He was a Whig of the most conventional type, regarding Macaulay and Hallam as the ideal historians, suspicious of novelty, and dismayed by paradox.

Froude's critic belonged to a more advanced school of Liberalism, and shuddered at the glorification of a "tyrant" like Henry VIII.

That he had also some reason for personally detesting Froude is plain from his malicious references to the Lives of the Saints, and to The Nemesis of Faith, which Froude himself had, so far as he could, suppressed.
When Froude's name was restored to the books of Exeter College in 1858, he wrote to Dr.Lightfoot, the Rector, that he regretted the publication both of The Nemesis and of Shadows of the Clouds.

His object in future, he added, would be to defend the Church of England.

That his idea of the Church was the same as Lightfoot's is improbable.