I must just do the best I can, and trust that I shall not be haunted by Freeman's ghost." Lord Salisbury did a bold thing when he appointed Froude successor to Freeman.

Froude had indeed a more than European reputation as a man of letters, and was acknowledged to be a master of English prose.
But he was seventy-four, five years older than Freeman, and he had never taught in his life, except as tutor for a very brief time in two private families.

The Historical School at Oxford had been trained to believe that Stubbs was the great historian, that Freeman was his prophet, and that Froude was not an historian at all.

Lord Salisbury of course knew better, for it was at Hatfield that some of Froude's most thorough historical work had been done.

Still, it required some courage to fly in the face of all that was pedantic in Oxford, and to nominate in Freeman's room the writer that Freeman had spent the best years of his life in "belabouring." Some critics attributed the selection to Lord Salisbury's sardonic humour, or pronounced that, as Lamb said of Coleridge's metaphysics, "it was only his fun." Some stigmatised it as a party job.