope, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Queen of Scots, the deliberate arrangements for Elizabeth’s murder, without shivering to think how near a chance it was.  Cecil was the one only man they feared, and the skill with which he dug mines below theirs, and pulled the strings of the whole of Europe against them, was truly splendid.  Elizabeth had lost her head with it all, but she knew it and did not interfere.  There are a great many letters of the Queen of Scots at Simancas, some of them of the deepest interest.  She remains the same as I have always thought her—­brilliant, cruel, ruthless, and perfectly unfeeling.”

Although Froude’s admiration for Elizabeth steadily diminished with the progress of his researches, even students of his History will be surprised by such a verdict as this: 

“I am slowly drawing to the end of my long journey through the Records.  By far the largest part of Burghley’s papers is here [in the Record Office], and not at Hatfield.  The private letters which passed between him and Walsingham about Elizabeth have destroyed finally the prejudice that still clung to me that, notwithstanding her many faults, she was a woman of ability.  Evidently in their opinion she had no ability at all worth calling by the name.”

Two or three extracts will complete the part of this correspondence which deals with the composition of the History.  “I have been incessantly busy in the Record Office since my return to London.  The more completely I examine the MSS. elsewhere the better use I shall be able to make of yours.  I have still two months of this kind before me, and my intention, if you did not yourself write to me first, was to ask you to let me go to Hatfield for a week or two about Easter.”

“I am now sufficiently master of the story to be able to make very good (I daresay complete) use of the Hatfield papers in my present condition.  I feel as if there were very few dark places left in Queen Elizabeth’s proceedings anywhere.  I substantially end, in a blaze of fireworks, with the Armada.  The concentrated interest of the reign lies in the period now under my hands.  It is all action, and I shall use my materials badly if I cannot make it as interesting as a novel.”