Inside the Henley town house with connections to Henry VIII

Being Henry VIII’s confessor must have been a nerve-racking job, but it’s one John Longland – who also held the titles Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Lincoln, and was thus a major ecclesiastical figure of the Tudor era – held with aplomb. Although he was closely associated with influential men (and bigger names) such as Sir Thomas More and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, his role in one of the most turbulent chapters in British history has secured his legacy, and given him a walk-on part in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, as well as many a modern-day small screen bodice-ripper.

As the famous story goes, when the athletic, handsome Henry became infatuated with Anne Boleyn during his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (and realised his Spanish-born wife was never going to provide him with a male heir), he wanted out. To this end, he started to express doubts over the validity of his marriage to Catherine, as she had been married before to his late brother, Arthur, and declared the union surely incestuous in God’s eyes.