But Froude was soon avenged.  Freeman gave himself into his adversary’s hands.  “Sometimes,” he wrote,* “Mr. Froude gives us the means of testing him.  Let us try a somewhat remarkable passage.  He tells us “It had been argued in the Admiralty Courts that the Prince of Orange, ’having his principality of his title in France, might make lawful war against the Duke of Alva,* and that the Queen would violate the rules of neutrality if she closed her ports against his cruisers.”  Then follows a Latin passage from which the English is paraphrased.  “We presume,” continues Freeman in fancied triumph, “that the words put by Mr. Froude in inverted commas are not Lord Burghiey’s summary of the Latin extract in the note, but Mr. Froude’s own, for it is utterly impossible that Burghley could have so misconceived a piece of plain Latin, or have so utterly misunderstood the position of any contemporary prince.”  Presumption indeed.  I have before me a photograph of Burghley’s own words in his own writing examined by Froude at the Rolls House.  They are “Question whether the Prince of Orange, being a free prince of the Empire, and also having his principality of his title in France, might not make a just war against the Duke of Alva.”  Froude abridged, and wrote “lawful” for “just.”  But the words which Freeman says that Burghley could not have used are the words which he did use, and the explanation is simple enough.  Freeman was Freeman.  Burghley was a statesman.  Burghley of course knew perfectly well that Orange was not subject to the King of France, not part of his dominions, which is Freeman’s objection.  He called it in France because it, and the Papal possessions of Venaissin adjoining it, were surrounded by French territory.  He called it “in France,” as we should call the Republic of San Marino “in Italy” now.  Freeman might have ascertained what Burghley did write if he had cared to know.  He did not care to know.  He was “belabouring Froude.”

—­ * Saturday Review, Nov. 24th, 1866. —­

Once Froude was weak enough to accept Freeman’s correction on a small point, only to find that Freeman was entirely in error, and that he himself had been right all along.  After much vituperative language not worth repeating, Freeman wrote in The Saturday Review for the 5th of February, 1870, these genial words, “As it is, there is nothing to be done but to catch Mr. Froude whenever he comes from his hiding-place at Simancas into places in which we can lie in wait for him.”  The sneer at original research is characteristic of Freeman.  One can almost hear his self-satisfied laugh as he wrote this unlucky sentence, “The thing is too grotesque to talk about seriously; but can we trust a single uncertified detail from the hands of a man who throughout his story of the Armada always calls the Ark Royal the Ark Raleigh? ...  It is the sort of blunder which so takes away one’s breath that one thinks for the time that it must be right.  We do not feel satisfied till we have turned to our