When the monks of Syon Abbey, in 1536, expelled and homeless, looked upon the ruin of their monastery and the destruction of the intricate web of interconnection between the living and the dead, the natural and the supernatural that made the medieval world, they asked how what had seemed so permanent, so set in stone, could have been destroyed. Their answer: ‘The King hath done it on his high power.’

Few kings destroy an entire world. Henry VIII did so.