Nothing was neglected by Froude which could throw light upon the splendid and illustrious Queen who raised England from the depths of degradation to the height of renown.  It was at the zenith of Elizabeth’s career that Froude stopped.  His original intention had been to continue till her death.  But the ample scale on which he had planned his book was so much enlarged by his copious quotations from the manuscripts at Simancas that by the time he reached his eleventh volume he substituted for the death of Elizabeth on his title-page the defeat of the Armada.  With the year 1588, then, he closed his labours.  Even the perverse critics who had assumed to treat the History of Henry viii. as an anti-ecclesiastical pamphlet were compelled to show more respect for volumes which gave so much novel information to the world.  Moreover Henry’s daughter was a very different person from her father.  Scandal about Queen Elizabeth had been chiefly confined to Roman Catholics, and few Englishmen had forgotten who made England the mistress of the seas.  The old religion had a strong fascination for her, and every one knows how she interrupted Dean Nowell when he preached against images.  She declined to be the head of the Church in the sense arrogated by Henry, and yet she would by no means admit the supremacy of the Pope.  If she ever felt any inclination towards Rome, the massacre of St. Bartholomew checked it for ever.  Gregory XIII. and Catherine de Medici were rulers to her taste.  On the other hand she resisted the persecuting tendencies of her Bishops, and spared the life even of such a wretch as Bonner.  It is possible that she believed in transubstantiation.  It is certain that she objected to the marriage of the clergy, and showed scant courtesy to the wife of her own favourite Archbishop Parker.  Nor would she suffer the Bishops, except as Peers, to meddle in affairs of State.  A magnificent princess, every inch a queen, she could not forget that the English people had saved her life from the clutches of her sister, and it was for them, not for any Minister, courtier, or lover, that she really cared.

Froude was no idolater of Elizabeth, and he became more unfavourable to her as he proceeded.  He dwells minutely upon all her intrigues, in which she was as petty as in great matters she was grand.  For her rival, Mary Stuart, he had neither respect nor mercy.  To her intellect indeed, which was quite on a par with Elizabeth’s, he does full justice.  But neither her beauty nor her wit, neither her scholarship nor her statesmanship, neither her passion nor her courage, could blind him to her selfishness, her immorality, and the fact that she represented the Catholic cause.  His account of her execution certainly lacks sentiment, and Mrs. Norton accused him of writing like a disappointed lover.  His sympathies are with John Knox, and the Regent Murray, and Maitland of Lethington.  But the man who believes that Mary was not concerned in the murder of her husband