"Butterfield was a great enough man, and a good enough historian, to deserve an appraisal that is weighed seriously and not coloured by adulation. And to me the verdict must be that as a practising professional historian, of the kind that he himself valued above the other roles he found himself playing, he failed to produce absolutely great work because professionally he never progressed to a full understanding of the nature, range and problems of historical evidence, and because his faith remained at war with his deeply held convictions concerning the practice of history. Such a verdict, however, must raise to an even greater height his real contributions to the study of history. These consisted, on the one hand, in his fight against cant, his proclamation of honest labour, and his repeated opening up of new territories and themes to be explored. On the other hand—and here lay his outstanding service—they consisted in his daily labour to bring the reality of history and the historical understanding to others."