The English Reformation: England's First Brexit

The American Conservative ^ | Jan 2020 | Brad Littlejohn

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Searching for analogues to explain this sudden preoccupation with national sovereignty, our intelligentsia have reached about as far back in history as our culture still seems able to remember, to the clash of Great Powers in the First World War and the clash of civilizations in the Second. But to understand the motivations driving the tectonic realignment of our politics today, and the long-awaited Brexit that now seems set to rapidly become reality, we must look a bit further back—to the original Brexit that helped birth what Yoram Hazony has called “the Protestant construction of the West” and the order of sovereign nation-states that anchored it.

In the spring of 1533, the Parliament of England, meeting in an extraordinary fifth consecutive annual session, passed a landmark piece of legislation that profoundly altered the course of the island-kingdom’s history: the Act in Restraint of Appeals. Striking a decisive blow against the Pope’s supremacy over a host of legal and fiscal matters across the European continent, the Act forbade any further judicial appeals beyond England to Rome, and asserted the supremacy of the Crown and Parliament in English law.

But what prompted this bold declaration of independence? The standard history books have a ready answer: so that King Henry VIII could divorce the aging Queen Catherine of Aragon and marry the fetching young Anne Boleyn! This explanation may tickle our fancy for scandal, but it hardly suffices as an explanation of the most significant constitutional reform in English history...How did a divorce case lead a devout Catholic monarch and nation to renounce their allegiance to the supra-national authority of the Papacy and to chart their own national course, establishing the legal framework for church, Crown, and Parliament that would anchor the development of British and American institutions for the next five centuries?

[CondoleezzaProtege]

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

23 hours until the new Brexit.

[cdcdawg]

“the Protestant construction of the West”

It ended up being a mixed blessing. It served the West well for a long time, but it was all utterly subverted in the end. I guess we get to see what comes next.

[Publius]

Ping. Great article.

[11th_VA]

I posted this video earlier today - it discusses the whole 40 years that led to Brexit - they even mention the English Civil War analogy

https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3812274/posts

[wildcard_redneck]

Thanks for the post! That was a great article and I learned something new about Henry VIII and the Protestant Reformation.

[MrChips]

Hardly. The economic comparison fails. In fact, it ruined the English economy for 100 years. Nor is there any comparison to be made among leaders. Henry VIII was a killer, England’s early version of Hitler.