The Church of the middle ages discharged invaluable functions which in later times were more properly undertaken by the State.

Froude sided with Henry, and showed, as he had not much difficulty in showing, that there were a good many spots on the robe of Becket's saintliness.

The immunity of Churchmen, that is, of clergymen, from the jurisdiction of secular tribunals was not conducive either to morality or to order.
Froude's essays might have been forgotten, like other brilliant articles in other magazines, if Freeman had let them alone.

But the spectacle of Froude presuming to write upon those earlier periods of which The Saturday Review had so often and so dogmatically pronounced him to be ignorant, drove Freeman into print.

If he had disagreed with Froude on the main question, the only question which matters now, he would have been justified, and more than justified, in setting out the opposite view.