Supreme Governor of the Church of England Church's assets in England and declared the Church of England as the established church with himself as its head. The Act of Supremacy 1534 confirmed the King's status as having supremacy over the church and required the peers to swear an oath recognising Henry's supremacy. Henry's daughter, Mary I, attempted to restore the English Church's allegiance to the Pope and repealed the Act of Supremacy in 1555. Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558 and the next year Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy 1558 that restored the original act. To placate critics, the Oath of Supremacy which peers
History of the Church of England the local monarch and the Pope about civil judicial authority over clerics, taxes and the wealth of the Church, and appointments of bishops, notably during the reigns of Henry II and John. As begun by Alfred the Great in 871 and consolidated under William the Conqueror in 1066, England became a politically unified entity at an earlier date than other European countries. One of the effects was that the units of government, both of church and state, were comparatively large. England was divided between the Province of Canterbury and the Province of York under two archbishops. At the time of