<P> Such constitutional changes made it not only possible for Henry to have his marriage annulled but also gave him access to the considerable wealth that the Church had amassed . Thomas Cromwell, as Vicar General, launched a commission of enquiry into the nature and value of all ecclesiastical property in 1535, which culminated in the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536--1540). </P> <P> Many Roman Catholics consider the separation of the Church in England from Rome in 1534 to be the true origin of the Church of England, rather than dating it from the mission of St. Augustine in AD 597 . While Anglicans acknowledge that Henry VIII's repudiation of papal authority caused the Church of England to become a separate entity, they believe that it is in continuity with the pre-Reformation Church of England . Apart from its distinct customs and liturgies (such as the Sarum rite), the organizational machinery of the Church of England was in place by the time of the Synod of Hertford in 672--673, when the English bishops were first able to act as one body under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury . Henry's Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) and the Acts of Supremacy (1534) declared that the English crown was "the only Supreme Head in earth of the Church of England, called Ecclesia Anglicana," in order "to repress and extirpate all errors, heresies, and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same ." The development of the Thirty - Nine Articles of religion and the passage of the Acts of Uniformity culminated in the Elizabethan Religious Settlement . By the end of the 17th century, the English church described itself as both Catholic and Reformed, with the English monarch as its Supreme Governor . MacCulloch commenting on this situation says that it "has never subsequently dared to define its identity decisively as Protestant or Catholic, and has decided in the end that this is a virtue rather than a handicap ." </P> <P> The English Reformation was initially driven by the dynastic goals of Henry VIII, who, in his quest for a consort who would bear him a male heir, found it expedient to replace papal authority with the supremacy of the English crown . The early legislation focused primarily on questions of temporal and spiritual supremacy . The Institution of the Christian Man (also called The Bishops' Book) of 1537 was written by a committee of 46 divines and bishops headed by Thomas Cranmer . The purpose of the work, along with the Ten Articles of the previous year, was to implement the reforms of Henry VIII in separating from the Roman Catholic Church and reforming the Ecclesia Anglicana . "The work was a noble endeavor on the part of the bishops to promote unity, and to instruct the people in Church doctrine ." The introduction of the Great Bible in 1538 brought a vernacular translation of the Scriptures into churches . The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the seizure of their assets by 1540 brought huge amounts of church land and property under the jurisdiction of the Crown, and ultimately into the hands of the English nobility . This simultaneously removed the greatest centres of loyalty to the pope and created vested interests which made a powerful material incentive to support a separate Christian church in England under the rule of the Crown . </P> <P> By 1549, the process of reforming the ancient national church was fully spurred on by the publication of the first vernacular prayer book, the Book of Common Prayer, and the enforcement of the Acts of Uniformity, establishing English as the language of public worship . The theological justification for Anglican distinctiveness was begun by the Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the principal author of the first prayer book, and continued by others such as Matthew Parker, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes . Cranmer had worked as a diplomat in Europe and was aware of the ideas of Reformers such as Andreas Osiander and Friedrich Myconius as well as the Roman Catholic theologian Desiderius Erasmus . </P>

Which monarch separated england from the catholic church