He held the Reformation to be the greatest and most beneficent change in modern history.

He believed the English race to be the finest in the world.
He disbelieved in equality, and in Parliamentary government.
Essentially an aristocrat in the proper sense of the term, he cherished the doctrine of submission to a few fit persons, qualified for authority by training and experience.

These ideas run through all Froude's historical writing, which takes from them its trend and colour.

Whatever else the male Tudors may have been, they were emphatically men; and even Elizabeth, whom Froude did not love, had a commanding spirit.

Except poor priest-ridden Mary, who had a Spanish mother and a Spanish husband, they did not brook control, and no one was ever more conscious of being a king than Henry VIII.
To him, as to Elizabeth, the Reformation was not dogmatic but practical, the subjection of the Church to the State.