Richard Hurrell Froude - Life

Life

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, Eton College and Oriel College, Oxford, where he became a Fellow in 1826.

At Oxford he became a close friend of John Keble and John Henry Newman, with whom he collaborated on the Lyra Apostolica, a collection of religious poems. He spent the winter of 1832–33 travelling in the Mediterranean with his father and Newman for the sake of his health (he suffered from tuberculosis), contributing on his return to the formation of the Oxford Movement, a group of Christian theologians, inclusing Keble and Newman, who argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy and theology. He was associated with the Tractarians, named after a series of publications Tracts for the Times which they published between 1833 and 1841 in the early stages of the movement.

Much of the rest of his life was spent outside England, acting as mathematical tutor at Codrington College in the Barbados, to alleviate his medical condition. He returned to England in 1835 and died from the tuberculosis the following year.

After his death, Newman and other friends edited the Remains, a collection of Froude's letters and journals.