A Clerk of Oxford Honored

From History Today:

This year’s Longman-History Today award for Digital History went to Eleanor Parker for her blog, A Clerk of Oxford.

Parker writes regular blog posts on an astoundingly wide range of subjects relating to Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian history and literature. Her academic work as a researcher at The University of Oxford focuses on the interaction between Anglo-Saxon and Viking culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries following the Norse settlement in England.

The blog posts and her Twitter account, however, are much more wide-ranging. As History Today's editor, Paul Lay remarked in his speech at the award ceremony: not a morning goes by where she has not shared some fascinating and insightful new piece of medieval miscellany.
Her skill lies in making medieval topics – texts that are considered esoteric even by medieval specialists’ standards – engaging, accessible and fascinating to an audience of non-specialist readers. It is an added bonus that they have the same effect on specialist readers, too. Her inclusion of medieval texts in their original language as well as in translation means many of the misconceptions surrounding them are completely bypassed and her readers can engage directly with the material, guided by her expert commentary. The sources she draws on are wide-ranging, and always presented and discussed with humour, insight and passion.

This blog is a treasure trove of grounded in exemplary scholarship and is a much appreciated contribution to the field of history online.

I have her blog linked and reference it often. Quite an honor!

Suppressing Septuagesima--Surprised by Lent?

As I have been preparing for my Cardinal Newman Day talk next Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) and reading Blessed John Henry Newman's sermons for Lent and Septuagesima, we've been attending Sunday Mass at St. Anthony of Padua with a mixture of liturgical seasons in evidence. In the Extraordinary Form we've celebrated Septuagesima and Sexagesima so far, the first two Sundays of the transition season from Epiphany to Lent. The priest wears purple vestments--we do not sing the Gloria or the Alleluia or any hymns--but the church is still filled with Christmas poinsettias and the Infant of Prague statue in the side chapel is wearing green since in the Ordinary Form it's Ordinary Time. The purple vestments and humeral veil do look beautiful against the background of red poinsettias!

As Amy Welborn notes on her blog, the suppression of the Septuagesima season after the Second Vatican Council was unfortunate for many reasons, including ecumenical ones--after all, the Church of England observes it, some high church Lutherans observe it, and Eastern Rite Catholics observe a pre-Lenten season too. Within the Roman Rite, the Anglican Use of the Ordinariate (thus the poster from St. Luke's Ordinariate in Washington, DC) and the Extraordinary Form still observe Septuagesima.

Welborn links an article explaining the development and purpose of Septuagesima and why it was suppressed--Welborn summarizes the latter: "As usual, it was determined that all this was too hard for us."

The intuition of faith that gave rise to the season of Septuagesima, then, is a recognition of the goodness, or even the necessity, of preparing oneself mentally, physically, and spiritually for the ascesis of Lent. The same recognition expresses itself in the Eastern practice of observing the Sundays of Meatfare and Cheesefare on the second and first Sundays, respectively, that precede the last Sunday before Lent. From Meatfare Sunday the faithful lay aside all flesh foods until the Pasch. From Cheesefare Sunday the faithful abstain from animal products such as eggs, milk, yogurt, butter, and cheese.

Meatfare and Cheesefare Sunday are practiced and well understood in Eastern Rite Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities, but the committee reviewing Septuagesima thought it was too hard for Western Roman Rite Catholics:

"The penitential character of the time of Septuagesima or pre-Lent (the suppression of the Gloria and Alleluia, the color violet) is difficult for the faithful to understand without many explanations. At present the exterior signs of a penitential season are used as in Lent, but are not retained for the sake of particular penance as in Lent. According to the mind of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the arrangement of the liturgical year may become clearer through the suppression of the penitential character of this season. As it pertains to the names Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima: because these names are also used by some of our separated brethren, it is necessary to proceed cautiously in this matter and to promote conversations on this matter as on others."

If you go to Welborn's blog post she gives examples of easily understood catechesis for 7th graders on Septuagesima's preparation for Lent. 

I'll be citing Parochial and Plain Sermons by Newman from all three Sundays next Wednesday and really look forward to saying their names: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and QUINQUAGESIMA!

My Review of Alison Weir's "Elizabeth of York"

I read this book on my Kindle, inspired by Elena Maria Vidal's review on her Tea at Trianon blog.

