Edward Viii Piers Brendan

Wallis Simpson was the woman who stole the king’s heart and rocked the monarchy - but she was not Edward VIII’s first or only love.

Tudor England was a place of religious upheaval and uncertainty, as the Catholic church was replaced by the Church of England, with Henry VIII at its head. When Henry VIII passed through Canterbury in 1532, a young woman named Elizabeth Barton, known as the Holy Maid of Kent and widely revered as a visionary, warned him that he was 'so abominable in the sight of God that he was not worthy to tread on hallowed ground'. Two years later she was executed as an enemy of the state, but she would not be the last to be punished for her faith – the summer of 1535 would see many others suffer the same fate.