There is in English history a king so evil that his name should live with Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler and Mr Blobby in the first league of sinners. He died, syphilitic and hideous, and missed by none.
He murdered his wives, Catholics, Protestants, Baptists and the good people of Yorkshire in equal measure. The Protestants he burned as heretics and - as a means of a kind of via media - the Catholics were hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors.
His name, of course, is Henry VIII. But because the Church of England that he founded (so he could divorce one wife and marry another so he could murder her) has continued to this day - a church of old maids cycling to Communion through the autumn mists of burning heretics - and because a hatred of Spain carried more weight than a love of the Old Religion - and because the Book of Common Prayer sounds so lovely and traditional - he has somehow kept a good name amongst the people of England as a precursor to that truly "Merry Monarch", Charles II. Although, on the whole, of course, I prefer Oliver Cromwell, who was not so attached to any pleasure except that of banning things.
But enough of this pretending that, though he killed Catholics, Protestants and Yorkshire folk, Henry was basically a good bloke. We must strike back - and in the way that would hurt him to the core.
We must ban Greensleeves.
I find it hard to believe that Dirty Harry could have written such a sweet and plangent tune, whatever Flanders and Swann said.
ReplyDeletePerhaps he wrote it when young and Catholic.