Elizabeth of York was like a hinge between the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Henry VII married her to strengthen his claim to the throne of England by conquest and yet he delayed both their wedding and her coronation in the attempt to assert it was his claim on the throne that mattered, not hers. (But it was really hers that mattered.)

Haunting both Elizabeth's "reign" as Queen and Henry's rule as King were her little brothers, Edward V and Richard, the Duke of York. Richard III had bastardized all of Edward IV's children, including Elizabeth, in Parliament--claiming that Edward had a pre-existing marital contract--and had held Edward and Richard in the Tower of London. They were reportedly killed there by orders of Richard III, yet their remains had never been found. Henry VII tried to find them; Elizabeth, as Weir notes, must have always wondered what happened to her brothers, who came before, as males, in the line of succession.

Weir introduces various other mysteries along the way through this biography: would Elizabeth really have wanted to marry Richard III? did Henry VII dislike Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth Woodville? did Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort, Henry's mother, get along or not? why did Queen Elizabeth of York go to Wales while pregnant and ill?, etc. She presents various pieces of evidence, analyzes their sources, presents her opinion, but ultimately leaves it to the reader to decide unless she is certain of the answer. At first--and she followed that process in another of her books I've read, The Lady in the Tower, about the fall of Anne Boleyn--this process frustrated me because it seemed to interrupt the flow of the narrative. But I have grown to accept and appreciate her letting me in on the process of thinking about the past, disputed information, and sources.

I recommend Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen to those who want to know more about the world of the Tudors as well as those who want to know more about Elizabeth. Alison Weir describes the structures and finances of the Tudor Court with vivid detail. Well illustrated. No index in the Kindle edition; I don't like not having an index!

As Promised, the Crusades on the Son Rise Morning Show!

Matt Swaim and I will discuss the Crusades on the Son Rise Morning Show after the 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central newsbreak--listen live here.

We were going to include the Crusades as part of our monthly Historical Apologetics Series in February, but President Obama's comments at the National Prayer Breakfast last week moved it up in the schedule:

"Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."

Pundits, historians, and others have been discussing those comments since last Thursday. The Crusades have been cited before, by former President William Clinton after the 9-11 attacks as the cause of radical Islamic hatred of the West, and they are often brought up as though the Christian West attacked the Islamic East. The opposite is the truth. The Crusades are not just one event, but most of the Crusades were efforts of the Christian West to free the Holy Land from Muslim domination, to defend Catholic Christians in the Holy Land and to make it safe for pilgrims to visit during Holy Week for example.

Of course, the President is correct that Christians, being sinners, have committed terrible deeds; whether or not they were in the name of Christ may be debatable. The Fourth Crusade, with its despoiling of Constantinople, never even reached the Holy Land--Pope St. John Paul II apologized to the Greek Orthodox and the Patriarch of Constantinople accepted the apology, wanting to heal the wounds caused by the Fourth Crusade.

One of the most commonly cited articles this weekend on social media at least was Thomas Madden's 2009 review  in First Things of Jonathan Riley-Smith's The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam published by Columbia University Press. In "Inventing the Crusades" Madden reflected on serious historians' work to correct errors about the Crusades:

It is generally thought that Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them. The Crusaders were Europe’s lacklands and ne’er-do-wells, who marched against the infidels out of blind zealotry and a desire for booty and land. As such, the Crusades betrayed Christianity itself. They transformed “turn the other cheek” into “kill them all; God will know his own.”

Every word of this is wrong. Historians of the Crusades have long known that it is wrong, but they find it extraordinarily difficult to be heard across a chasm of entrenched preconceptions. For on the other side is, as Riley-Smith puts it “nearly everyone else, from leading churchmen and scholars in other fields to the general public.” There is the great Sir Steven Runciman, whose three-volume History of the Crusades is still a brisk seller for Cambridge University Press a half century after its release. It was Runciman who called the Crusades “a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.” The pity of it is that Runciman and the other popular writers simply write better stories than the professional historians.

