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Entry: Englishmen, and Other Aborigines Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/englishmen_and_other_aborigines#401 Post contents: Oh dear. I don't find J.B.'s remarks incoherent at all (and our shared initials are just a coincidence.) In response to some of H.A.'s assertions, seriatim: 1. The Pilgrims left Plymouth because they were weary of Holland, and England was better off for being relieved of so many fanatical Puritans through the 17th century, antipathetic as they were to traditional English liberites; 2. English Roman Catholics went underground or kept a low profile, but were not "practically obliterated", although the nominally Catholic terrorist Guy Fawkes certainly deserved to be personally obliterated; 3. Other Protestant sects were not "eliminated" by the C of E, although the nominally Catholic Queen Mary certainly tried to eliminate all Protestants in her murderous purges, after which the relatively peaceful and tolerant reign of her C of E sister Elizabeth was considered a relief and a blessing even by the Catholics of England (of whom Shakespeare might have been one); 4. The Dissolution of the Monasteries was an atrocity, but it was inspired far more by cynical venality than by any religious belief and/or heresy, and the C of E did a relatively good job of preserving at least the main treasures of English Christendom such as the many English catherals which remain glories of European architecture to this day; 5. Thomas More was murdered politically for the personal vanity of King Henry, not because of any fanaticism of the C of E; 6. Funny thing about Margaret Clitherow is that for a long time many devotees of hers claimed to have witnessed her ghost at a house where she was believed to have lived in York, until later historical evidence proved that she had never lived there - thus, I wonder how much of the story of Clitherow's martyrdom has been mythologised; 7. Millar's article did not say that the C of E was "in ruins." And as Adam Smith said in response to the suggestion that Britain was "ruined" by the loss of the American colonies: "There is a lot of ruin in a nation" - just like there is a lot of ruin in all temporal forms of the Christian Church - but last time I heard Evensong at Westminster Abbey, neither the Abbey nor the music nor the congregants were in any ruinous state at all. Sent at: 2008 12 02