Freeman's plight was not to be envied.

If his offence had been rank, his punishment had been tremendous.

Even The Spectator, which had hitherto upheld him through thick and thin, admonished him that he had passed the bounds of decency and infringed the rules of behaviour.

Dreading a repetition of the penalty if he repeated the offence, fearing that silence would imply acquiescence in charges of persistent calumny, he blurted out a kind of awkward half-apology.

He confessed, in The Contemporary Review for May, 1879, that he had criticised in The Saturday all the volumes of Froude's Elizabeth.
This self-constituted champion proceeded to say that he knew nothing about Froude's personal character, and that when he accused Froude of stabbing his dead brother "in the dark" he only meant that the brother was dead.