Emperor Gum wrote:madrak_the_red wrote:A little bit, but the majority weren't. CofE ain't catholic after all (I think. I'm not very down on these things, being atheist).
(also, I'm English too, so don't worry, I'm not making some broad generalisation. Well, I am, but from INSIDE)
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the majority were. You're right, Church Of England is a form of Protestantism.
Regardless of religion you people should know this, it's an important part of Britain's history. The short of it:
Henry VIII wanted his marriage annulled, the Pope refused, so Henry seized the all the church's assets in England, declared himself the head of the Church of England, and got his marriage annulled. The Pope promptly excommunicated him. This was in 1536, IIRC, and the Americas were already being colonized by Europe by this point (at least temporarily). Henry's daughter, Queen Mary I, attempted to restore England to Catholicism, so it wasn't until Elizabeth took the throne in 1558 that England became permanently officially Protestant under the Church of England, with the monarch at its head.
However, not everybody converted overnight, a good chunk of England was still Catholic over the main periods of immigration to the New World, and many of them did come over, thus bringing their Catholic guilt with them. To this day, there's still something like 5 million Catholics in England. Most of them belonging to the
Catholic Church of England that was linked to.
Sorry.
