** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 787 27/9/18 HENRY VIII’S BACK: TO FIGHT EUROPE

HISTORIAN DAVID STARKEY RESURRECTS KING HENRY VIII AS HIS BREXIT HERO. NOT BLOODY LIKELY!
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Down there, in some hell set apart for tyrants, murderers and lustful swine, on a rare break from being perennially tortured by demons, King Henry VIII manages a twisted grin: ‘What! Thanks to a famous gay historian am I summoned to fight my battle again? Fancy that! Maybe I can also get a pretty wench or two to marry me…’ Whereupon an angry demon grabs him with sharp pincers and tosses him into a lake of boiling fire.

Do you wish to stir up British patriotism, smouldering jingoism, bash Johnny Foreigner, that kind of jolly thing? Normally you’d invoke Winston Churchill, ‘the greatest Englishman’. A tediously familiar trick. Tory historian David Starkey has another, unlikely candidate - Henry VIII. The Brexit vote, it seems, was a victory for Henry’s lurid ghost. The syphilitic tyrant, wife-murderer, destroyer of holy places and slayer of saintly men: voila’ Starkey’s ideal leader for getting a Brexit super-deal from the cussed EU. It says a lot about the sourpuss historian’s hero-worship: ‘chacun a son gout’!

It’s a grim tale. Much to do with Henry’s voracious erotic drives and boundless greed. Divorcing his loyal and Catholic wife of many years, Catherine of Aragon, so he could wed young and Protestant Ann Boleyn. As Pope Clement VII wouldn’t oblige, Henry proclaimed himself head of the Church, made venal Cranmer as his Archbishop of Canterbury and got him to do his bidding. Oh, yes, the shabby trick also allowed Henry to break away from Rome, seize the monasteries’ huge lands and immensely enrich himself and his henchmen. It’s called the English Reformation. An event that shaped English destiny and national character for centuries to come.

A great political leader, Starkey calls Henry. Dubious ‘greatness’ apart, Henry was a big bully, powerful and cunning. The kind of boss Britain needs to teach uppity Europeans a lesson, the historian suggests. As opposed to Theresa May, whom he regards as ‘a terrible Prime Minister’. Despite myself having often been rude about poor Theresa (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), I must aver she is a decent human being. Unlike horrible Henry who had St Thomas More and St John Fisher cruelly jailed to break their fibre and later beheaded, May’s hands are not stained with innocent blood. There’s a hell of a moral difference between a despotic, bloodthirsty monster and a decorous, democratic PM like May. Sorry, Mr Starkey, Britain needs Henry back as she needs a hole the head!

Starkey, a declared atheist, can’t appreciate the theological side of the Reformation as rooted in European history. Yet, far from sharply separating Englishmen from Europeans, the Reformation also built a bridge with the continent. Reformers like Luther and Calvin were Europeans. Their Scottish and English disciples saw themselves as Protestants in alliance with their brethren across the Channel. Indeed, Henry’s royal successors always directed the moral element of English foreign policy towards the protection of Protestants in Europe. Partly Machiavellian, sure – ‘divide and rule’ your rivals – but also a deep religious conviction. Ever since ‘scratch an Englishman, you find a Protestant’, as G.B. Shaw quipped.

A dialogue between St Thomas More and the King in the timeless movie ‘A Man for All Seasons’ exemplifies the importance Holy Scripture played in the English Reformation. Henry, who had married his brother’s widow, believed she was not his lawful wife. His lack of male heir he held to be a curse. Based on chapter 20, verse 21, of Leviticus, in the OT: ‘If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity…they will be childless’. Thomas More, his learned Chancellor, counters with a quote from another OT Book, Deuteronomy 25:5, apparently contradicting Leviticus: ‘If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son…her husband’s brother shall take her and fulfil the marital duties to her.’ Henry’s response in the film is: ‘But Deuteronomy is ambiguous…’ Because the ruler had persuaded himself, as it suited him, that Deuteronomy’s prescriptions were not laws of God but laws of the Church. Therefore he wanted the Pontiff, as Vicar of Christ on earth, to override Deutero
nomy in his favour. But Pope Clement had other ideas.

Archaic notions? For atheists, sceptics, secularists and similar rabble, sure, but not so for thoughtful Christian minds. Arguments from Scripture play a key role in the law of Islam, for example. And faithful sections of Christianity exist which do not consider the Bible and its teachings as passé. Such as the Anglican Gafcon movement, for instance. Which is significant because it shows how religion, as its etymology implies (from Latin ‘re-ligare’), can closely bind different peoples together, against the disintegrating tendencies of an atomised post-modernity. When England proudly waved the flag of her Reformed identity, it connected her with fellow Protestant nations in Europe. Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch and the like. Theresa May, a Vicar’s daughter, might once have played on that to reach out to EU Prots. It is a symptom of Britain’s decay that no longer obtains. (Except in tiny Northern Ireland but that is very special case.) Ditto for continental Prots. Looks like being a
terminal disease.

Starkey puffs up bad old Henry VIII as a tough one who could have stood up for Britain to the EU. Actually, Henry never won or fought a single war. Apart from butchering innocent Scots civilians in Leith, as part of the notorious ‘rough wooing’. An infamous action worthy of an infamous man. Down below where he is now, next to his fellow despots, I trust the King is paying the penalty he richly deserves.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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