Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/311

 The Reformation of the Latin Church 291 A MAJOLICA DISH PAINTED IN COLOURS An allegory of the Church triumphant over heretics and infidels. Italian (Urbino), dated 1543 {In the Victoria and Albert Museuiii) these dissentients were the Non-conformists, who played a very large part in the politics of that country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In England they carried their objection to a princely head to the Church so far as to decapitate King Charles I (1649), and for eleven prosperous years England was a republic under Nonconformist rule. The breaking away of this large section of Northern Europe from Latin Christendom is what is generally spoken of as the Reformation.