A place to start to answer this question is the start of Englands church. At the the end of Romes time in England there were Christians there and as the Romand fled the Angles and Saxons so did the Christians a good number of them went to Irland, Supposedly St. Patrick was in this group but that's one of those things we will never know. The Celtic church and it's clergy was monastic and had no diocesan clergy. It developed on its own separate from Rome. It then spread over into England and developed the same monastic system. In 660 the English decided to join Rome and that is when they received the archbishop of Canterbury. But the church continued to grown in it's monastic style. It had a strong tradition of sending missionaries to the continent. This was in effect a brain drain for the church in England. This and England, throughout the middle ages is kinda a backwater in a lot of things.

     After 800, Anglo-Saxon churchman were never 
     again to be the intellectual leaders of Europe,...
     By the year 1000 there is no doubt that England 
     Was an intellectual back water of Eroupe. 

The Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor p. 165-166. Most of the above information is from this fantastic book.

Then in the 1600's England became protestant, and well I don't know much about the Episcopal structure of it. Though during the civil war Cromwell did destroy and confiscate alot of curch property. Here is a decent web site on the matter. http://www.olivercromwell.org/wordpress/?page_id=1827