‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight’ is the lament at the end of Christopher Marlowe’s play ‘Doctor Faustus’. A promising scholar wastes his God-given opportunity of a few years on this planet. It makes us think of the ‘might have been’ of histories. Not that there were any. Things happened. They become the past. Historians do their best to tell the tale. That is enough to keep them busy life-long with their computers and notes.
But suppose. Just suppose. Suppose William the Conquer had failed in his tactics. His troops had landed and never made any progress. King Harold was not hit in the eye by an arrow. The defeat he had inflicted on Harold Hardrada at Stamford Bridge had not taken too much out of him. William’s civil service was to prove unequal to the task of adding up his gains and establishing a new nobility.
We should still have spoken English. We may have had a mongrel version of the Christian faith rather than a Rome and Canterbury led type. Tostig’s attempt at invasion might have boosted the English navy that had had a victory at Swanage and was to have a gleaming future.
Suppose the Duke of Medina Sidonia had sent Drake’s ships back to England in obloquy rather than triumph. England would not have had a navy equal to any force on the globe. The English language would not have followed the trade, and would not have found itself continually in demand. The Anglican form of Christianity would not have flourished as it has done until recently.
It might have been so. But it is pointless to speculate. When Jesus’ disciples attempted to take him down this road, he turned the conversation into a warning about that kind of interest. He had not come to teach divination. (Mark 13).
Imagine how different things might have been if you had not been brought up as a Christian.
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