Cobbett was mediaeval; that is, he was in almost every way the opposite of what that word means to-day.

He was as egalitarian as St.Francis, and as independent as Robin Hood.

Like that other yeoman in the ballad, he bore in hand a mighty bow; what some of his enemies would have called a long bow.

But though he sometimes overshot the mark of truth, he never shot away from it, like Froude.

His account of that sixteenth century in which the mediaeval civilisation ended, is not more and not less picturesque than Froude's: the difference is in the dull detail of truth.