Great English dates No 7: 1536

Two years after Henry VIII's break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries changed the face and fortunes of England for ever

Henry VIII (1509-47) was the Hercules of English history. Part medieval tyrant, part renaissance prince, he discarded the ancient compromise of Norman rulers and English people. He took a nation salvaged by his father, Henry Tudor, from civil war and set over it a sovereign king, master of its civil and religious being.

In 1534, tormented by the Roman church's...