So we continue to write our scholarly books and articles, learning more and more about the Crusades but scarcely able to be heard. And when we are heard, we are dismissed as daft. I once asked Riley-Smith if he believed popular perceptions of the Crusades would ever be changed by modern scholarship. “I’ve just about given up hope,” he answered. In his new book he notes that in the last thirty years historians have begun to reject “the long-held belief that it [the Crusade movement] was defined solely by its theaters of operation in the Levant and its hostility toward Islam—with the consequence that in their eyes the Muslims move slightly off center stage—and many of them have begun to face up to the ideas and motivation of the Crusaders. The more they do so the more they find themselves contra mundum or, at least, contra mundum Christianum.”

At least we can keep trying! UPDATE: Anna Mitchell tells me this interview will be re-aired sometime in the 6:00 a.m. Eastern/5:00 a.m. Central hour of the SRMS tomorrow. Matt mentioned that I'll be on next Tuesday to talk about Shrove Tuesday and traditions in England before the Reformation. Get your pancakes ready--next Tuesday, February 17 at 7:35 a.m. Eastern; 6:35 a.m. Central after the bottom of the hour newscast.

Next month: The Inquisition. Spanish or Albigensian?

Sexagesima Sunday from Blessed John Henry Newman

Blessed John Henry Newman, by the effort of prayer and meditation, came to see that many of the troubles of his life were examples of God's providence and that his submission to them was an example of God's grace in his life. In this Parochial and Plain Sermon ("Affliction, a School of Comfort") for Sexagesima Sunday, Newman warns that suffering and self-denial are no guarantee of holiness; we can suffer and be miserable and want others to be miserable or we can suffer and love God so that we'll want others to know comfort and support in their own sufferings. Newman was a graduate of this school of comfort and he--according to the many letters Peter C. Wilcox describes and quotes in the great study of Newman as a spiritual director I read just a couple of months ago--passed along the lessons he had learned when people wrote to him about their troubles and afflictions:

Such is one chief benefit of painful trial, of whatever kind, which it may not be unsuitable to enlarge on. Man is born to trouble, "as the sparks fly upward." More or less, we all have our severe trials of pain and sorrow. If we go on for some years in the world's sunshine, it is only that troubles, when they come, should fall heavier. Such at least is the general rule. Sooner or later we fare as other men; happier than they only if we learn to bear our portion more religiously; and more favoured if we fall in with those who themselves have suffered, and can aid us with their sympathy and their experience. And then, while we profit from what they can give us, we may learn from them freely to give what we have freely received, comforting in turn others with the comfort which our brethren have given us from God.

Now, in speaking of the benefits of trial and suffering, we should of course never forget that these things by themselves have no power to make us holier or more heavenly. They make many men morose, selfish, and envious. The only sympathy they create in many minds, is the wish that others should suffer with them, not they with others. Affliction, when love is away, leads a man to wish others to be as he is; it leads to repining, malevolence, hatred, rejoicing in evil. "Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?" said the princes of the nations to the fallen king of Babylon. The devils are not incited by their own torments to any endeavour but that of making others devils also. Such is the effect of pain and sorrow, when unsanctified by God's saving grace. And this is instanced very widely and in a variety of cases. All afflictions of the flesh, such as the Gospel enjoins, and St. Paul practised, watchings and fastings, and subjecting of the body, have no tendency whatever in themselves to make men better; they often have made men worse; they often (to appearance) have left them just as they were before. They are no sure test of holiness and true faith, taken by themselves. A man may be most austere in his life, and, by that very austerity, learn to be cruel to others, not tender. And, on the other hand (what seems strange), he may be austere in his personal habits, and yet be a waverer and a coward in his conduct. Such things have been,—I do not say they are likely in this state of society,—but I mean, it should ever be borne in mind, that the severest and most mortified life is as little a passport to heaven, or a criterion of saintliness, as benevolence is, or usefulness, or amiableness. Self-discipline is a necessary condition, but not a sure sign of holiness. It may leave a man worldly, or it may make him a tyrant. It is only in the hands of God that it is God's instrument. It only ministers to God's purposes when God uses it. It is only when grace is in the heart, when power from above dwells in a man, that anything outward or inward turns to his salvation. Whether persecution, or famine, or the sword, they as little bring the soul to Christ, as they separate it from Him. He alone can work, and He can work through all things. He can make the stones bread. He can feed us with "every word which proceedeth from His mouth." He could, did He so will, make us calm, resigned, tender-hearted, and sympathising, without trial; but it is His will ordinarily to do so by means of trial. Even He Himself, when He came on earth, condescended to gain knowledge by experience; and what He did Himself, that He makes His brethren do. . . .

