J. A. Froude

James Anthony Froude ( ; 23 April 1818 – 20 October 1894) was an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of ''Fraser's Magazine''. From his upbringing amidst the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Froude intended to become a clergyman, but doubts about the doctrines of the Anglican church, published in his scandalous 1849 novel '' The Nemesis of Faith'', drove him to abandon his religious career. Froude turned to writing history, becoming one of the best-known historians of his time for his ''History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada''.

Inspired by Thomas Carlyle, Froude's historical writings were often fiercely polemical, earning him a number of outspoken opponents. Froude continued to be controversial up until his death for his ''Life of Carlyle'', which he published along with personal writings of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. These publications illuminated Carlyle's often selfish personality, and led to persistent gossip and discussion of the couple's marital problems.

Life and works

Early life and education (1818–1842)

He was the son of Robert Hurrell Froude, archdeacon of Totnes, and his wife Margaret Spedding (d. 1821). James Anthony was born at Dartington, Devon, on 23 April 1818. He was the youngest of eight children, including engineer and naval architect William Froude and Anglo-Catholic polemicist Richard Hurrell Froude, who was fifteen years his elder. By James's third year his mother and five of his siblings had died of consumption, leaving James to what biographer Herbert Paul describes as a "loveless, cheerless boyhood" with his cold, disciplinarian father and brother Richard. He studied at Westminster School from the age of 11 until he was 15; there he was "persistently bullied and tormented". Despite his unhappiness and his failure in formal education, Froude cherished the classics and read widely in history and theology.

Beginning in 1836, he was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, then the centre of the ecclesiastical revival now called the Oxford Movement. Here Froude began to improve personally and intellectually, motivated to succeed by a brief engagement in 1839 (although this was broken off by the woman's father). He obtained a second-class degree in 1840 and travelled to Delgany, Ireland, as a private tutor. He returned to Oxford in 1842, won the Chancellor's English essay prize for an essay on political economy, and was elected a fellow of Exeter College.

Religious development and apostasy (1842–1849)

Froude's brother Richard Hurrell had been one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, a group which advocated a Catholic rather than a Protestant interpretation of the Anglican Church. Froude grew up hearing the conversation and ideas of his brother with friends John Henry Newman and John Keble, although his own reading provided him with some critical distance from the movement.

During his time at Oxford and Ireland, Froude became increasingly dissatisfied with the Movement. Froude's experience living with an Evangelical clergyman in Ireland conflicted with the Movement's characterisation of Protestantism, and his observations of Catholic poverty repulsed him. He increasingly turned to the unorthodox religious views of writers such as Spinoza, David Friedrich Strauss, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe, and especially Thomas Carlyle.

Froude retained a favourable impression of Newman, however, defending him in the controversy over Tract 90 and later in his essay "The Oxford Counter-Reformation" (1881). Froude agreed to contribute to Newman's '' Lives of the English Saints'', choosing Saint Neot as his subject. However, he found himself unable to credit the accounts of Neot or any other saint, ultimately considering them mythical rather than historical, a discovery which further shook his religious faith.

Nevertheless, Froude was ordained deacon in 1845, initially intending to help reform the church from within. However, he soon found his situation untenable; although he never lost his faith in God or Christianity, he could no longer submit to the doctrines of the Church. He began publicly airing his religious doubts through his semi-autobiographical works ''Shadows of the Clouds'', published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Zeta", and '' The Nemesis of Faith'', published under his own name in 1849. ''The Nemesis of Faith'' in particular raised a storm of controversy, being publicly burned in Oxford, at Exeter College, by William Sewell, and deemed "a manual of infidelity" by the ''Morning Herald''. Froude was forced to resign his fellowship, and officials at University College London withdrew the offer of a mastership at Hobart Town, Australia, where Froude had hoped to work while reconsidering his situation. Froude took refuge from the popular outcry by residing with his friend Charles Kingsley at Ilfracombe.

His plight won him the sympathy of kindred spirits, such as George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and later Mrs. Humphry Ward. Mrs. Ward's popular 1888 novel '' Robert Elsmere'' was largely inspired by this era of Froude's life.

''History of England'' (1850–1870)

At Ilfracombe, Froude met and soon married Charlotte Grenfell, Kingsley's sister-in-law, the daughter of Pascoe Grenfell. The couple moved first to Manchester and then to North Wales in 1850, where Froude lived happily, supported by his friends Arthur Hugh Clough and Matthew Arnold. Prevented from pursuing a political career because of legal restrictions on deacons (a position which was at the time legally indelible), he decided to pursue a literary career. He began by writing reviews and historical essays, with only sporadic publications on religious topics, for ''Fraser's Magazine'' and the ''Westminster Review''. Froude soon returned to England, living at London and Devonshire, in order to research his ''History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada'', on which he worked for the next twenty years. He worked extensively with original manuscript authorities at the Record Office, Hatfield House, and the village of Simancas, Spain.

Froude's historical writing was characterised by its dramatic rather than scientific treatment of history, an approach Froude shared with Carlyle, and also by Froude's intention to defend the English Reformation (which he asserted was "the hinge on which all modern history turned"; quotes in and the "salvation of England") against the interpretations of Catholic historians. Froude focused on figures such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, although he became increasingly unfavourable to Elizabeth over the course of his research. Furthermore, he directly expressed his antipathy towards Rome and his belief that the Church should be subordinated to the state. As a result, when the first volumes of Froude's history were published in 1856 they drew the ire of liberals (who felt that Froude's depiction of Henry VIII celebrated despotism) and Oxford High Churchmen (who opposed his position on the Church); this hostility was expressed in reviews from the '' Christian Remembrancer'' and the '' Edinburgh Review''. The work was a popular success, however, and along with Froude's 1858 repudiation of his early novels helped him regain much of the esteem he had lost in 1849. Following the death of Thomas Macaulay in 1859, Froude became the most famous living historian in England.

In 1862, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.

Beginning in 1864, Edward Augustus Freeman, a High Churchman, launched a critical campaign against Froude in the '' Saturday Review'' and later in the ''Contemporary Review'', somewhat damaging Froude's scholarly reputation. In 1879, Freeman's review
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* in the ''Contemporary Review'' of Froude's ''Short Study of Thomas Becket'' incited Froude to respond with a refutation in ''The Nineteenth Century'' which largely discredited Freeman's attacks and reaffirmed the value of Froude's manuscript research.

In 1860, Froude's wife Charlotte died; in 1861, he married her close friend Henrietta Warre, daughter of John Warre, MP for Taunton. Also in 1861, Froude became editor of ''Fraser's Magazine'' following the death of former editor John Parker, who was also Froude's publisher. Froude retained this editorship for fourteen years, resigning it in 1874 at the request of Thomas Carlyle, with whom he was working. In 1869 Froude was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews, defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a majority of fourteen. In 1870, following the passage of the Clerical Disabilities Act (c. 91, Vict. XXXIII & XXXIV; "Bouverie's Act"), which permitted priests and deacons to resign from Holy Orders, Froude was finally able to officially rejoin the laity.

In a prize-winning work published in 1981, the historian J. W. Burrow

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