Freeman was under no obligation to say anything about the Ark Raleigh.

Prudence and ignorance might well have restrained his pen.
Two blots in Froude's History Freeman may, I think, be acknowledged to have hit.

One was intellectual; the other was moral.

It was pure childishness to suggest that Froude had never heard of the peine forte et dure, and only invincible prejudice could have dictated such a sentence as "That Mr.Froude's law would be queer might be taken as a matter of course."* Still, it is true, and a serious misfortune, that Froude took very little interest in legal and constitutional questions.

For, while they had not the same importance in the sixteenth century as they had in the seventeenth, they cannot be disregarded to the extent in which Froude disregarded them without detracting from the value of his book as a whole.