Taught by our own pain, our own sorrow, nay, by our own sin, we shall have hearts and minds exercised for every service of love towards those who need it. We shall in our measure be comforters after the image of the Almighty Paraclete, and that in all senses of the word,—advocates, assistants, soothing aids. Our words and advice, our very manner, voice, and look, will be gentle and tranquillizing, as of those who have borne their cross after Christ. We shall not pass by His little ones rudely, as the world does. The voice of the widow and the orphan, the poor and destitute, will at once reach our ears, however low they speak. Our hearts will open towards them; our word and deed befriend them. The ruder passions of man's nature, pride and anger, envy and strife, which so disorder the Church, these will be quelled and brought under in others by the earnestness and kindness of our admonitions.

Read the entire sermon here.

Another Brave Blogger on Mary I

Via Tea at Trianon. Conor Byrne sums up Mary I's reign and religion:

It is important to recognise that the negative depiction of Mary I's religious policies ultimately lies in the success of Protestant propaganda and its impact on the creation of national history. As Weikel explains, this propaganda has obscured the many positive aspects of the queen's religious regime. It is virtually impossible to know with any certainty how popular her restoration of Catholicism was, for we lack the attitudes of ordinary people across the country. Historians have uncovered evidence of a desire to return to the old religion, and celebrations across England at news of Mary's accession speaks volumes about her initial popularity among her subjects. In the end, circumstances beyond the queen's control defeated her efforts at Catholic restoration: 'Mary's regime was fatally undermined, not so much by failings in policy, but by disasters beyond human control' (Brigden). Pole was recalled by a vengeful pope, which demoralised both him and the queen, while a 'devastating mortality crisis' in 1558-9 was significant in that the queen was one of its victims. Mary died in November 1558, aged only 42, with no Catholic heir and having been queen for only five years: the shortest reigning of the five Tudor monarchs. Had she given birth to a Catholic heir, had she reigned for longer, it is quite conceivable that England's return to Roman Catholicism might have been, in the long-term, successful. The Marian regime was not 'backward' or 'stagnant' in its religious reforms and policies. It was energetic, vivacious, resourceful and purposeful in seeking to restore the old religion. As eighteenth-century historian John Lingard explained, Mary's policies failed, not because they were unpopular or 'wrong', but because her reign was too short to fully establish them, while natural disasters beyond her control ultimately undid her efforts. Elizabethan propaganda skilfully 'stamped Catholicism as an alien presence in England, and has consequently prevented 'a just assessment of the aims and achievements of the Marian Church'' (Weikel and Duffy). We, however, do not have to uncritically read such propaganda in our own times. We can afford England's first queen regnant respect and admiration for her concerted attempts to restore Roman Catholicism to a country which, in many respects, cried out for its return upon her accession.

In the Christmas 2014 issue of the BBC History Magazine "Anna Whitelock argues that, despite her bloody reputation, Mary I was a highly impressive queen cut off in her prime." In the February 2015 issue, however, one letter writer rejected Whitelock's thesis most thoroughly--those 300 burned at the stake rightly haunt her legacy. Anna Whitelock wrote one of the recent biographies of Mary I which attempts to bring some balance to our view of her reign, which I wrote about here, in First Things online.

Thomas More's Birthday in Context

Today is St. Thomas More's birthday, on February 7, 1478. It's interesting to note that in 1478, on the 26th of May, Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici was born, who would be elected pope in 1523 and take the name Clement VII.

Thus, in the same year, two men who would be most involved in and affected by Henry VIII's Great Matter of ending his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon were born. Pope would refuse to grant Henry VIII the decree of nullity he sought; Thomas More stayed out of most of Henry VIII's marital arrangements and resigned as Chancellor when Henry VIII took his final action to proclaim himself Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England in 1533. Pope Clement VII died in 1534, while Thomas More languished in the Tower of London, preparing for death because he would not take the Oaths of Supremacy and Succession demanded by Henry VIII.

