THE schism between England and the Catholic Church, widely considered the Brexit of the 16th century, decided our future for centuries. 

But did Henry VIII, the country’s cuddliest king, mastermind the papal break because of his need for a divorce and a male heir? Or was he motivated by finding sitting through a whole mass fucking deadly?

To quote from the personal papers of Cardinal Wolsey: “My worries for our King deepen day by day. On asking what wisdom the Lord blessed him with, he replied ‘Wisdom? All I heard was a dullard priest droning on for an hour and a sodding half in Latin.’

“His Majesty has grown overfond of lavish entertainment, of society balls or the thrill of a three-day hunt. I advised the altar server to give it extra welly with the incense, but he did not deign to notice and I spied his head nod during the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. And that’s the fun bit.

“His love of the lavish even made the dawn mass that bit more arduous for him. Though Henry claims never to have suffered the dark consequences of mead, yet he was still seen to have inhaled a barrel of ale yestereve.

“I doubt this lingering poison will have made his reception of the homily on the holy virtues of fasting any jollier. He has confided in me honestly about the trials of his faith, from his disaffection towards his lady Queen to the vast sums of taxation the Vatican demands.

“Yet it is my honest opinion that he would have forgiven these faults were it not for this morning’s stunningly slow rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. I fear the depths of boredom the King was forced to may cause him to act rashly.”

And so, despite warnings that Protestantism wouldn’t be any more exciting, the King was set in his desire to reform the Church and burn every last monastery to the ground out of revenge.

Next week: to 1970, when The Sun newspaper’s Page 3 invented tits.