CP This Charles-Camilla wedding announcement has opened up a can of worms with everybody having his own expert opinion. It would be good to educate ourselves on the issues involved.
Understand that throughout history the British Monarchy has changed the 'rules' to circumnavigate their personal circumstances, including matters of marriage, religion and infidelity. To quote from http://www.monarchist.org.au/ACTSETTLE.htm quote The clash between England and Rome reached a crisis during the reign of Henry V111, rather mischievously known only for his thirst for wives. This was at a time of tremendous change in the political and cultural environment of Europe. Spain was rapidly expanding its Empire in the new world and Portugal its trade with the East Indies. Religious leaders were also questioning the purpose of man and the teachings of the church. The actions of men such as Luther were bringing about a Protestant Reformation in Germany and elsewhere. Initially Henry was violently against such change and in fact wrote a very effective essay in Catholic polemics which prompted Pope Leo X to award Henry the title 'Fidei Defensor' or 'Defender of the Faith'. Henry's wife Catherine bore him a daughter but it was later clear that she would bear no more children. Henry needed a son to carry on the dynasty started by his father and he appealed to Rome to annul the marriage, on the basis that Catherine had earlier been married to his deceased brother, something the Pope would have allowed under normal conditions. however by that time Pope Leo had died and the new Pope Clement V11 was under the influence of Charles V, Emperor of Germany and King of Spain and uncle of Catherine and the appeal was consequently rejected. Put simply, this rejection encouraged Henry to heed to the advice of such reformists as Thomas Cromwell and he agreed to take England into a Protestant Reformation. Contrary to popular belief, the decision to break away from Rome was not Henry's alone. It was Parliament which passed laws in 1534 to establish the Church of England and to make the King the Supreme Head of the Church of England and it was Parliament which, in 1544, enacted legislation to make the title given to Henry of 'Defender of the Faith' a hereditary one to be held by all future English monarchs as 'Defenders of the Protestant Faith'. The ensuing unnecessarily brutal despoiling of the Roman Catholic Church and the dispossession of its faithful was to create dissention and disunity for the next one hundred and fifty years and beyond. Henry was succeeded by his weakling son Edward V1 who ascended the throne just before his 10th birthday. Edward was used by his Protestant guardians to violently entrench Reformation in England and it was during his reign that Thomas Cranmer's English prayer book was issued in 1549 and revised in 1552. However Edward died at the age of 16 in 1553 and the Throne passed to Mary, the sole surviving daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine. Queen Mary was a tragic and figure soured by the treatment meted out to her mother and herself. Her sole mental buttress was the Roman Catholic Faith and she immediately sought to right the wrongs, as she saw it, against her faith and to return England to Rome. Her uncle, the German Emperor Charles V, who has earlier blocked the Pope from granting her father the divorce he sought, was still alive and arranged her marriage to his son Philip 11 of Spain viewed as the greatest enemy of England. Mary ignored all warnings of all around her and finding that her marriage was barren blamed the fact on the heresy of the Protestant Reformation and sought absolution by burning at the stake those who would not be turned from the Protestant Faith. She died in 1558, a broken and embittered woman, and her reign would go down in history as one of the bloodiest in England's history followed by one of the greatest. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth 1 had learned tact and discretion from her distressed childhood and her reign began with great mercy as she sought to walk a tightrope between extremities of both previous reigns and to establish unity amongst her subjects. In her wisdom, she allowed Roman Catholics to attend mass privately. However her tolerance was greatly stretched when, in 1570, the Pope issued a bull (Papal Edict) from Rome, deposing her and absolving her subjects from treason against her thereby creating an intolerable situation for those of Roman Catholic faith in England, particularly during the attempted Spanish invasion . However in spite of these and other upheavals, the long reign of Elizabeth, spanning forty five years, was a calming influence and it was this period that saw the entrenchment of England's sovereignty in the Throne and in Parliament as opposed to political and religious interference from Rome. Elizabeth died childless earning her for posterity the title of 'the Virgin Queen'. She named as her heir her kinsman James V1 of Scotland, the great, great grandson of Henry V11 by his daughter Margaret who had married James the fourth of Scotland, in the hope that the Protestant Succession would be