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The Church of England


Church of England
Canterbury-cathedral-wyrdlight.jpg
Abbreviation C of E
Orientation Anglican
Polity Episcopal
Supreme Governor Queen Elizabeth II
Primate Archbishop Justin Welby
Region England, Wales (cross-border parishes)
Isle of Man
Channel Islands
Continental Europe
Headquarters Church House, Westminster
Origin
England
Separated from Roman Catholic Church
(16th century)
Separations English Dissenters
Methodists (18th century)
Episcopal Church (US) (1789)
Plymouth Brethren (1820s)
Free Church of England (1844)
Members 25 million
Official website churchofengland.org

The Church of England (C of E) is the state church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury (currently Justin Welby) is the most senior cleric, although the monarch is the supreme governor. The Church of England is also the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It dates its establishment as a national church to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury.

The English church renounced papal authority when Henry VIII failed to secure an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in the 1530s. The English Reformation accelerated under Edward VI's regents before a brief restoration of papal authority under Queen Mary I and King Philip. The Act of Supremacy 1558 renewed the breach and the Elizabethan Settlement charted a course whereby the English church was to be both Catholic and Reformed:

In the earlier phase of the English Reformation there were both Catholic martyrs and radical Protestant martyrs. The later phases saw the Penal Laws punish Roman Catholic and nonconforming Protestants. In the 17th century, political and religious disputes raised the Puritan and Presbyterian faction to control of the church, but this ended with the Restoration. Papal recognition of George III in 1766 led to greater religious tolerance.


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