England

England, like France, had a powerful monarch in the early 1500s, Henry VIII. He decided that England should break free from Rome and should confiscate the land owned by the Church within England and close the monasteries and convents which had lived off that land. To win the approval of Parliament for this change, Henry granted the lords power to collect taxes on former Church lands and also the tithes formerly paid to the Church.

In establishing his new Church of England, or Anglican church, Henry preserved a Catholic hierarchy of bishops and archbishops to supervise religion, with himself at the head. This compromise did not however satisfy those reformers (especially commoners who lived in London and in towns) who hoped England would become a Calvinist country, as its neighbor Scotland did, or those (especially lords) who hoped England would return to the Roman Catholic fold.

This rivalry was particularly intense under Queen Elizabeth, between:

Puritans -- radical Reformation Protestants (Calvinists and Anabaptists) that came to control the House of Commons and pushed for the Anglican Church to become more Calvinist. They also argued that Elizabeth was becoming too powerful at the expense of Parliament.

and

Catholics, who control the House of Lords. They too resent Elizabeth as too powerful, even tyrannical. Catholics hope to restore a Catholic to the throne in the person of Queen Mary of Scotland, of the ruling Scottish Stuart family. She is imprisoned, and then executed by Elizabeth.