Free Republic

On this date in 1547, the Duke of Norfolk was to have been beheaded. But thanks to the previous day’s death of the corpulent 55-year-old King Henry VIII, the duke’s death warrant was never signed, and the condemned noble died in bed … seven years later. A force in the gore-soaked arena of English politics for two generations, Thomas Howard had steered two nieces into the monarch’s bed. Both girls had gone to the scaffold,* and the disgrace of the second, Catherine Howard, brought a collapse in the whole family’s fortunes. Thomas Howard’s son Henry was not as lucky as...

Spain led the Holy League to defeat the Ottoman Turkish Navy at the Battle of Lepanto near Corinth, Greece, in 1571. Hilaire Belloc wrote in The Great Heresies (1938): "This violent Mohammedan pressure on Christendom from the East made a bid for success by sea as well as by land. ... The last great Turkish organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople, proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean. ... There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme...

Father Jeff Kirby of the Diocese of Charleston, S.C., reads by candlelight in this demonstration of use of a "priest hole," part of an exhibit on the Tudor era at the Venerable English College in Rome. The replica is an example of hiding places built into walls for priests to celebrate Mass and the sacraments in England during the Reformation. (CNS/Paul Haring) By Father Matthew GamberCatholic News Service ROME (CNS) -- When Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Great Britain later this year, he will be greeted by lords and ladies and dignitaries of all kind, including Queen Elizabeth II...