He was born in
Dartington, Devon, the eldest son of
Robert Froude (
Archdeacon of Totnes) and the elder brother of historian
James Anthony Froude and engineer and naval architect
William Froude. He was educated at
Ottery St Mary school, and went to
Eton College at the age of thirteen. His mother, the first great influence in his life, died when he was eighteen; he matriculated at
Oriel College, Oxford, a few weeks later. At Oxford, his tutor was
John Keble, whose holy life and teaching had a profound effect upon him. In 1823, Keble's mother died and he left Oxford to assist his father and two surviving sisters. Froude,
Isaac Williams, and
Robert Wilberforce went to stay with him at
Southrop to read during the Long Vacation. Williams, who did not know Froude well at that time, said of him, "There was an originality of thought and a reality about him which were very refreshing." Froude took his degree in 1824 with a double second class in Classics and Mathematics, and became a Fellow at Oriel in 1826. The following year he became a Tutor with Wilberforce and Newman as colleagues. Froude was at first shy of Newman, because of Newman's Liberalism. He wrote Wilberforce, "Newman is a fellow that I like more the more I think of him; only I would give a few odd pence if he were not a heretic." He returned to England in 1835. Froude died from the tuberculosis the following year at the age of thirty-two at the Parsonage House in Dartington, where he was born. After his death, Newman and other friends edited the
Remains, a collection of Froude's letters and journals, "an uninhibited assault on Protestantism" that pushed the Oxford Movement closer to Anglo-Catholicism. These were later interpreted by Sir
Geoffrey Faber in his work
Oxford Apostles, published in 1933 for the centenary of the Oxford Movement. ==References==