IT is good to see that Abergavenny and King Henry VIII school remembers its own history.

That is not to say that I am a great admirer of Henry VIII. On February 13 1542 he had his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, beheaded at the Tower of London.. She was no more than 21.

The Church of England owes its foundation not so much to Henry VIII who almost certainly remained a Roman Catholic to the end of his days.

It owes its foundation to three great Queens of England, Anne Boleyn (1533-May 19 1536, beheaded by a French swordsman at theTower of London), Catherine Parr (1543-1547, who was clever enough to survive the real danger of being beheaded herself) and Elizabeth I (1558-1603) for whom her mother Anne Boleyn had sacrificed her life.

By keeping the name of Henry VIII we can celebrate the lives of three great ladies, all of them Queens of England, and none more famous than Elizabeth I who knighted Sir Francis Drake on board the Golden Hind at Deptford on April 41581.

We have a precious history and we must preserve it. I owe my knowledge of history above all to R.A. Parry at Monmouth School. I still think of him now I am 80 with a smile on my face.

-Gerald Morgan OM FTCD (Leader: English

Parliamentary Party, founded Lydbrook,

Gloucestershire, 2001)