James Anthony Froude

James Anthony Froude (pronounced FROOD; 23 April 1818 – 20 October 1894) was an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of *Fraser's Magazine*. Raised within the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, he initially planned to become a clergyman. However, his 1849 novel *The Nemesis of Faith*, which aired his growing doubts about Anglican doctrine, caused a scandal and forced him to abandon that path. He then turned to history, gaining fame for his multi-volume *History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada*.

Strongly influenced by Thomas Carlyle, Froude wrote history in a fiercely argumentative style that attracted many vocal critics. He remained a controversial figure for the rest of his life, especially after publishing a biography of Carlyle along with the personal writings of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. These publications sparked lasting gossip and debate about the couple’s marital troubles.

Froude was born in Dartington, Devon, the youngest of eight children. His father, Robert Hurrell Froude, was the archdeacon of Totnes; his mother, Margaret Spedding, died when he was three. By that time, five of his siblings had also died of consumption. Biographer Herbert Paul described Froude’s subsequent upbringing with his cold, strict father and older brother Richard as a “loveless, cheerless boyhood.” He attended Westminster School from age eleven to fifteen, where he was “persistently bullied and tormented.” Despite his unhappiness and poor formal performance, he developed a deep love for the classics and read widely in history and theology.

In 1836, he entered Oriel College, Oxford, then the center of the Oxford Movement. There he began to thrive, motivated by a brief engagement in 1839 (ended by the woman’s father). He earned a second-class degree in 1840, then worked as a private tutor in Delgany, Ireland. Returning to Oxford in 1842, he won the Chancellor’s English essay prize for a piece on political economy and was elected a fellow of Exeter College.

Froude’s brother Richard Hurrell was a leader of the Oxford Movement, which pushed for a Catholic rather than Protestant interpretation of the Anglican Church. Growing up, Froude absorbed the conversations and ideas of Richard and his friends John Henry Newman and John Keble, though his own reading gave him some critical distance. During his time at Oxford and in Ireland, he grew increasingly uneasy with the Movement. Living with an Evangelical clergyman in Ireland contradicted the Movement’s view of Protestantism, and the poverty he saw among Catholics repelled him. He turned instead to the unorthodox religious ideas of Spinoza, David Friedrich Strauss, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe, and especially Thomas Carlyle.

Still, Froude kept a favorable opinion of Newman, defending him in the controversy over Tract 90 and later in his 1881 essay “The Oxford Counter-Reformation.” He agreed to write for Newman’s *Lives of the English Saints*, choosing Saint Neot as his subject. But he found he could not believe the accounts of Neot or any other saint, regarding them as myths rather than history—a discovery that further eroded his faith.

He was ordained a deacon in 1845, hoping to reform the church from within. Soon, however, he found that position impossible. Though he never lost his belief in God or Christianity, he could no longer accept the church’s doctrines. He began airing his doubts publicly in two semi-autobiographical works: *Shadows of the Clouds* (1847, under the pseudonym “Zeta”) and *The Nemesis of Faith* (1849, under his own name). The latter caused an uproar. It was publicly burned at Exeter College by William Sewell, and the *Morning Herald* called it “a manual of infidelity.” Froude was forced to resign his fellowship, and officials at University College London withdrew an offer for a teaching post in Hobart Town, Australia, where he had hoped to go while reconsidering his situation. He took refuge from the outcry with his friend Charles Kingsley at Ilfracombe.

His plight won sympathy from kindred spirits like George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and later Mrs. Humphry Ward, whose popular 1888 novel *Robert Elsmere* was largely inspired by this period of Froude’s life.

At Ilfracombe, Froude met and married Charlotte Grenfell, Kingsley’s sister-in-law. They moved first to Manchester, then to North Wales in 1850, where he lived happily, supported by friends Arthur Hugh Clough and Matthew Arnold. Barred from a political career by legal restrictions on deacons (a position from which he could not resign), he chose a literary path. He began writing reviews and historical essays for *Fraser’s Magazine* and the *Westminster Review*, with only occasional religious pieces. He soon returned to England, living in London and Devonshire, to research his *History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada*, a project that would occupy him for twenty years. He worked extensively with original manuscript sources at the Record Office and Hatfield House.