When Thomas More was born, King Edward IV was on the throne, and on February 18, in 1478 George Plantagenet, the Duke of Clarence was executed for treason against the king--drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. George was Edward's brother, and as a member of the House of York, had switched sides to support the Lancastrians against his Edward. His surviving children were Edward, the Earl of Warwick and Margaret Plantagenet, who were made wards by Edward IV, and held under arrest by Richard III, who removed them from the succession because of the father's treason, attainder, and execution. The Earl of Warwick was held in the Tower of London by Henry VII after he same to the throne and later executed after the Perkin Warbeck pretender was unmasked. Henry arranged Margaret's marriage to Sir Richard Pole. Margaret's family, because of their claim to the throne and opposition to Henry VIII's supremacy over the Church in England. Her son, Reginald Pole, out of the reach of Henry VIII's attainder, would return to England during Mary I's reign as the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.

Also in the year 1478, Edward IV arranged the marriage of his youngest son, Richard of Shrewsbury, when the little boy was only 4 years old. Richard was married to Anne de Mowbray of Norfold on January 15. Of course the marriage was never consummated because Anne, who was six when she married, died when she was eight. Young Richard is one of the two Princes in the Tower, along with his brother Edward V, who succeeded his father briefly before Richard III usurped the throne. More wrote about the reign of Richard III.

Two births, one execution, and one marriage, all in 1478. Those events were all background to momentous events yet to come: a new ruling dynasty in England, a new Church of England, and two martyrdoms.

But on this day in 1478, and father and mother, John and Agnes More, welcomed their new baby boy to the world, and started planning his baptism.

Monday Morning: Matt Swaim and I Go on Crusade! Deus Vult!

"Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history.  And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."--President Barack Obama, National Prayer Breakfast, February 5, 2015

History by sound bite is never a good idea and President Obama has been receiving lots of criticism for this remark which some have taken to create a moral equivalence between the Crusades and current ISIS atrocities or between the Inquisition (Spanish or otherwise, I assume) and the ISIS burning the Jordanian pilot alive.

Matt Swaim and I will discuss this in our Catholic History Apologetics Series on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday morning, February 9--in my usual time slot a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central.

Matt and I were going to talk about the Crusades anyway this month, but the President's remarks gave the schedule some greater urgency! Live live here.

Image above: "Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, given a late Gothic setting in this illumination from the Livre des Passages d'Outre-mer, c. 1490."

Full disclosure: I am a former Crusader! That is, I attended Kapaun-Mt. Carmel High School and our mascot was/is The Crusader!

Victorian Images of the English Past

Reviewed in The Weekly Standard, this book published by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art describes and depicts how Victorian artists imagined their country's past:

Inspired by Roy Strong’s classic And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1977), which rescued Victorian history painting from oblivion, Andrew Sanders’s lavishly illustrated In the Olden Timeexplores how the Victorians responded to key figures in their political and cultural tradition, and how they cheerfully molded the past to conform to the needs of the present. As laid out by the leading historian of the day, Thomas Babington Macaulay, the Victorian interpretation of history was Whiggish, with clearly defined heroes and villains and yielding useful lessons. Embracing the notion of progress, it presented history as a steady movement towards a balanced constitution and the representative government of the Victorian era, an object of envy for the less fortunate folk living on the Continent.

The challenge of making the past come alive was eagerly accepted by novelists and artists, says Sanders. Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly (1824), set during the Jacobite rising in 1745, pioneered the genre by plunging fictional characters into the middle of momentous events. Said Thomas Carlyle of Scott and his imitators: “The historical novel taught us that the bygone ages of the land were actually filled with living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies and abstractions of men.”

In their efforts, novelists and painters took pains to get the physical details right, relying on antiquarian handbooks on dress and armor. Scott thus provided meticulous descriptions of clothing and interiors while painters fussed endlessly over costumes. Occasionally, the result looked a little too stiff: Thackeray once complained that Sir Edwin Landseer’s “gentlemen and ladies do not look as if they were accustomed to their dresses, for all their correctness, but had put them on for the first time.”

