But vengeance was coming, and before many years were over his head Freeman had occasion to remember the Hornfinn tag: Raro antecedentem scelestum Deseruit pede poena claudo.
Froude himself took the matter very lightly.

He had boldly offered the fullest inquiry, and Freeman had not been clever enough to shelter himself behind the plea that copies were not originals; he did not know enough about manuscripts to think of it.

The blunders he had detected were trifling, and Froude summed up the labours of his antagonists fairly enough in a letter to Skelton from his beloved Derreen.* "I acknowledge to five real mistakes in the whole book- twelve volumes--about twenty trifling slips, equivalent to i's not dotted and t's not crossed; and that is all that the utmost malignity has discovered.

Every one of the rascals has made a dozen blunders of his own, too, while detecting one of mine." Skelton's own testimony is worth citing, for, though a personal friend, he was a true scholar.

"We must remember that he was to some extent a pioneer, and that he was the first (for instance) to utilise the treasures of Simancas.