Yet there are people who talk as if the Reformation meant nothing, was nothing, never occurred at all.

This theory, like the shallow sentimentalism which made an innocent saint and martyr of Mary Stuart, has never recovered from the crushing onslaught of Froude.
Mr.Swinburne in the Encyclopaedia Britannica reduces the latter theory to an absurdity, by demonstrating that if Mary was innocent she was a fool.

In his defence of Elizabeth Froude stops short of many admirers.

He was disgusted by her feminine weakness for masculine flattery; he dwells with almost tedious minuteness upon her smallest intrigues; he exposes her parsimonious ingratitude to her dauntless and unrivalled seamen.

Yet for all that he brings out the vital difference between her and Mary Tudor, between the Protestant and Catholic systems of government.