He made frequent visits to London, where he was the guest of his publisher, John Parker, at whose table he met Arthur Helps, John and Richard Doyle, Cornewall Lewis, Richard Trench, then Dean of Westminster, and Henry Thomas Buckle, once famous as a scientific historian.

He called on the Carlyles at their house in Chelsea, and began an intimacy only broken by death.

Carlyle himself was an excellent adviser in Froude's peculiar field.

He had the same Puritan leanings, the same sympathy with the Reformation, the same hostility to ecclesiastical interference with secular affairs, unless, as in the case of John Knox, the interference was directed against Rome.

Froude considered him not unlike Knox in humour, keenness of intellect, integrity, and daring.