His sympathies are with John Knox, and the Regent Murray, and Maitland of Lethington.

But the man who believes that Mary was not concerned in the murder of her husband will believe anything, even that she did not reward the murderer of her brother, or that she would have spared Elizabeth if Elizabeth had been in her power.

And at least Froude does not, like some more modern writers, degrade her to the level of a kitchen wench.

Froude's Elizabeth was the subject of bitter, hostile, sometimes violent, criticism in The Saturday Review, the property of an ardent High Churchman, Beresford Hope.

In the next chapter I shall deal with these articles at more length.