If a zealous priest called Gregory Botolph had guarded his tongue more carefully in Holy Week of 1540, England might well be a Catholic country still. Let me explain. Botolph was a chaplain to the governor of Calais, still an English possession. Like many garrison towns, it contained a lot of people with plenty of time to squabble – and the squabbling was made worse by rising religious tensions between good Catholics like Fr Botolph and a growing number of colleagues affected by Luther and the more radical Protestantism of Strasbourg and Switzerland.