The Dissolution Of The Monasteries

[poliphilo]

"Dissolution"- a curiously mild word- as if the monasteries had just melted away. The reality was theft, murder and the obliteration of a thousand year old culture. The English have always been a little cagey about talking about it.  Henry VIII?- oh, he was the man who had trouble with his wives. Where is the art that deals with this national crime? There isn't any. Shakespeare, who lived as close to the events as my generation does to WWII, slips in the odd reference- "bare ruined choirs where once the sweet birds sang"- but you sense him being careful. The new ruling class didn't want people talking about how they'd come by  their nice new houses and estates. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a lot of guilt about the Empire washing about these days, the bombing of German cities is a perennial subject of debate, the Queen recently laid a wreath at the IRA memorial in Dublin- and earlier this year I went round the new Museum of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Liverpool. I don't think we do too badly at facing up to the crimes of our ancestors.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

A wreath? Really?

I think they should have drug your queen off to Kilmainham Gaol, put a bucket over her head and beat on it for a while -- not too hard, mind you, since she isn't getting any younger, but hard enough to help her "face up" to the crimes of her ancestors. That's how her ancestor's minions liked to help any locals that dared stand up to their English masters.

Then perhaps we could throw the old ratbag in some stinking ship's hole and transport her to Sydney Cove to rot. Alternatively, we could show her the English equivalent of leniency and just quietly hang her.