THE P RTAL
February 2015
Page 7
The Popes
and the Ordinariate
Dr Harry Schnitker continues his series
We have
reached the penultimate instalment of this series and with it the Wars of the Roses.
Although Henry VIII is looming on the horizon, it is salutary to recall that there were as few
clairvoyants then as now: nobody foresaw the Reformation. This is important, for it reminds us that we are
still in a Catholic England.
The Wars of the Roses is one of the best-known
episodes of English history, thanks to Shakespeare
and, more recently, the rediscovery of the body of
King Richard III under a Leicester car park. Grossly
simplified, this was a period when factions of the
royal Plantagenet dynasty competed over the English
crown. Marked by short bursts of intense violence,
the conflict finally paved the way for the advent of the
Tudor dynasty and all that entailed.
uncle. It says much for his relative detachment from
politics that he managed to crown Edward IV, Richard
III and the first Tudor, Henry VII. The stance of the
Archbishop of Canterbury was not that important any
more, and he was not that interested.
There were political bishops, which was inevitable as
they were all members of the noble families involved
in the various attempts to seize the crown. George
Neville, Archbishop of York and brother of the Earl of
unsuited to kingship
Warwick, supported Edward IV, but abandoned him
Both factions, Lancaster and York, traced their when Warwick placed Henry VI back on the throne,
descent to King Edward III, but it was the House and earned his sobriquet of ‘The Kingmaker’.
of Lancaster that came to power first. In the person
The Archbishop came to regret his rashness, for he
of Henry V they counted England’s most successful
military monarch of the Middle Ages in their ranks. suffered arrest and incarceration, in another sign of
However, his successor, Henry VI, was singularly just how weak the leaders of the Church now were.
unsuited to kingship. Devout, devoid of political
cunning, disinterested in government and generally Stalwart of the Tudor regime
unsuited to public life, the realm descended into
Although many clerics continued to serve the
strife.
government, none was truly significant. There was one
exception, and that was John Morton. The Bishop of
The English crown lost its vast French possessions, Ely became a strenuous opponent of Richard III and
to be left with only Calais. From its apogee, it fell to was a firm supporter of Henry Tudor, whose coup
its political nadir in a couple of decades. The English d’état he supported. Morton became a stalwart of the
Church was oddly unaffected.
Tudor regime, was responsible for making the new
king wealthy through careful financial management,
From a spiritual viewpoint, the reign of Henry VI and earned himself a cardinal’s hat for his trouble.
was actually a golden age. The saintly Cardinal Thomas
Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, personifies the the ultimate reference point
In all, the Church survived the Wars of the Roses
fine men who made up the bulk of the Church in this
almost unscathed and unchanged. At the dawn of the
period.
Tudor era, the Faith and its practices were flourishing
Canterbury was not that interested
in England, perhaps more so than in many other parts
Bourchier was pious, and more than a little naïve. of Europe. )