Language reformation
From Dr David Dendy Sir: Noel Gale concentrates too much on Henry and not enough on his successors (Letters, 6 September). Under Edward, Elizabeth and James 1/VI, the Anglican Church became a well-favoured and well-founded one, which it remained until quite recently. The several non-conformist sects here and in the US followed its Prayer Book and Bible — books which, with Shakespeare, created the English language as we know it.
The most important effect of the Protestant Reformation in the Anglo-Saxon countries was not so much religious but the freeing of ordinary folk to read the Bible and to worship in their own tongue. This led, in due course, to an independence of mind and a unique inventiveness in both technology and institutions. The Industrial and the Agricultural Revolutions began in Britain and spread rapidly to the US, the British empire and northern Europe. The Catholic countries were slow to follow.
David A.V Dendy
Blewbury, Oxfordshire
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