As the book description notes, however, the author also examines the Victorian view of England's religious history:

In this richly textured and wide-ranging survey of Victorian attitudes to the past, Andrew Sanders builds on Roy Strong's groundbreaking book And when did you last see your father?: The Victorian Painter and British History (1978). Sanders explores the essentially literary nature of Victorian history writing, and he reveals the degree to which painters were indebted to written records both fictional and factual. Starting with a stimulating comparison of Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, In the Olden Time examines works by poets and painters, essayists and dramatists, architects and musicians, including Jane Austen, John Donne, William Shakespeare, and John Soane. Together with a study of religious history as seen through the eyes of architect and critic Augustus Pugin and journalist William Cobbett, this book offers an original view of Victorian responses to British history, presenting a fresh investigation of unexpected Victorian attitudes and the establishment of particular 20th-century prejudices and bias.

There are certainly some very evocative historical paintings of the English Reformation era including several images of St. Thomas More, whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow. For example: John Herbert Rogers's depiction of St. Thomas More and his daughter Meg in the Tower of London; Edward Matthew Ward's image of Meg and More meeting on his way back to the Tower after being sentenced to the death of a traitor; Charles Landseer's scene of Meg paying for her father's head after his execution; and Lucy Madox Brown's painting of Meg obtaining her father's head before it was cast into the Thames.

Churchill's Historical Anti-Catholicism

In England last week they celebrated the 50th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill's funeral. Professor John Charmley, head of the Interdisciplinary Institute at the University of East Anglia, Norwich writes in The Catholic Herald about Churchill's anti-Catholic bias in The History of the English-Speaking Peoples:

The volumes illustrate Churchill’s great strengths as a historian and have a strong narrative drive, as well as clearly delineated heroes and villains: the former are usually Protestant, the latter invariably Catholic. This reflected not only the reality that England’s hereditary enemies were the Catholic countries of Spain and France, but also the bias inculcated by three centuries of Anglican state-sponsored propaganda.

Churchill imbibed, and later served up, the classic Victorian Anglican version of our island story. . . .

Churchill was, naturally, equally celebratory about the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. He described how a “great Protestant wind” rose in the “hearts of men, rising in fierce gusts to gale fury” to blow away the Catholic tyrant, James II, a low fellow prepared to sacrifice English freedom to the dictates of his faith. The English people were, Churchill declared, convinced “from the whole character of the Catholic Church at this time, that once he wielded the sword their choice would be the Mass or the stake”. The “Protestant wind” that brought King Billy to England, blew away the dark shadows of priestcraft and opened the way to the sun-kissed uplands of liberty, which would be defended by gallant Whigs such as his own ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough.

Professor Charmley points out that Newman identified Churchill's historical type in Lectures On the Present Position of Catholics in England:

Churchill was, in fact, that archetype described by Newman in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, who justified his anti-Catholicism by declaring: “It is too notorious for proof; every one knows it; every book says it; it has been so ruled long ago.” The book was full of “that ungenerous spirit which energises and operates so widely and so unweariedly in the Protestant community”.

Far from Newman’s work being, in Owen Chadwick’s words, a sad example of “a refined mind bothering itself with trash”, it was a noble attempt to combat the “black legend” about Catholicism which formed part of the Victorian version of our history. Only a few years before, in 1851, the restoration by Rome of the Catholic hierarchy in England had led to an outbreak of anti-Catholic hysteria led by the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, whose hereditary prejudices led him to dub it “papal aggression”. In 1874 Gladstone would declare that no Catholic Englishman could be fully trusted because he owed his ultimate allegiance to a “foreign potentate”. So deep-rooted was this prejudice that Newman himself predicted that the response to his sallies would be: “It is rather too much in the 19th century to be told to begin history again, and to have to reverse our elementary facts.” Churchill’s History bore witness to the accuracy of that prophecy.

Churchill, however, does regret the atrocities of Henry VIII's reign--the executions of so many nobles, religious, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, etc--but since his focus is on and his delight is in the development of Parliamentary rule in Great Britain, Churchill maintains a progressive view of the past. If events in the past lead to the triumph of parliamentary principles and democracy, they were necessary if regrettable. He also does admit that if King James II really meant to establish religious freedom in England, it was regrettable that he had to be deposed. Perhaps even if the cause of religious freedom was delayed by Parliament in 1688, it was still all to the good since Parliament decided for religious freedom for Catholics in the late 18th and early (1829) 19th centuries.