DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

It is quite startling to be told that the title of "Defender of the Faith" was used by any royal predecessor of Henry VIII. Selden (*Titles of Honour*, ed 1631, p. 54) says: "The beginning and ground of that attribute of DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, which hath been perpetually, in the later ages, added to the style of the kings of England, (not only in the first person, but frequent also in the second and in the third, as common use shows in the formality of instruments of conveyance, leases and such like) is most certainly known. It began in Henry the VIII. For he, in those awaking times, upon the…