James Anthony Froude

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James Froude

Caricature from Punch, 30 December 1882

James Anthony Froude (Froude rhymes with rood) (April 23, 1818 – October 20, 1894) was an English historian. He was the brother of the Anglo-Catholic polemicist Richard Hurrell Froude and of William Froude, the engineer and naval architect.

The son of R. H. Froude, archdeacon of Totnes, he was born at Dartington, Devon. He was educated at Westminster School and Oriel College, Oxford, then the centre of the ecclesiastical revival now called the Oxford Movement. He obtained a second class degree, but won the Chancellor's English essay prize, and was elected a fellow of Exeter College (1842).

His elder brother, Hurrell Froude, had been one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Froude joined that party and helped John Henry Newman in his Lives of the English Saints. He was ordained deacon in 1845. By that time his religious opinions had begun to change, he grew dissatisfied with the views of the High Church party, and came under the influence of Thomas Carlyle. Signs of this first appeared publicly in his Shadows of the Clouds, a volume containing two stories of a religious sort, which he published in 1847 under the pseudonym of "Zeta," and his complete desertion of his party was declared a year later in his Nemesis of Faith, of which the earlier part seems to be autobiographical.

At the college's request, he resigned his fellowship at Oxford. His plight won him the sympathy of kindred spirits like Elizabeth Gaskell and her husband; Mrs Gaskell's novel, North and South, is thought to have been based on Froude's experience, and the heroine, Margaret Hale, may have been based on his wife, Charlotte.

From then on, Froude mainly supported himself by writing, contributing to Fraser's Magazine and the Westminster Review. His talent was soon generally recognized. The first two volumes of his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada appeared in 1856, and the work was completed in 1870. As an historian he is chiefly remarkable for his literary style. Like his mentor Carlyle, he condemned a scientific treatment of history, believing that its purpose was simply to record human actions and that it should be written as a drama. Accordingly his work gives prominence to the personal element in history, but he sometimes failed to understand the context of the period on which he was writing. His anti-Catholic bias can be marked

The keynote of Froude's History is his assertion that the Reformation was "the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the Anglo-Saxon race over the globe." Hence he praises King Henry VIII and others who helped the movement, and speaks harshly of its opponents. So too, in his English in Ireland (1872-1874), which was written to show the futility of attempts to conciliate the Irish, he exaggerates the bad points of the Irish, touches lightly on English atrocities, and emphasizes the influence of Roman Catholicism.

Carlyle's influence on him is seen in his admiration for strong rulers and strong government, which led him to write as though tyranny and brutality were excusable, and also in his independent treatment of character. His representation of Henry VIII as the self-denying minister of his people's will is founded on the false theory that the acts of Henry's parliaments represented the opinions of the educated laymen of England.

In his Divorce of Catherine of Aragon (1891) Froude attempted to show that fresh evidence on the subject, brought forward by James Gairdner, Friedmann and others, was consistent with the views which he had expressed in his History nearly forty years before. He worked diligently at original manuscript authorities at Simancas, the Record Office and Hatfield House; but he used his materials carelessly, and brought to his investigation of them a mind already made up.

Froude's Life of Caesar (1879), a glorification of imperialism, betrays little acquaintance with Roman politics and the life of Cicero; and his travel book, The English in the West Indies or The Bow of Ulysses (1888) shows that he made little effort to master his subject, simply assuming that his racist prejudgments were the truth. Historical scholars ridiculed his mistakes, and Freeman never missed a chance of criticizing him in the Saturday Review. Froude's temperament was sensitive, and he suffered from these attacks, which were often unjust and savage. The literary quarrel between him and Freeman became news when it blazed out in a series of articles which Freeman wrote in the Contemporary Review (1879) on Froude's Short Study of Thomas Becket.

Froude's History is, if long, a well-balanced and orderly narrative. The thread of the story is never lost amid a crowd of details. Froude was a master of English prose. The most notable characteristic of his style is its graceful simplicity; it is never affected or laboured; his sentences are short and easy, and follow one another naturally. He is always lucid. The History, in common with almost everything which he wrote, was widely read despite criticisms.

In 1868 he was elected rector of the University of St Andrews, defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a majority of fourteen. He was warmly welcomed in the United States, which he visited in 1872, but the lectures on Ireland which he delivered there caused much dissatisfaction. On the death of his adversary Freeman in 1892, he was appointed, on the recommendation of Lord Salisbury, to succeed him as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.

Except to a few Oxford men, who considered that historical scholarship should have been held to be a necessary qualification for the office, his appointment gave general satisfaction. His lectures on Erasmus and other 16th century subjects were largely attended. With some allowance for the purpose for which they were originally written, they present much the same characteristics as his earlier historical books. His health gave way in the summer of 1894, and he died later that year.

He was for fourteen years editor of Fraser's Magazine. He was one of Carlyle's literary executors, and brought some sharp criticism upon himself by publishing Carlyle's Reminiscences and the Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, for they exhibited the domestic life and character of his old friend in an unpleasant light. Carlyle had given the manuscripts to him, telling him that he might publish them if he thought it well to do so, and at the close of his life agreed to their publication. This controversy was heightened by the publication of Froude's biography of Carlyle, in which he made public his opinion that the Carlyles' marriage had never been consummated. He also reported stories of violent quarrels between the couple. Such frankness was considered disrespectful at the time. Some of Carlyle's relatives persisted in disputing Froude's claims, which gave rise to further, questionable, claims by Frank Harris.

Froude was generally reserved, though his manners and conversation were charming. In 1874 Lord Carnarvon, then colonial secretary, sent Froude to South Africa to report on the best means of promoting a confederation of its colonies and states, and in 1875 he was again sent to the Cape as a member of a proposed conference to further confederation. Froude's speeches in South Africa were tactless, and his mission was a failure.

Froude's first wife, a daughter of Pascoe Grenfell and sister of Mrs Charles Kingsley, died in 1860; his second, a daughter of John Warre, M.P. for Taunton, died in 1874.

Froude's Life, by Herbert Paul, was published in 1905.