"There was great resistance in the Anglican Communion to this reforming of religious practice and doctrine to follow that of the Catholic Church. - The Episcopal Church of the USA used to be have the official name of the Protestant Episcopal Church" ~ stripes1776
The Church of England was created by King Henry VIII in 1533-1534 by secession from Rome.
It was the first protestant church to be established as a church organization before it even embraced any particular doctrines.
Doctrine wasn't Henry's concern.
Henry had been unable to persuede the RCC to give him a special dispensation to divorce his wife so that he could marry his mistress.
So as King of England, he started a new church and made himself to be the head so that he would have the authority to grant himself the divorce.
The establishment of the Church of England in 1533/1534 went along with a breakdown of Catholic church traditions - the monasteries were dissolved (rather a financial matter, as much of church property ended up in the hands of the king) and celibacy was disregarded, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer among the first to marry. [snip] More here:
Anglican Doctrines:
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/period/reformation/doctrangl.html *
Edward VI Edward VI (ruled 1547-1553) was Henry's third child, born by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Edward was only a teenager when he became king, but he thoroughly sympathized with the Protestant cause.
Edward and Thomas Cranmer set about turning the church of England into a thoroughly Protestant church.
He repealed the Six Articles, allowed clergy to marry, and imposed Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer on all church services. He also ordered any and all images and altars to be removed from churches.
Had Edward lived, England would have become a more or less Calvinist country.
Mary Edward, however, died only six years into his reign. He was succeeded by Mary (1553-1558), who was Henry's first child by Catherine of Aragon. Mary had been raised in France and was devoutly Catholic.
When she assumed the throne of England, she declared England to be a Catholic country and assertively went about converting churches back to Catholic practices. Images and altars were returned, the Book of Common Prayer was removed, clerical celibacy was reimposed, and Eucharistic practices reaffirmed.
She met opposition with steely-eyed defiance; because of the sheer number of executions of Protestant leaders, the English would eventually call her "Bloody Mary." Had she lived longer, England would probably have reverted to Catholicism for another century or so.
Elizabeth I Mary was succeeded by Elizabeth, the daughter of Ann Boleyn. Henry had executed Ann as an adulterer and Elizabeth was declared a bastard child.
Nevertheless, she assumed the throne in 1558 and reigned until 1603. Elizabeth was perhaps the greatest monarch in the history of England, and possibly the greatest and most brilliant monarch in European history.
Elizabeth understood that her country was being torn apart by the warring doctrines.
While she repealed Mary's Catholic legislation, she did not return to Edward's more austere Protestantism.
Rather, she worked out a compromise church that retained as much as possible from the Catholic church while putting into place most of the foundational ideas of Protestantism.
The pope excommunicated her and this created intense internal difficulties in England.
For it was incumbent on any Catholic to attempt to assassinate or overthrow her if possible, and a large part of the English nobility was Catholic.
Despite this, she managed to avoid assassination because of her brilliant political skills and her pervasive network of spies.
The Catholic plots on her life finally met their end when she executed her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587.
Mary was a cousin of Elizabeth's and the next in line for the English throne. She was a committed Catholic, but ruled over a country (Scotland) that had become and still is fiercely Calvinist.
Catholic extremists in England understood that Elizabeth could spell the end of any hopes of a Catholic revival in England, so they began to plot Elizabeth's assassination.
Mary, for her part, feeling justified by the Pope's excommunication of Elizabeth, foolishly took part in several of these plots.
Elizabeth eventually brought her to trial and condemned her, reluctantly, to death.
Elizabeth's greatest legacy was the spirit of compromise that infused her version of the Church of England.
She managed to please Catholics by retaining several important aspects of Catholicism and also managed to please moderate Calvinists who wanted all traces of the Roman church to be expunged.
She effected this by allowing English Calvinists (called "Puritans" because the wanted to purify the church from all Roman influences) to participate in Parliament and to set up semiautonomous congregations that practiced Calvinist doctrine but still recognized the Queen as the head of the church.
Excerpted from "Protestant England":
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/REFORM/ENGLAND.HTM