Robert Fripp's Diary

Glenorchy Centre West Derbyshire United

10.32

Glenorchy Centre, West Derbyshire United Reformed Church,

Coldwell Street, Wirksworth, Derbyshire.

Cell I…

II…

This congregation of the UK Guitar Circle hit full at breakfast. Our fifteenth congreet presented themselves at breakfast, having dribbled pitifully in their dormitory bunk for all of yesterday.

Morning sitting at 07.15.

Breakfast 08.00.

Guitar Meeting at 09.15 to address circulating. Various attempts to slaughter C major were, mostly, successful; seemingly without effort. There were, however, a few faces that evidenced strain & various approaches to manifesting cheerful.

Basic Form – Left & Continuing;

Basic Form – Right & Continuing;

Basic Form – Left with Return;

Basic Form – Right with Return;

Basic Form – Left with Return + 1;

Basic Form – Right with Return + 1;

Basic Form – Left with Return + 2;

Basic Form – Right with Return + 2;

Basic Form – Left with Return + 2 - 1;

Basic Form – Right with Return + 2 – 1.

Then into two & three groups for offsets on arpeggiated triads into one, two & three octaves.

Over to Curt.

14.23         Lunch at 13.15.  The dining room is up the steps…

… from the dormitory. Looking towards the cell…

… the cell…

…  is opposite luxury quarters…

Looking back towards the stairs…

View from the stairs I…

II…

Dining Room I…

II…

The kitchen is behind the door in the middle of the wall.

View I…

II…

Notice Board…

II…

No mention of the perils attendant on close proximity to the UK Guitar Circle.

Personal meetings at 15.00.

16.34         Tea at 16.00 with discussions on whether it was Luther’s fate, or destiny, to be constipated. Further explanations for Curt on the progress of schism, Protestantism & Dissent in England, picking up from yesterday…

Henry VIII & Henry’s “middle way” between Roman Catholicism & a Catholicism directed by the King & head of the English Church (1534) who, doctrinally, did not accept much of the European Protestant theology developed by (for example) Luther, Calvin & Zwingli. Henry’s own re-direction & formulation of the catholic tradition involved contradictions & compromises - justification by faith alone and/or good works? Protestant or Catholic? - that are mostly continuing today, in a wonderfully English fashion: a holy bodge that keeps going.

After Henry’s death in 1547, a Protestant direction was set during the reign of Henry’s son, the young Edward VI (1547-1553). Edward was followed by his half-sister Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, and a fervent Roman Catholic. Mary’s persecutions of the Other Lot included public bonfires of quite a few of them, and likely did more for Protestantism in England than any other single factor. A good martyr is hard to forget, and John Foxe made sure they weren’t.

Elizabeth, Henry’s daughter by his second wife Anne Boleyn, became queen in 1558. Henry probably had a son by Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary, but he didn’t count because he was born on the wrong side of the covers & became a Fitzroy. Under the Elizabethan Settlement, the independent Church of England was re-established by the Act of Supremacy (1559). The Book of Common Prayer (final revision) of 1662 & the Thirty-nine Articles (1571) became main statements of Anglican liturgy & doctrine. New/old changes, back & forwards, were a tad confusing for small country parishes, clergy & congregations, but the new forms were steadily applied & imposed by the country’s Power Possessors.

Earnest Reformers had run away from Mary’s England to Europe, a safe place to practice Protestant Face, and they came back to Elizabeth’s England. But Elizabeth was too moderate for earnest Prot Faces who wanted to be nasty to recusant Catholics. Meanwhile, lots of the Better Sort, and probably a majority of the Lower Sort, remained loyal to the Old Faith. But positions of power & responsibility, throughout the country, were only being handed out to those prepared to swear an oath of loyalty to the Royal Supremacy.

What a mess.

Fortunately & unfortunately, Elizabeth was a pragmatic. Provided you were prepared to lie with a smile on your face, while taking care of business, you could believe anything you like. Good Queen Bess was in the middle, dealing with stuff, with Prot Face on one side, incense & the pope on the other.

The mess got worse with Mary, Queen of Scots.

In 1568 Mary was driven from Scotland & took refuge (aka imprisonment) in England.

In 1569 a rebellion by feudal aristocrats in the Catholic north of England was put down by more than unkind words & nasty looks.

In 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth, and told her subjects they weren’t bound to the oath of allegiance; so they could be disloyal & traitorous with good consciences.

In 1571 Elizabeth’s spies uncovered conspiracies linked to Mary, who was personally ambitious & conspiratorial. Mary was supported by the Roman church as rightful Queen of England, which didn’t go down well with Elizabeth or her ministers.

In 1572 the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants in France set a new low in relations between Hugenots & Roman Catholics.

In 1580 Pope Gregory XIII declared the world would be better without that nasty heretic, Elizabeth I!

In 1584 William of Orange, the other major Protestant leader in Europe beside Elizabeth, was assassinated.

In 1586 Mary’s secret correspondence, of the disloyal kind, was found.

In 1587 (8th. February) Mary was beheaded.

English executioners used an axe, and were well-known for needing a few shots at the job to get it done; for example, Sir Walter Raleigh looked up after the first axe-blow & asked his executioner to take better aim. Mary’s took two shots & her small dog was found nestling beneath her skirts.

Meanwhile, English Jesuits were being trained on the Continent & returning to their compatriots to intrigue & plot, alternatively, minister to their co-religionists (depending on your point of view).

In July 1588 the Spanish Armada arrived off the Southern coast of England, Sir Francis Drake finished his game of bowls & sailed out from Plymouth for a punch up.

The mess got worse.

