10th February 2016
Hampton Court Palace Chapel, rebuilt by Henry VIII, has just had its first Roman Catholic service since Mary I's reign – Vespers, mostly in Latin, to mark Shrove Tuesday. It was led by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, leader of the Catholic Church in England. I think it's an excellent move at a very symbolic location – Henry broke with Rome and made himself head of the new Church of England when Wolsey failed to obtain his annulment, and took Wolsey's palace of Hampton Court into the bargain. It's hard to imagine what Henry would have thought of this new move – despite his opposition to the pope he died a Catholic, not having embraced the Reformation. His Protestant queen Kateryn Parr probably wouldn't be thrilled – here's a quote from The Taming of the Queen, written from her perspective:
Though he was my husband, he is to be buried beside Jane Seymour in Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor, and he leaves a fortune for people to sing Masses for him and he establishes a chantry chapel with two priests to save him from the purgatory that he did not believe in. When they tell me this I have to grip the wooden arm of my chair to prevent myself from laughing out loud.
They tell me that he made his confession. He sent for Thomas Cranmer right at the end, and the archbishop gave him extreme unction, so he died a faithful son of the Catholic church. Apparently he told Cranmer that he had little to confess, for everything that he had done had been for the best. I smile as I think of him dying, without fear of the darkness, secure as ever in his own good opinion, dabbled with holy oil. But what was the purpose of his life if not to save his country from these rituals and superstitions? What, at the end, was he thinking?