Tea at Trianon: The "Cursed" Marriage of Henry VIII

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 18, 2013

The "Cursed" Marriage of Henry VIII

From The Catholic Herald:

Anne Boleyn’s coronation song, with its optimistic lyrics about her future childbearing capabilities, was performed again by schoolchildren as part of the procession during the Lord Mayor’s Show in the City of London. Only weeks before the song was first sung Henry VIII had made the final break with Rome, frustrated that the Pope would not dissolve his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.

Henry believed his first marriage had broken a biblical rule against marrying your brother’s wife, and that it had therefore been cursed. But Katherine insisted that her marriage to his brother Arthur had never been consummated, and was never, therefore valid. The revival of the Anne Boleyn song, prompts the old question, was Katherine telling the truth, or did she lie in a desperate attempt to save her marriage? (Read more.)