The main document that lead to this split was the Statute in Restraint of Appeals, passed by Parliament in 1533. The idea went like this: The king of England, Henry VIII the only religious authority for all of England's possessions, so instead of going to the Pope for religious concerns, you would go to the King. This was based on a claim that England was an empire, based on Henry being the descendant of a most likely mythological descendant of Aeneas (of Rome founding and Trojan fame), and this is important because a king recognized ecclesiastical powers as equals, an emperor did not. One year later, the act of Supremacy declared Henry head of the Anglican church.