Posthumous Apologias

Posthumous Apologias

By Jem11 

James II was the last King of England who during his reign was openly a communicant in the Roman Catholic Church. He reigned from 1685 until 1688. Three years.

Henry VIII was the English King who 150 years prior to James II's reign separated the English Church from the Holy See and made himself Head of the English Church thus making England a protestant country. He reigned from 1509 until 1547. Thirty eight years.

After Henry all English monarchs held the title of Head of the Church (later modified to Supreme Governor of the Church, possibly for obscure reasons of gender politics) including James himself and also Henry's eldest daughter Mary who despite her efforts to restore the link with Rome took two years (half her reign) to negotiate the necessary legislation through parliament during which time she remained, against her will, Head of the Church. Henry's youngest daughter Elizabeth broke the link again and finally almost as soon as her sister was dead.

Henry's reign ended when he died in his bed (from unspecified causes, although his Roman Catholic enemies liked to sometimes say, without any evidence, it was syphillus). James' reign ended when he was deposed by the English parliament and replaced by his eldest daughter and her husband the Dutch Stadtholder (effectively King), who also happened to be James' nephew. They were both avowed staunch Protestants. James died some years later in exile in France as a guest of his first cousin the French King Louis XIV.

Though Henry and James are related by blood James was not Henry's direct descendant, Henry's four surviving children dying without issue.

*****************

The two tall gentlemen encounter each other in an empty room at Whitehall Palace. The room's furnishing is mid baroque.

"Who the devil might you be?" says the fatter of the two.

"Who might might I be? The King of England is who I am, Sir."

"Damn your eyes! King of England you say? Don't look much like a King, if you don't mind me saying so. More like a knave. More like a jackanapes. What are these crazy weeds you're wearing? Even Will Somers, my Court Fool, wouldn't have been seen in something like that. And Will is no fool."

"You're just as I imagined you'd be. Blustering and crude."

"Damn ya Sir! You're impertinent! I've a mind to call out ma Beef Eaters and have ya thrown in the Tower of London to remain there at the King's pleasure!"

"Be my guest."

"What?!"

"Call em."

Henry calls his guards but no one comes.

"Damn me! Those lazy scoundrels! I'm going to knock a few heads together!" He strides majestically towards one of the doors.

"That will do you no goo..." James tries to warn Henry but he's too late. Henry has already opened the door and almost collides with a solid brick wall covering the entrance.

"By Saint Mary!"

"We can't leave here. Neither of us can."

Henry checks the other doors only to find them similarly blocked.

"Is this some kind of popish plot?" Henry looks at the other man suspiciously now through narrowed eyes.

"Something like that."

"So d'ya work for the Spaniards or those damn Frenchies, Sir? Or is it the Bishop of Rome sent you?"

"None of those. I am entirely English. I told you I am King of England."

"Well that can't be, for I am the King of England."

"I know that."

"Well damn ya breeches, Sir, damn ya hose or whatever you call those things you're wearing. We can't both be the King. One's the King and the other will be declared a traitor and have his head smitten off on Tower Hill or his balls chopped off at Tyburn, whichever at the King's choosing."

"We were both King of England but not at the same time."

"What witchery is this? You know the penalties for those dabbling in black magic are the cropping of the ears? Though with hair done up like a whore it's hard to tell if you'd have ears to crop."

"I don't know what it is, witchery or magic or whatever. I just know I've got you with me in this room whilst we sort a few things out. Specifically the fact that why I was King for only three years had a lot to do with things you did in your thirty eight years."

"What?"

"I was King from 1685 until 1688. You were King from 1509 until 1547. I reigned for three years because of actions you took 150 years before me. At least that's my view of things."

"This is either witchery or madness. Either way I'm not standing for it. If my guards won't deal with you, I'll do it myself. Have at you, scoundrel!" Henry launches himself at James getting in a good solid punch ... but then he looks amazed to see that his best and biggest sucker punch has bounced off the other man like water off a baby. Eyes ablaze he tries a few more times with the same fruitless results. Then he tries to get James in one his best wrestling holds. But also to no avail. The other man is immovable. Henry stands back looking red faced.

"Witchery!" Henry spits out, "We're in hell and you're the devil sent to torment me."

"Well you certainly deserve to be in hell after everything you did to the Church and to England and even the world? But this, as far as I'm aware isn't hell. As you can see it's actually a room in Whitehall Palace."

"Whitehall Palace? Whitehall never had crazy furnishings and fittings such as this."

"That's because it's as I had it, not as you had it one a half centuries before me. You're my guest after all, not me yours. So here I'm chez mois. Of course, enjoy it while you can. It'll soon be burned to the ground under the joint reign of my ungrateful bastard of a daughter and my backstabbing weasel of a nephew her husband."

