An EU summit was hosted by the British prime minister at Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII's home in the 16th century. While Henry severed Britain's tie to Europe, recent British governments have increasingly committed themselves to European unity.
by Melvin Rhodes
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was in good humor as he welcomed EU leaders to the European summit held in Henry VIII's Hampton Court Palace just outside London.
"As King Henry VIII said to his wives, 'I won't keep you long!'" was Mr. Blair's welcoming joke, reminding his European colleagues of the palace's long history, going back to the 16th century.
Ironically, it was that famous king of England who first decided to sever England's main tie with the continent and began to build the framework for four centuries of British foreign policy.
Another irony was in the timing of the EU summit, sandwiched between the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar on Oct. 21 and the 400th anniversary of the famous Gunpowder Plot on Nov. 5. Both were attempts to force England back into mainstream Catholic Europe.
Henry VIII is one of those people who did the right thing for the wrong reason. He broke with Rome, which opened the way for England to have its own Bible in English and, in time, freedom of religion. But his motive was to rid himself of his first wife (since she had not provided him with a male heir) and then take another and another ... until eventually his sixth wife outlived him.
But Henry had unleashed an ecclesiastical and spiritual revolution that was to continue for centuries, the same centuries that saw Britain's preeminence in the world.
"During his [Henry's] last years a radical but powerful minority of his subjects, inspired by their reading of the printed scriptures...denounced as idolatrous superstitions many of the leading tenets of the medieval Church—transubstantiation, the confessional, the efficacy of indulgences and papal remission of sin, of pilgrimages, relics and the intercession of the saints" (Sir Arthur Bryant, Protestant Island, 1967, p. 10).
Henry usurped the pope's authority, with himself now the supreme head of the Church of England, but others were to lead what became a religious revolution.