Through all of this, William Cecil was a main gigster for Elizabeth, beginning right away in her reign as sole secretary in 1558, becoming Lord Burghley in 1571, and getting his son Robert (born 1563) the gig as secretary in 1596. Robert went on to serve James I of England, buy Cranborne Manor, have children who had children, etc., etc., and eventually shoeing a relative into the Red Lion House, but only after it was no longer a pub.

Then Elizabeth died in 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England, got the Bible translated into English - better than any before and since – wrote a book on witches, and got up the hopes of Puritans in England because he was a Calvinist. That was because he came from Scotland. But he let them down in 1604 at the Hampton Court Conference because he liked the gig of King – No bishop! No king! So much for Presbytarianism down south, then. Pooey! Pooey! they said & in 1607 a team of Puritans from Scrooby went to Holland en route to catch a boat called The Mayflower, that a madame in New York was named after, and eventually sailed to Cape Cod. They took a long time and only arrived in 1620.

King James preferred men, particularly those with bona lallies, but he did his duty & it worked, more than once. His first son, Henry, was a winner but died aged 16 in 1612, so his son second Charles, a loser, went on to be King in 1625. Charles had a Scots accent and a slight stammer, but nowhere near as bad an accent as his father James, whose accent was much worse. And James had a tongue too large for his mouth so dropped a lot of food over his clothes. Charles got so into the King gig that he upset Puritans with round heads, and lost his own in 1649. Then the Puritans got into power & had a Commonwealth, but had to fight a couple of civil wars  for it (1642-49). John Milton was a leading Puritan. He wrote a famous book There Goes Paradise! and a sequel Here It Comes Again!

But everyone else such had a miserable time that when Oliver Cromwell died of warts, Charles I’s son came back from France, where he had been practising French practices, and became King in 1660. Charles II’s French practices were very useful throughout his reign, dealing with the convolutions of Anglicanism, Romanism, dissenting non-conformism & more mistresses than can be good for anyone. The Church of England had a major comeback when he arrived.

Any English Protestant not conforming to the doctrines & practices of the Church of England was called a Dissenter, initially from the five Dissenting Brethren at the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643–47), but mainly because they just didn’t agree. The word Nonconformist was first used in penal acts (1660), when Charles II was Restored along with Anglicanism. The Act of Uniformity (1662) authorized places of worship by congregations separated from the Church of England. This is why the word Separatist came about.

Charles II was a closet Roman Catholic, but knew it didn’t go with the King of England gig, so only went full-time Roman when he died (1685). Then James II took over. James II was a paid-up, card-carrying Roman, quite a good guy & a god soldier, but he went a bit loopy towards the end. When his Catholic wife got pregnant in 1687, it looked like the succession would go Roman Catholic, and this really upset the managers. So they called a Glorious Revolution in 1688–89, threw James II out & invited William of Orange in. This was not the William of Orange who had been assassinated nearly a hundred years before.

It was all very messy.

This wasn’t a great time to disagree with the Church of England, because you automatically became a Nonconformist. On the other hand, this was a great time to be a Nonconformist because there got to be so many different kinds of them – Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians, Plymouth Brethren, English Moravians, Churches of Christ, and eventually the Salvation Army. Quakers don’t talk a lot, but in the Sally you get to play in a brass band.

 I’m not sure exactly where the United Reformed Church of Wirksworth fits in, but John Wesley was born in 1703 and became an Anglican deacon in 1725. He had a Holy Club with some pals who studied methodically & did good works around Oxford, but fell apart when John went missionising to Savannah, Georgia in 1735. He failed with the Indians & Sophia Hopkey, and upset enough of the congregation that returning to England seemed a good idea. Then he met Peter Bohler, a Moravian, got into Lutheran theology & Band Societies, and was influenced by George Whitfield & Evangelicalism. John also had a brother, Charles, and eventually the names Wesleyan, Methodist & Evangelical all got to be used a lot. The Wesley brothers also wrote some hymns.

You could be an Evangelical and either Anglican or Dissenter. Anglican Evangelicalism in the 18th century emphasized the Protestant side of things, and the Oxford Movement of the 19th century, the Roman Catholic part. These two attitudes continue today, and are usually called Low Church (Protestant) and High Church (Roman Catholic). The church at Wimborne St. Giles, a village close to Cranborne where Crafties would walk for tea in the village hall on Sundays between 1986-89, rebuilt after a fire in 1900, is very High Church: incense but without the Pope. The holy bodge continues.

Dissenters are also called Free Churchman because at the end of the19th century different denominations of Nonconformists said let’s get together and have a Free Church Federal Council!  So they did. The free churches also said let’s have voluntary societies to maintain the Sabbath, abolish slavery & encourage moral reform! So they did that too. Next door to the Glenorchy Centre is a Temperance Hall, for sale. This is a wonderful building, of rough beauty. If it were in Bredonborough, I would be looking at the For Sale board with interest while twitching gently.

In Scotland, the established church is Presbyterian, so all other churches, including the Church of England, are considered Nonconforming. Cruel but fair, as it were.

21.52 Dinner at 19.00. Guitar Meeting at 19.45 because the apple crumble wasn’t  ready. Several attempts were made to question the validity & integrity of C major, mostly successful, in one, two & three groups. C major was abandoned for C symmetrical, which was abandoned in favour of C major. After an hour of this, we went back for apple crumble.

Curt asked a question: when in GC, historically, did circulating become Circulations, one of the pillars of Guitar Craft?

The particular & specific moment I remember well, and told the story. And, along the way, commenting on mistakes & their repercussions in the personal, social & impersonal domains.

Now, personal & small group work is underway.