Everything is silent for a moment. A gentle breeze blows through an open window from the river Thames.

"The river smells unusually sweet for the time of year ...... Soo we ready to talk?" James asks finally.

"La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La!" Henry stands with his fingers in his ears going, "La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La!"

James shakes his head, "Really? We're not doing this are we? Oh! Grow up for God's sake! You look ridiculous. Just because you can't get your way through the usual combination of bluster, threats and violence that you've used your whole adult life you're going to revert to being a big baby."

"La La La La La ... I can't hear you! ... La La La La La La La La La La ... by the way what happens when we need to use the privies since we can't get out? La La La La La! Just do it in the corner like a horse I suppose? La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La!"

"You won't need .... Will you please stop for a minute so that I can answer you! Thankyou. You won't need to use the privies because we're in limbo here. You won't feel hunger or pain or the need to answer any bodily functions. But you won't get out of here either until we've had our discussion. So you can go La La and stick your fingers in your ears till doomsday because we basically have eternity to do this. And I have plenty of experience in waiting."

Henry goes silent pulling his fingers out of his ears. He silently looks at James with a pouty, sullen appearance on his fat face. James thinks, oh God why did I want to do this again?

"That's better. First of all I need to tell you something of my story. I was James II King of England. My family, the Stuarts, came to rule England from Scotland in 1603...."

"Ah! James Stewart. Now that name sounds familiar. I had a nephew, my sister Margaret's boy, by that name. James V Of Scotland. A pathetic excuse for a man. Died when..." says Henry grinning.

"Anyway regardless of that. He was my great great great grandfather. He spelt his name with a W whilst I spell it with a U for reasons it's unnecessary for me to go into here. My grandfather, the grandson of your nephew, was invited to become King of England..."

"Who in God's name invited him? I and my predecessors spent years trying to keep the Scottish weasels out of England and someone just ups and invites one of them to take over the country?"

"Ah well. Thankyou. Now we come to it. The English parliament invited him. That's who invited him. The Patriotic English parliament which had become so powerful that they could decide who would be King of England because of your actions decades before."

"My actions?"

"Yes your actions. Big bad Henry. Standing there with his legs apart and his big cod piece in that portrait Holbein did of you. What a guy! Makes me cry! King Of England. King Of Ireland and Of France. Head of the Church in both England and Ireland. The English Pope! Wow! So powerful. And in the end all you did was hand the keys of the Kingdom to a sniveling crowd of small minded farmers and shopkeepers in parliament. So sad ..."

"La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La ..."

"Oh! Ok! I'll wait ... finished?"

"La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La ..."

Ten minutes later.

"We done? Good. By the way that iconic portrait of you with your thighs opened up that I mentioned was destroyed."

"Destroyed?"

"In the fire at Whitehall Palace during the reign of my weasly nephew William. He didn't like living there, even though English Kings and Queens had been happily living there for many years, 'coz it wasn't wery cwean. ooh! it was sooo dorty!' And so because no one was living there it got neglected and it burned down. This is the type of person that your actions brought into the world and who now pretty much runs it. Fumigators, pest managers, vivisectors, fire inspectors, auditors, bookkeepers, flea crackers, fact checkers, sanitizers, efficiency experts, bureaucrats. William was the first of a new type, a now sadly ubiquitous type, a type largely made possible through your actions and the actions of your enablers."

"By Saint Joseph I don't what you're talking about."

"Really? So what about this. Because of your actions in separating the church in England from Rome the universal church was destroyed forever."

"My Commissioners found various systemic abuses in the Church that I was anxious to correct. I desired to maintain true doctrine but also to root out corruption. As far as I could tell the cause of this corruption was the papacy so by removing that we could bring the English Church back to its pure origins."

"But that's not what your creature Cromwell wanted. The man you tasked with the job of 'cleaning things up'. Did he? He was a Lutheran or worse. He wanted to overthrow the doctrines of the Church that had been in place for fifteen centuries and replace them with 'holy scriptures' as he called it. Except that what's the correct way to read holy scripture? The original is in New Testament Greek and Ancient Hebrew. So it gets translated so everyone can read it because otherwise you'd have to rely on a priesthood to interpret it guided by traditional doctrine and you've decided that's corrupt. But what's the correct translation or the correct reading of the correct translation? Each person gets to decide that for themselves guided by the 'holy spirit' and so the church's traditions that should have guided its interpretation of doctrine are replaced by each person's private conscience. And it's only a short step from deciding which version of God's Word you want to deciding there is no God. Why not? It's all up to individual interpretation. Congratulations on helping to destroy Christianity."

"Oh I think you go too fast, your Highness," says Henry with a dismissive smirk.

