Frances Mulraney wrote on IrishCentral that "Faith, Hope &amp; Charity" episode "overplays the extent to which Queen Victoria sought to aid the famine Irish in the 1840s, exaggerating her interest in Ireland." English-born historian Christine Kinealy, founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University, who has studied Queen Victoria's diaries and the writings of Prime Ministers Peel and Russell, said that "There is no evidence that she had any real compassion for the Irish people in any way." Irish clergyman Robert Traill, who wrote a letter that makes it to the newspapers, had never met Victoria. The creator of the show, Daisy Goodwin, said: "I thought [Robert Traill's] story would be a good way to illustrate the terrible way in which the Irish were treated by the British government."