On the one hand was the personal influence of Newman, who raised more doubts than he solved.

On the other hand Froude's experience of Evangelical Protestantism in Ireland, where he read for the first time The Pilgrim's Progress, contradicted the assumption of the Tractarians that High Catholicity was an essential note of true religion.

Gradually the young Fellow became aware that High Church and Low Church did not exhaust the intellectual world.
He read Carlyle's French revolution, and Hero Worship, and Past and Present.

He read Emerson too.

For Emerson and Carlyle the Church of England did not exist.