Free Republic

One of the most famous Kings in the world has to be Henry VIII of England. He is most known today for the fact he had 6 wives, and the fact he ordered the execution of 2 of these, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Henry VIII's love life certainly was turbulent, and it caused chaos across the country. After being refused a divorce for his first wife Catherine of Aragon, he split from Rome becoming the Supreme Head of the Church of England. This began the English Reformation, which changed the face of religion forever.We know much about Henry's wives,...

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...

. . . . For centuries, the English have been taught that the late medieval Church was superstitious, corrupt, exploitative, and alien. Above all, we were told that King Henry VIII and the people of England despised its popish flummery and primitive rites. England was fed up to the back teeth with the ignorant mumbo-jumbo magicians of the foreign Church, and up and down the country Tudor people preferred plain-speaking, rational men like Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin. Henry VIII achieved what all sane English and Welsh people had long desired ­– an excuse to break away from an anachronistic subjugation...