Did you know that the Church of England was founded by a dog? I wish I could tell you exactly what breed of dog it was, but the 17th-century writer who provides the source for this little known fact is maddeningly imprecise on that one essential detail. Briefly, according to Thomas Fuller, in his Worthies of England, what happened was this. Pope Clement VII, eager to do the right thing by King Henry VIII over the question of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, had retired to a castle outside Rome to decided on the issue once and for all. The English ambassadors, told by a friendly cardinal that His Holiness might soon be disposed to sign the relevant documents, hurried to the papal presence, where the Pope was sitting with one foot on a stool, the victim of a bad attack of gout. All the necessary cringes and prostrations took place, and Clement had just called for pen and ink when, as the envoys stepped forward with the papers, somebody's pet pooch bounced out from the crowd of attendants and knocked the stool from under his inflamed leg. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. The Anglican Communion doesn't go in for canonisation, but perhaps Dr Carey, as a last archiepiscopal gesture, could be persuaded to beatify the dog.
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