secured. James had been brought up as a Calvinist but initially sought to continue the tolerance of the previous reign. However following the Gun Powder Plot of November 5th 1605 he agreed to the issuing of penalties. It was this reign that saw a new translation into English of the Bible which became the present King James or 'Authorised Version'. When Charles 1 succeeded to the Throne in 1625, the influence and the wisdom of the Elizabethan era had faded and religious problems surfaced, extended even to schisms amongst the Protestant denominations. The marriage of Charles to the Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria of France gave rise to a great fear of undue influence over the Throne. However it was the rigid belief of both Charles and his father in the Divine Right of Kingship which essentially declares that the Authority of the King derives from God and as such places him above the law of man - in other words 'The King can do no wrong' - that distanced the Throne from Parliament, whose authority had been greatly enhanced during the reign of Elizabeth. Disputes turned into a irreconcilable differences between the King and the now Puritan Parliament which led to Civil War and Britain's first and only republic which saw the execution of Charles on the 28 January 1649. The Republic collapsed after just 11 years following the death of Cromwell and the collapse of the rule of his son Richard and the Crown was offered to the exiled Charles 11 who had been proclaimed King on the execution of his father. As with Elizabeth's confinement, exile had taught Charles a great proficiency in tact and diplomacy and he was able to skilfully keep the lid on a pot which was still boiling with power struggles between King and Parliament and the religious diversities of the past one hundred years. Charles was very close to Louis X1V of France and as well as being in his pay had also treasonously entered into an understanding for French troops in the event of another Civil War. Just before his death in 1685 he was received into the Roman Catholic Faith. He was succeeded by his brother James 11 who was an excellent soldier but lacked his brother's judgment. Also unlike his brother, James was honest about his faith and declared himself to be a practising Roman Catholic. He was also a dependent of Louis X1V and relied upon his money to maintain a standing army outside the control of Parliament. The fear of the King's relationship with France and of his attempts to undo the Protestant efforts of the past one hundred and fifty years and to take England back under the Authority of Rome faced fierce rejection by Parliament who in their anxiety appealed to his son-in-law, William Prince of Orange, to help them remove the King. Facing massive desertion from his army, James fled and was held to have abdicated following the landing of William in November 1688. James sought refuge with his benefactor, Louis X1V, whose Archbishop welcomed him with the words "There's a good man who has given up three Kingdoms for a mass". Louis later financed an army for James to retake England but this was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. James is supposed to have bitterly complained that his army had run away only to receive the response "Sire, it is your Majesty who seems to have won the race!". After a short interregnum Parliament offered the Throne to both William and Mary to rule jointly. Although William came to the Throne essentially by right of his wife as the elder daughter of James 11 it should not be forgotten that William's mother was the daughter of Charles 1 thereby making him a grandson of James 1 and a potential claimant to the Throne in his own right. William was to exercise Executive Authority in the joint rule not because he was a male, but because he was an able administrator and an expert and proven soldier. However at the same time Parliament required both him and Mary to agree to a Declaration of Rights which was subsequently converted into the more formal Bill of Rights of 1689. It was during this joint reign and following Mary's death in 1694, the sole reign of William, that the major constitutional changes particularly those embodied in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, established once and for all the legal basis for rule by Parliament which was to develop over the following one hundred and fifty years into the Westminster System we know today. end quote CP To read more about the six wives of Henry VIII check out: http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Tudor/HenryVIII.html For a more political analysis of his reign check: http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon41.html And to those few who bad mannered individuals who choose to concentrate on Camilla's looks rather than the bigger issues involved I can only quote from: http://www.talkabouttravelling.com/group/rec.travel.europe/messages/709577.html quote... Tho' I do note that those who decry Camilla's looks are not only petty & childish, but aren't rushing to post pictures of themselves to see if there is any room for them to talk. unquote Cheers! Cecil ====
