But, before I come to details, let me say one word more about Freeman's qualifications for the task which he so lightly and eagerly undertook.

Freeman, with all his self-assertion, was not incapable of candour.

He was staunch in friendship, and spoke openly to his friends.

To one of them, the excellent Dean Hook, famous for his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, he wrote, on the 27th of April, 1857 [1867 ?], "You have found me out about the sixteenth century.

I fancy that, from endlessly belabouring Froude, I get credit for knowing more of those times than I do.