He had rewritten the story of the Reformation.

He had proved that the Church of England, though in a sense it dated from St.Austin of Canterbury, became under Henry VIII.

a self-contained institution, independent of Rome and subject to the supremacy of the Crown.
Elizabeth altered the form of words in which her father had expressed his ecclesiastical authority; but the substance was in both cases the same.

The sovereign was everything.

The Bishop of Rome was nothing.