What Are The Origins Of The Church Of England?

England was, at the start of the 16th century, one of the most Catholic countries in Europe but, in the late 1530s, Henry VIII turned away from the Church of Rome, and declared himself head of a new protestant Church of England. Henry himself was not a protestant but he was something of an opportunist. Breaking with the Pope allowed him to divorce his first (and subsequent) wives, it gave him more power, and it allowed England to move with the times and allow the popular movement of Protestantism to become the accepted religion of the country.

His successor, Mary, immediately returned her Kingdom to Catholicism when Henry VIII died. However, after this brief period, Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558 and she returned the country to being a protestant state. She chose the middle ground that has been the Church of England ever since. The new church was not headed by the Pope but it did retain some of the rites and practices of the Catholic church. One difference was the many services were conducted in line with the Book of Common Prayer.