The Act of Supremacy was passed in the English Parliament defining the right of Henry VIII to be acknowledged as Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Act severed ecclesiastical links with the Papacy. 

While on the surface the Act of Supremacy looked like a Protestant Reformation it was simply a break from Rome. Henry VIII wanted an essentially Catholic church without the Pope. He still went to mass three times a day, burned Protestants who embraced transubstantiation, and embraced orthodox catholicism. However, Henry’s use of the Bible to refute the claims of the Papacy and obtain a divorce opened Pandora’s box. The King of England believed the Bible was a higher authority than the word of the Pope. This new paradigm opened the floodgates for biblical inquiry within the realm. 

Those who were prepared to facilitate Henry’s break with Rome often had Protestant leanings. For example, Thomas Cranmer, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury of the newly formed Church of England, had spent several years in Germany where he had adopted Luther’s new teachings. He had even gone so far as to get married while in Germany and when he was recalled to England, rumors abounded that he had smuggled his wife into the kingdom in an extra luggage chest with holes in it. Then there was Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister and a known supporter of Protestantism. He was the architect behind the dissolution of the monasteries and worked hard to keep William Tyndale far from the king’s reach. Queen Anne herself had embraced Protestantism while at the French Court under Margaret of Navarre. She distributed Protestant literature, offered it to the king, and placed Protestants in key ecclesiastical offices. 

So while Henry’s decision to break away from Rome was not ideologically Protestant it served to facilitate the spread of Protestantism in England.