On November 3, 1534, the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, naming King Henry VIII the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England. The break with Rome, years in the making, became law that day. The vote ended Rome's authority over the English church and shifted its wealth to the crown.
Henry wanted an annulment the Pope would not grant, and the act let him settle the matter at home. It also handed him control of the church's lands and courts.
Rome lost England. The king would not yield. The church changed hands.
The act built on earlier steps that had already ended payments to Rome and had named the king the church's defender, and once the break was final, monasteries were dissolved, bishops answered to the crown, and the English Bible moved into parish churches where lay readers could hear it in their own tongue.
The change outlasted Henry and his children. It fixed a split that still defines English and British religion, and the title the act created survives in the crown's style to this day, more than four centuries after the vote in Westminster.
The break fed the English Bible's spread and gave the crown a church it could tax and direct. Rivals of the king who stayed loyal to Rome faced fines, prison, and sometimes death, so the act was not only a legal line but a test of loyalty.