Kingsley was still professor of history at Cambridge, the similarity of the views they expressed evoked a well-known epigram generally ascribed to Bishop Stubbs, which attributed Froude's low opinion of divines and Kingsley's low opinion of historians to the fact that Froude thought Kingsley a divine, and Kingsley went to Froude for history (Sir Algernon West, Recollections, 1899, i. 65). But Froude was by no means unversed in those methods of laborious research among original authorities to which Stubbs owed his own reputation. He rarely quoted at second hand; he ransacked the manuscript collections in the Rolls House (now the Record Office), at the British Museum, and at Simancas, and although he did not find all there was to be found, or present what he did find with remarkable accuracy, probably no previous history has incorporated so much unpublished material.
In 1860 J. W. Parker, son of John William Parker [q. v.] and editor of 'Fraser's Magazine,' died. Froude 'nursed him like a brother till the moment of death' (Kingsley, Letters, ii. 105), and succeeded him as editor of 'Fraser's' in December. He continued to edit it, with temporary assistance from Charles Kingsley and Sir Theodore Martin, for fourteen years.
Froude's first wife died near Bideford on 21 April 1860, being buried in Kingsley's parish, Eversley, and on 12 Sept. 1861 he married his second wife, Henrietta Elizabeth, daughter of John Ashley Warre (d. 1860) of West Cliff House, Ramsgate, by his second wife Florence Catherine, daughter of Richard Magenis ; Warre's third wife was Caroline, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell and sister of Froude's first wife. Some verses written by Froude soon after his second marriage appeared anonymously in 'Fraser's Magazine' for May 1862. While at work on the 'History of England' Froude was compelled to pay frequent visits to London. In 1860 he made London his home (Carlyle in London, ii. 254). In 1865 he took a house at 5 Onslow Gardens, Kensington, where he remained until his removal to Cherwell Edge, Oxford, in 1892. In the summer months he rented a house in the country, at first in Scotland and Ireland, and afterwards for many years at The Molt, Salcombe, Devonshire. There he built a small yacht, which he sailed himself; he was also an expert angler and excellent shot.
The growing reputation of Froude's 'History' quickly brought him great social consideration. In 1859 he was elected by the committee a member of the Athenæum Club. In February 1866 he was an original member of the Breakfast Club, of which Sir James Lacaita [q. v. Suppl.] was the founder (Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1851-72, ii. 4) ; he was also a member of The Club. In November 1868 he was elected rector of St. Andrews ; his inaugural address delivered on 19 March 1869, and his final address 'On Calvinism,' delivered on 17 March 1871 (A. K. H. Boyd, Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews, i. 108, 114), were both published in the years of their delivery and reprinted in 'Rectorial Addresses,' ed. William Knight, 1894.
During the summer months of 1869 and 1870 Froude took a house called Derreen at Kenmare, co. Kerry, and there he began his next important book, 'The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. Its motive was to show the folly of such attempts to conciliate Ireland as the disestablishment and land bills of Gladstone's first administration. Froude, like his master Carlyle, had no liking for either political party, but Gladstone and Gladstone's Irish policy were his especial aversion ; he had already in 'Fraser's Magazine' for December 1870 unsparingly denounced John Bright [q. v. Suppl.], who was defended by Samuel Clarkson in 'The Censor Censured' (1871). The first volume of the 'English in Ireland' appeared in 1872, and in the autumn of that year Froude went to the United States to lecture on the same subject. His book was completed in three volumes in 1874, and a new edition was published in 1881. Like most of Froude's books it evoked numerous rejoinders (see T. N. Burke, English Misrule in Ireland and Ireland's Case, both in 1873; W. H. Flood, Notes and Hist. Criticisms, 1874; Mitchel, The Crusade of the Period, 1873} ; but the most scholarly reply is contained in Mr. W. E. H. Lecky's 'History of Ireland during the Eighteenth Century.'
More bitter were the attacks of Edward Augustus Freeman [q. v. Suppl.], occasioned by the mediaeval studies published by Froude, mainly in 'Fraser's Magazine,' and reissued in his 'Short Studies.' The first series of these 'Studies' appeared in 1867, the second in 1871, the third in 1877, and the fourth in 1883 ; they were subsequently included, with others of Froude's works, in Messrs. Longmans' 'Silver Library.' Freeman's attacks, which appeared in the 'Saturday Review,' were characterised by unnecessary vehemence, and were based sometimes on misconceptions of Froude's meaning, and more than once on blunders of Freeman's own.
Froude's second wife died on 12 Feb. 1874, and in the same year he gave up the
