From Supreme Head to Supreme Governor

Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy in 1534 severed the English church from Rome after the papacy refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and the Act named the king himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, a title claiming direct headship in place of the pope. His daughter Mary I briefly restored papal authority during her reign, but Elizabeth I's own Act of Supremacy in 1559 re-established royal authority over the church while deliberately adjusting the title from Supreme Head to Supreme Governor, a change meant to answer the theological objection, pressed by reformers on the continent and at home, that Christ alone can properly be called head of his church.

The 1559 Settlement required an Oath of Supremacy from clergy and officeholders acknowledging the monarch's authority, and by 1571 Article XXXVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles fixed the position doctrinally, asserting the sovereign's authority to govern all estates of the realm, including the clergy, in outward and temporal matters, while explicitly denying that the monarch has any power to minister the sacraments or to decide doctrine directly, a careful line intended to distinguish royal supremacy from anything resembling a lay papacy.