Stubbs's Constitutional History of England may be a useful book for students.
Unless or until it is rewritten, it can have no existence for the general reader; and if the test of impartiality be applied, Stubbs is as much for the Church against the State as Froude is for the State against the Church.

When Mr.Goldwin Smith resigned the Professorship of Modern History, or contemplated resigning it Stubbs wrote to Freeman, "It would be painful to have Froude, and worse still to have anybody else." He received the appointment himself, and held it for eighteen years, when he gave way to Freeman, and more than a quarter of century elapsed before the painful event occurred.

By that time Stubbs was Bishop of Oxford, translated from Chester, and had shown what a fatal combination for a modern prelate is learning with humour.

If Froude had been appointed twenty years earlier, on the completion of his twelve volumes, he might have made Oxford the great historical school of England.

But it was too late.
The aftermath was wonderful, and the lectures he delivered at Oxford show him at his best.