Froude was convinced that ecclesiastics could not be trusted, and that they would oppress the laity unless the laity muzzled them.

He held that the reformers had been calumniated, that their services were in danger of being forgotten, and that the modern attempt to ignore the Reformation was not only unhistorical, but disingenuous.

He wrote partly to rehabilitate them, and partly to prove that Henry VIII.
had conferred great benefits upon England by his repudiation of Papal authority.

He took, as he considered it his duty to take, the side of individual liberty against ecclesiastical authority, and of England against Rome.

The idea that an historian was to have no opinions of his own, or that, having them, he was to conceal them, never entered his mind.
That Froude had any prejudice against the Church of England as such is a baseless fancy.