"That is in fact what happened, your Highness. I have the advantage of knowing the future. But let's get down to the level of politics. Something you might actually care for. Power and money. Because you threw down the Church you needed another institution in its place. You couldn't turn it into your creature on your own. You needed someone to help you. Friend Cromwell had just the answer. The English parliament and especially the House of Commons. You looted Church land and wealth and shared out the spoils with the MPs. You weakened the Church but you made Parliament more powerful than ever."

"As the King it was mine to seize and disburse as I saw fit."

"Well that's debatable. But anyway once Cromwell had done your work for you, you got Parliament to help you convict him of treason and cut off his head. I don't know if Cromwell had a crystal ball of some sort. Because a cynic like him might have appreciated the irony as he waited in the Tower for his head to be chopped off that a century after his execution, my father, your nephew by four removes, the King of England, would be put on trial for his life. Not quietly murdered in the Tower like Edward II or Richard II but tried in open court like a common horse thief or a poacher and publicly executed in front of the whole world as a criminal. Unprecedented. That was done by your precious Parliament led by ... wait for it ... led by a man called Cromwell who, as my father was your blood relative, was a blood relative of your Chief minister that you had killed. Revolution complete indeed. That is after all what Revolution is: a circle."

"You lie, knave!"

"Oh but it's true. Once again I have the gift of prescience..You see the Church never threatened your power. Of course you know that no matter how much you pretended otherwise. A man of your education. Its job isn't to rule this world but to prepare man's soul for the next. The most it ever did was to inflict some minor humiliation on your predecessor King Henry II, the Angevin, by making him wear a hair shirt and kneel before the Archbishop of Canterbury for a few strokes of the lash ..."

"Yes and I exhumed the traitor Thomas A Beckett's body for hanging, drawing and quartering over that.."

"Oh you showed em, Tiger! Big threat ... The point is your Parliament isn't like the Church. Not a bit of it. There's no division of labour there. It wants to rule in the King's stead. You created a monster and it completely devoured my family whole. Not your family mind you. You lot just happily ploughed the furrow for your own short term and short sighted ends. It's we, and the whole country, who had to reap the terrifying harvest."

"The Pope just had to give me my divorce! Damn him!"

"Ah yes well now we come to it. Don't we? This really is the nub. The lynchpin of egoism that links everything I've been talking about."

"What do you mean?"

"Your desires supervened all. Holy Church destroyed. An assembly of country squires and merchants raised to coequal power with the Crown. All because of your desire for a son ..."

"Without an heir we would have had civil war!!"

"You had a daughter."

"A useless girl! No fit ruler for a country!"

"Your son Edward, for whom you destroyed a country and a church, died whilst still a minor. Your eldest daughter became Queen. But prematurely aged by your treatment of her mother and herself she died after four years. That left your preening selfish heretical bastard Elizabeth ..."

"Oh God, Anne Boleyn's brat. Bet that was a disaster."

"No. Not at all. Like most bastards once she'd usurped other people's birthrights she did very well with it. They possess a certain primitive egotistical energy you know. A perfect heir for you though. She completed your destruction of the Catholic monarchy and made the rabble in Parliament more preeminent than ever because like you she served her own power and not the good of the country."

Henry shifts uncomfortably.

"That Parliament would ultimately come to cut off your heir's, my father's, head and expel us from the Kingdom. We eventually returned because the abomination of the blasphemous Republic set up by your chief minister Thomas Cromwell's heir was too much even for those rebels in Parliament to tolerate. But we reigned with difficulty, constantly beset by treason and insane religious fanaticism caused by your schismatic Protestant reformation. When I became King I attempted to gently heal the nation and restore the English Catholic Church and the English Catholic monarchy that you destroyed because of your selfishness and your egotism. But the damage had gone too far. Once you destroy an ancient thing that took centuries to build it is almost impossible to bring it back again. My poor father learned that to his cost."

"Well! Damn me! How was I to know?"

"Of course, you couldn't. And no one expects you to. I was troubled myself by a strong desire for women which I prayed to God and my Father Confessor to free me from. But your egotism, which you apparently couldn't control, points the way to the modern world where self comes before duty, innovation for the sake of innovation comes before tradition, doubt comes before faith, scepticism comes before belief. There's a direct line running from you to my prosaic nephew William to whom Parliament granted the throne of England after my deposition that should only have been in God's gift. But thanks to you they thought they could usurp God. And William, the mysophobic, was the fitting receptacle for the world they wanted to create in which there was room for neither faith nor tradition."

Suddenly the room is empty. As though it has never been occupied. Everything goes dark. Then it begins to go up in flames as Whitehall Palace did in fact do in 1698, destroying many treasures including the iconic portrait of Henry VIII standing like a colossus over his kingdom painted by Hans Holbein.