We do not feel satisfied till we have turned to our Camden and seen 'Ark Regis' staring us full in the face." Freeman did not know the meaning of historical research as conducted by a real scholar like Froude.
Froude had not gone to Camden, who in Freeman's eyes represented the utmost stretch of Elizabethan learning.

If Freeman had had more natural shrewdness, it might have occurred to him that the name of a great seaman was not an unlikely name for a ship.

But he could never fall lightly, and heavily indeed did he fall on this occasion.

With almost incredible fatuity, he wrote, "The puzzle of guessing how Mr.Froude got at so grotesque a union of words as 'Ark Raleigh' fades before the greater puzzle of guessing what idea he attached to the words 'Ark Raleigh' when he had got them together." When Freeman was most hopelessly wrong he always began to parody Macaulay.
Corruptio optimi pessima.

"Ark Raleigh" means Raleigh's ship, and Froude took the name, "Ark Rawlie" as it was then spelt, from the manuscripts at the Rolls House.