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'.