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Tina P.
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 9:23am | IP Logged
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OK. So I just read part of Kings and Queens by Tony Robinson to my kids which is little blurbs about kings and queens since Alfred the Great in about 871. I get to Edward the Confessor and am floored by the sketchy and (please tell me this is true as I am not versed in history myself) unfair description of him. "He was tall and religious and looked like people thought kings should look. But looks aren't everything. He was actually very weak and couldn't sand up to his bossy nobles. The bossiest was Godwin...Never trust a king's promise. Edward promised his distant French cousin William of Normandy and Harold Godwinson that when he died each of the others could be king." Now the only other information I have on Edward is from saint books. The world history books I have seem to be more interested in continental European history than in England.
I'm just now looking with absolute woe at page 60 which says, "The Roman Catholic Church told people that if they paid a lot of money their sins would be forgiven." AAAAACK! 
And this is rich: Mary the First "married Egnland's enemy, King Philip of Spain. To make matters worse, Mary started trying to persuade the English back ot the Catholic religion. This persuasion involved burning people to death. Her men set fire to over 300 protestants because they wouldn't stop being protestants."
Oh please! Here's a rich one: "Elizabeth the first was "brilliant!" "Elizabeth put Mary Queen of Scots under arrest and kept her shut away for almost 20 years. Eventually she had her executed, but felt very sorry afterwards. She cried and cried and couldn't eat or sleep."
I've got the Good Queen Bess thingy at the end of this book as well.
I thought I was buying a nice timeline aid because it has every king of England since Alfred listed with a little bit about him.
Wow! I've never read such an anti-Catholic book before. Why ever did we buy this!?!?!? And what to do with it now?!?!? I think I want my money back! 
Help?!?! I'm so out of my league!
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Tina P.
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 9:32am | IP Logged
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I'm quite disgusted with a new book called Kings and Queens by Tony Robinson that I just bought. Wish I wouldn't have and now I'm hoping they'll allow me at least a credit at the store. It's vey Protestant sympathetic, "Elizabeth's court feared that her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots was plotting against her. Elizabeth put her under arrest and kept her shut away for almost twenty years. Eventurally she had her executed, but felt very sorry afterwards. She cried and cried and couldn't eat or sleep."
And very anti-Catholic "Mary (the First) married England's enemy King Philip of Spain. To make matters worse, Mary started trying to persuade the English back ot the Catholic Faith. This persuasion involved burning people to death. Her men set fire to over 300 Protestants because they wouldn't stop being Protestants." Any remorse there?
Edward the Confessor is said to have been weak and said that basically the best thing he did was to build Westminster Abbey.
I am a bit in shock as I have never read such an anti-Catholic account before.  How can I correct this? Seems like a lot of world history resources focus on continental Europe. Any help would be much appreciated.
PS: I had a much longer post but it drifted off into la-la-land, so if there is a lot missing and I need to fill in holes, please let me know.
God bless, Tina
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 11:27am | IP Logged
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Tina, factually all those comments are correct (though I don't know that Elizabeth "cried and cried and couldn't eat or sleep" after Mary's death). I agree the phrasing of the Mary quote one is bad, and the whole tone is flippant. I have the book and also wished I hadn't bought it - too facetious and too thin in content.
Unfortunately there is no such thing as an account of British history for children written from a Catholic perspective. Believe me, I've looked! I'm writing a children's history of the Catholic Church in England which will at least fill the gaps in the secular accounts and offer some balance. I've only got as far as the thirteenth century, but if you would like a link to the chapters I've done I'll send it to you privately.
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Dh Michael,  Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06)  (11/07)
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 11:32am | IP Logged
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Me again! I'm afraid the bit about Edward the Confessor is probably fair. He wasn't a great king. In many ways Elizabeth was a good queen - if you weren't Catholic .
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~Rachel~
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 1:35pm | IP Logged
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 From what I remember in my reading, Edward was a very good MAN and a bad KING  . He was religious to a fault, forgetting many of his kingly duties... which is quite sad.
And I have to agree with Kathryn... being English in the US means that I realise sometimes that the English royal family is glamourised... to the detriment of those who were Catholic and religious. Not to mention that since the royal family is now the head of the Church of England, they are always going to be written about with a slant in that direction ...
That's a shame about the book though, I like Tony Robinson, and loved his shows when I was back home!
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 2:21pm | IP Logged
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Rachel wrote:
| From what I remember in my reading, Edward was a very good MAN and a bad KING . He was religious to a fault, forgetting many of his kingly duties... which is quite sad. |
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Worse still, it is very hard to pin down any real evidence for his saintly character and piety. The sources are generally late, sketchy and unreliable. I was thrilled to discover that King Alfred, who IMO really did deserve his title "Great", has a feast day celebrated in our diocesan calendar. I hadn't realised he was considered a saint, and I've always thought he deserved it  .
