If it was to be taken as part of the Catholic creed that to kill a prince in the interests of Holy Church was an act of piety and merit, stern English common sense caught the readiest means of expressing its opinion on the character both of the creed and its professors." Stern English common sense! To suggest that the English people had anything to do with it is a libel on the English nation.

Elizabeth had the decency to forbid the repetition of such atrocities.

That she should have tolerated them at all is a stain upon her character, as his sophistical plea for them is a stain upon Froude's.
On the 12th of January, 1870, Freeman delivered in The Saturday Review his final verdict on Froude's History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada.

It is one of the most preposterous judgments that ever found their way into print.

In knowledge of the subject, and in patient assiduity of research, Froude was immeasurably Freeman's superior, and his life had been devoted to historic studies.