As Macaulay drily remarks, he was a good Catholic who preferred to be his own Pope.

He knew very well that Englishmen would like him none the worse for resisting the pretensions of Rome, for insisting on the royal supremacy, for taking every possible step to secure the succession in the male Tudor line.

If in his callous indifference to the fate of the men or women who stood in his way he appears scarcely human, we must consider, with Bishop Stubbs, his awful isolation.

The whole burden of the State was upon him, and he could not share it.

Not till the reign of his elder daughter did his subjects realise the horrors from which he had delivered them.
Hostile criticism, though it affected the opinion of scholars, did Froude no harm with the public.