Rachel wrote:
| That's a shame about the book though, I like Tony Robinson, and loved his shows when I was back home! |
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I bought it for very little from a book club and like Tina I was thoroughly disappointed in it  . It has been sitting on my shelf untouched for years, but I took another look after reading Tina's post and it was as bad as I remembered. I'm planning a book clear out, and it's going to have to go!
Tina, if you want a children's book on British history, the best in-print book I know is The Young Oxford History of Britain and Ireland. It is in five sections, with each written by an expert in the period. The Reformation section is as close to even-handed as I've come across. There are a few minor things I would quibble with, but overall it is good. Here are sections on the treatment of Protestants under Mary and Catholics under Elizabeth for comparison:
"From 1554 Protestants in England were hunted down, and nearly 300 were burned as heretics, mostly in the south-east where Protestant beliefs were strongest. Although people were used to public executions, mary's burnings were unpopular. This was probably because, apart from four bishops, most of the victoms were as ordinary as the crowds who watched them die - weavers, cobblers, farm labourers, and at least fifty women."
[After the Pope issued a Bull declaring Elizabeth deposed and ordering her subjects not to obey her ...] "English and Welsh Catholics were now in a terrible position, for they had to choose between their religion and their queen. Although only a few Catholics were plotters, harsh new laws made things difficult for all of them. Fines for non-attendance at Church of England services increased from twelve pence to a crippling twenty pounds, and by 1585 it was treason, punished by death, to be a Catholic priest, or even to give a priest shelter. About 180 Catholics were executed under these laws in Elizabeth's reign. Like the Protestants burnt in Mary Tudor's reign, they believed they were dying for their faith. Elizabeth's councillors thought they were stamping out dangerous traitors."
Another book I like is out of print, but shouldn't be too hard to find in the UK (try Amazon, eBay or AbeBooks). This is People in History by R.J.Unstead. It was originally published as 4 separate volumes, but can also be found in a single volume. It covers nearly 50 people from British history, with nice length stories. I haven't found anything anti-Catholic in it, and a number of the stories are of English saints, including St. Thomas More. Great for ages 6 to 10, or thereabouts.
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 2:33pm | IP Logged
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Kathryn UK wrote:
| Tina, factually all those comments are correct |
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That was the comments in your second post ... don't want anyone to think I was agreeing with Tony Robinson's supremely bad one sentence analysis of the Reformation!
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~Rachel~
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 4:00pm | IP Logged
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Do tell me about the feast day of King Alfred the Great... I am always on the lookout for great role models for boys, and Alfred has some great stories attached to him ( althought I liked the cakes burning one best )...
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 4:03pm | IP Logged
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Me yet again ... as luck would have it, I had a copy of a New Dictionary of National Biography article on Edward the Confessor on my computer - very recent, written by a leading expert on Edward. His take is that the weak king / saintly man version of Edward is quite different to the reality. He describes the king as an "energetic, sometimes ruthless, sometimes rash, resourceful prince, who was not only a great survivor but also a great conservator".
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 18 2005 at 4:10pm | IP Logged
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~Rachel~ wrote:
| Do tell me about the feast day of King Alfred the Great... I am always on the lookout for great role models for boys, and Alfred has some great stories attached to him ( althought I liked the cakes burning one best )... |
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October 26th - St.Alfred the Great, King and Confessor (optional memoria). I only found that a few weeks ago - nice surprise
Someone on the Sonlight UK egroup claims to have a photo of Alfred burning the cakes, thereby proving that it must be true
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Tina P.
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| Posted: July 20 2005 at 3:04am | IP Logged
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Thank you Kathryn and Rachel for your support. I was a bit tightly wound when I first wrote my post. I think I'm getting a better idea of what to do with this study. We're going to finish reading about King Alfred (in a Geoffrey Trease book, Seven Kings of England). And then, the kids and I are going to visit ancient times so that I have time to collect solid resources on the sticky periods of history. I want a balanced account of history, not an account that sympathizes too heavily with either Protestantism or Catholicism. Why don't these authors realize that we're all human and we all sin from time to time?
Tina~ wife to Gus and mother to seven earth-bound blessings and one in heaven.
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~Rachel~
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| Posted: July 20 2005 at 9:59am | IP Logged
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I guess because they love heroes!
This is where multiple books come in very useful!
~Rachel~
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 20 2005 at 1:17pm | IP Logged
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Tina, Geoffrey Trease is one of my favourite authors of historical fiction . I don't think he was religious at all (Catholic or Protestant), and in fact in his early years at least he was a socialist, but I've never spotted anything terrible in his books. One was a little negative about the Church and had a character who was a wicked monk (a monk who happened to be wicked, rather than being wicked because he was a monk, if you get the distinction), but I don't remember anything else problematic. Even that one is a good book - Red Towers of Granada, set in medieval England and Spain. Unfortunately most of his books are out of print . If you want a fun piece of fiction on Elizabeth's reign, with Shakespeare as a character (and nothing about the Reformation!), his Cue for Treason is a great adventure story.
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: Kings and Queens of England? Any help?
