These opinions were not new.

They were held by most people when Froude was a boy.

It was from Oxford that an attack upon them came, and from Oxford came also, in the person of Froude, their champion.
Froude's historical work took at first the form of essays, chiefly in The Westminster Review and Fraser's Magazine.

The Rolls Series of State Papers had not then begun, and the reign of Henry was imperfectly understood.

Froude was especially attracted by the age of Elizabeth, who admired her father as a monarch, whatever she may have thought of him as a man.