The nobles and the King and the priests were always suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and death lurking near.
The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those days.
Thus advantageously was the new king situated.

Will it be believed that the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and branch?
He did indeed do that.

To state the case figuratively, he was a prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft.

This Church was a horrid thing.

It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the priests to the king.