All the saints venerated by the pre-reformation English church would have been “carried over”, so to speak, and that includes Edward the Confessor. No doubt there are churches here and there dedicated to him, and he may get a guernsey somewhere in the Calendar. It’s just that, for the reason pointed out by *APB, Anglicans generally don’t pay the same kind of attention to saints as Catholic and Orthodox Christians do. Parish churches are dedicated to saints because they always have been, rather than because there is any need for them to be.
Henry didn’t divorce Catherine of Aragon, he annuled it (invalidly in the eyes of the RCC)
See, that’s the thing. A purported annulment for which there is no grounds is in substance a divorce.
Though, it has to be said, the term “annulment” wasn’t much used at the time. Henry said that he was looking for a divorce, but everyone understood that he was looking for what we would term an annulment.
The key issue was not really whether he had good grounds for an annulment, as who had the authority to decide this. That was the issue on which the English church broke from Rome.
Well … I don’t know … live outside the country for a while and it all goes to pot 
I still hear an emotive difference between “evil tyrant” and “evil bastard” tho’ but I would be interested to read the books mentioned.
(It is interesting how people’s image changes … I had always thought of Simon de Montford (6th Earl of Leicester) to be one of the good - or at least better - guys but in A Great and Terrible King by Marc Morris he’s painted in somewhat different colours.)
It’s not just a question of judging Henry by the standards of our day. It’s true that in Henry’s day marriage for a king was about power-broking, alliances and securing the succession but these did make all other considerations irrelevant. In his own time, Henry’s marital shenanigans were deeply unpopular with his people, and embarrassing to his court. And, in so far as his objective was to secure a trouble-free and undisputed succession, he failed lamentably.
He burned his way through the very sound financial position that he inherited, and on his death left an appalling financial situation, higher taxes and a repeatedly debased coinage. His treatment of the monasteries was popularly perceived as a cross between sacrilege and piracy (motivated in large part by his money worries), and caused a great deal of hardship through the resultant closure of the network of hospitals, almshouses, free schools and colleges which depended on the monasteries. There was an enormous cultural loss in the destruction of the great monastic libraries. All this in turn provoked a substantial popular rebellion which was suppressed with considerable bloodshed.
In so far as Henry has been kindly regarded by later generations of English, his reputation largely rests on his break with Rome. This opened the way for the later protestantising reformation of the English church, and was therefore applauded by later generations who saw it as a Good Thing that England was a protestant country. But it was certainly not Henry’s intention to protestantise England, and in Henry’s own time the people of England were not that enthusiastic about Protestantism.
So it may that to some extent, it is not Henry’s poor reputation but rather his good one which resulted from later generations judging him by the standards and values of their own time.
He was looking to annul his marriage on the affinity grounds saying. An annulment says there was never a marriage, a divorce ends it, Henry was looking for the first one and that’s what he got.
The Episcopal Church also, from time to time, adds people to the Book of Common Prayer’s feast-calendar list of those worthy of remembrance and praise, even if it’s not technically sainthood, as this article says: http://media.www.districtchronicles.com/media/storage/paper263/news/2006/02/09/DivineIntervention/Episcopal.Parish.Proposes.Sainthood.For.Thurgood.Marshall-1604872.shtml
UDS I’m not unaware of the problems during Henry’s kingship - what I was reacting to was Argent Towers saying “many people perceive him as a real bastard.”. That had never been my impression growing up in the UK, I doubt “many people” are aware of the details in your post - 6 wives & dissolution of the monesteries aside. I have now learned that his potrayal is changing and thus his image in the popular consciousness.
For that matter, parish churches don’t have to be dedicated to saints in the Catholic church, either. I’ve seen churches named things like “Resurrection”, “Holy Rosary”, “Sacred Heart”, and “Holy Family”
Maybe he’s thinking of Henry’s daughter, Mary I; aka Bloody Mary Tudor?
Especially in the latter years of his reign, Henry VIII was notorious for presiding over an enormous number of executions ( many of them political ) - from a low estimate of 50,000 up to 72,000. He actually appears to have far, far, FAR exceeded his daughter’s totals. Mary gets the bad press because some of hers were martyrs - Protestants executed for their faith.
I’ve never read that - at least nothing on nearly that scale. Cite, please?
From Holinshead:
Cardan’s original quote was:
Sure. I’m reacting to your suggestion that the more negative view of Henry is the result of our generations judging him by “the standards of our day”. It was in fact the positive view of Henry which resulted from assessing him according to later standards - specifically, the standard that Protestantism, for which he unwittingly cleared the way, was a Good Thing. Judged by the standards of his own day, any assessment of Henry would have to be more negative than positive.
OK - got it.
Yes, I know. Both Henry’s supporters and Henry’s detractors referred to the ruling he wanted as a “divorce”, but in the terms we use today what he was looking for was an annulment.
The thing is, though, when we look at what he actually got, as opposed to what he sought, perceptions differ. To the King’s supporters, what he got was what we would term an annulment. To the King’s Catholic opponents, what he got was - in effect - what we would term a divorce - a decree allowing him to marry Anne Boleyn, even though he had failed to establish grounds for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
For that reason, later generations of Catholic opponents treated Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, as illegitimate (and therefore not entitled to succed to the throne) - in distinction to Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, who was of course legitimate in Catholic eyes (but illegitimate in Henry’s eyes), and Edward, the daughter of Jane Seymour, who was legitimate because Catherine of Aragon had died by the time Henry married Jane Seymour.
Well, that I can believe.
(The one I always felt sorry for was poor Lady Jane Grey. Wasn’t her family behind her grab for the throne?)
Her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland.
Mary gets a particularly bad press. Apart from being rather gentler than her father, total numbers executed under Mary on religious grounds is probably much the same as total numbers executed under Elizabeth on religious grounds. But we never hear of “bloody Elizabeth”.
Elizabeth, of course, was a very successful monarch who acheived great things for her country; it is natural that history and popular sentiment will judge her kindly. But it also reflects the fact that Elizabeth’s executions were in support of protestantising the church, which later generations saw as a Good Thing, whereas Mary’s were not.
Hmm. From Captain Amazing’s quote from Holinshed, it looks as though these “mass murders” of Henry VIII’s might include ordinary judicial executions - “petty thieves and rogues” sounds like the ordinary run of criminals to me.
Since this was a time when execution was the prescribed penalty for virtually any serious crime - penal transportation and imprisonment at hard labour didn’t really get started until the seventeenth century - I’m inlcined to wonder whether “mass murder” is an appropriate term. Undoubtedly, the total must include many politically-motivated executions (yes, I know all about Sir Thomas More thankyouverymuch), but I suspect Henry VIII has a way to go before he’s up there with Stalin and Pol Pot in the mass-murdering leagues.