The fun time of the year is here, what with food, wine, gifts and sweets running through our heads. First up is Thanksgiving. Time to be grateful, yes?
I will turn your gratitude to your ancestors. Who were they? If you have your DNA handy, that is a clue. If you’ve traced back a few of the branches, that’s an even bigger clue. Nonetheless, that is not an easy question to answer unless you study their history. Which leads you backward on the path of how you got here.
Have you ever really thought about it?
To broaden your search for your roots, it’s a good idea to stop to study the past which your ancestors inhabited. If you’re an American, north or south, it’s best to take into consideration why your ancestors migrated here, and when they migrated here. Who were the movers and shakers that brought us to this time and place? An additional question to ask is are you are part of the first migration over, as in Native American? Or did your people come over in later migrations?
Many questions need to be asked and answers found. In truth, the study of history is best looked at through the lens of your own family.
Come Thursday the 18th of November, one week before Thanksgiving in the United States, at 7 pm Pacific Time, I will host a webinar on the background of this holiday. The true background, not the romantic myth we have about it. And not within the current, one-sided conversation, held by too many university professors and most media blabbers. That conversation has to do with how wicked the Europeans, make that “white” Europeans, are/were.
The webinar is big on context because I’m big on context. What do I mean? The era, the culture, the circumstances, of the people of the past, has to be taken into consideration when learning about those who came before us.
In my work in history, I do not romanticize the past nor do I condemn those who brought us here. Just like us, some folks are good, some are bad, and then there are the psychos of the past, who can give our modern day psychos a run for their money.
Psychos, individuals with absolutely no empathy or sympathy, have always been with us. Every culture on the planet has had to deal with psychos. There are no psychos in Thursday’s webinar. However, there is one individual who was obsessive to the extreme. Perhaps he could be referred to as borderline psycho since individuals died because of his preoccupation with procuring a son.
I refer to Henry VIII.
Here is a bit of historical trivia. The first king of England that had to deal with the no son issue was Henry I. This happened in the year 1120. Henry’s son died in a ship wreck. He had a daughter, Matilda, who had been widowed.
Henry was a widower, so he attempted to have another son, through a second marriage, but this was unsuccessful. He then supported Matilda as his heiress. He arranged a marriage for her to the Count of Anjou’s son, Geoffrey. They are the parents of the famous Henry II. Matilda, after Henry I death, was to be queen, however, her cousin Stephen beat her to the treasury, and he was crowned king. A civil war broke out, and, technically, though she was queen for a few months, Stephen’s side was too powerful. Eventually, Matilda negotiated with her cousin Stephen, to end the civil war, aka the Anarchy. Therefore, having a queen of England was not completely unknown. Nonetheless, until the Henry VIII problem, there had been no woman on the English throne as queen in her own right.
Henry VIII’s obsession began when the pope would not grant him an annulment from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. This is a story that has been told many a time, in history books, plays, movies and television series. The more detailed entertainments point out that there was a faction of men around Henry that liked the idea of the separation of England from the Catholic Church because they were in favor of the new thinking on the church. This argument with the pope had begun after Martin Luther had nailed those 95 theses on that church door in 1517. The Reformation was afoot, and the thinkers around Henry thought, why not have England reforming its church by making the king the head of that church?
The rest, as is said, is history.
What happened next was that all hell broke out. Wars and such, over religion, would not end for another 100 years, not only in England but throughout all Christendom. All because Henry wanted a son.
Henry got his son, Edward, but he died young. And then the women took over, and ruled England for the next 50 years. Henry’s daughters, Mary, ruled from 1553 to 1558; Elizabeth, ruled from 1558 to 1603. Both women died childless, but the heir came from another queen. Mary Stuart’s son, James, became king in 1603. Born to a Catholic mother, James I was raised a protestant.
It was James that would begin the settling of the New World in earnest. Would James have come to the throne if Henry had not been obsessed with having a son? That is unknowable. Mary Tudor, aka, Bloody Mary, married late in life, at 37. Thirty-seven in the 16th century is like our 50. If her father had not been so pigheaded, he would have arranged a marriage for when she was old enough, but not too old, to bear a child. If she had a son, that boy would have been the direct heir to the throne.
Indeed, we are talking alternative history here. However, this would not have effected the New World migrations, except in the religious sense. It would be a different set of people migrating, but migrate they would. That path was set.
Such an alternate history would make a good novel, yes? However, in the real story we have to tell, it was Henry VIII that turned the world upside down, and sent a certain ilk of Christians across the Atlantic.
Join me, Thursday, November 18, 7 PM PST. We will talk about what happened next. It is a story of true grit and tragedy.
You can reserve your spot here. https://lauracrockett.com/leadership-event/