In religious matters Froude could not be neutral.

Where Catholic and Protestant came into conflict, he took instinctively, almost involuntarily, the Protestant side.

In the England of the sixteenth century the Protestant side was the side of England.

In Ireland the case was reversed, and the spirit of Catholicism was identical with the spirit of nationality.

Irish Catholics to this day associate Protestantism with the sack of Drogheda and Wexford, with the detested memory of Oliver Cromwell.