This site offers quite a good perspective :-
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html
I suppose this excerpt from the above site puts into context, relating to :-The Enlightenment in England
Meanwhile Great Britain had developed its own Enlightenment, fostered by thinkers like the English thinker John Locke, the Scot David Hume, and many others. England had anticipated the rest of Europe by deposing and decapitating its king back in the 17th century. Although the monarchy had eventually been restored, this experience created a certain openness toward change in many places that could not be entirely extinguished. English Protestantism struggled to express itself in ways that widened the limits of freedom of speech and press. Radical Quakers and Unitarians broke open old dogmas in ways that Voltaire was to find highly congenial when he found himself there in exile. The English and French Enlightenments exchanged influences through many channels, Voltaire not least among them.
Because England had gotten its revolution out of the way early, it was able to proceed more smoothly and gradually down the road to democracy; but English liberty was dynamite when transported to France, where resistance by church and state was fierce to the last possible moment. The result was ironically that while Britain remained saturated with class privilege and relatively pious, France was to become after its own revolution the most egalitarian and anticlerical state in Europe--at least in its ideals. The power of religion and the aristocracy diminished gradually in England; in France they were violently uprooted.
one good example of Enlightenment:-
"Michel de Montaigne, in a much more quiet and modest but ultimately more subversive way, asked a single question over and over again in his
Essays: "What do I know?" By this he meant that we have no right to impose on others dogmas which rest on cultural habit rather than absolute truth. Powerfully influenced by the discovery of thriving non-Christian cultures in places as far off as Brazil, he argued that morals may be to some degree relative. Who are Europeans to insist that Brazilian cannibals who merely consume dead human flesh instead of wasting it are morally inferior to Europeans who persecute and oppress those of whom they disapprove? "
As to your question, from what I can see, as with any other subject in life there are those for and those against; fudamentalism and enlightenment.
I think Henry VIII, by his behaviour could be said to be 'enlightened' - though I think it was more a case of where's the answer to
my problem ?
The English, as a whole, I would have thought tend towards the fundementalist side - but I think that is more of a culltural trait than anything else - the French, with their revolution are definitely classed as 'enlightened'.
That's the thing about England, we drag our heels about everything; we enjoy being steeped in tradition, although if you ask John Doe, he will probably tell you that it would be better to dump all the Pomp, and 'get with the beat'.
