It was hardly separate if Henry VIII had to beg the papacy for a divorce (and be denied). Also the Church operated as a fifth column of government by encouraging its adherents to seditiously sabotage any government which it asserted did not have the divine right of kings. If it was separate it would not have delegated divine authority by implication through blessing the rule of monarchs.

The Church at that point was extremely corrupt and bound up in secular matters of governance and finance by too many means to describe outside the medium of tedious literature. While I don’t like the endless gaudy heresies which Tyndall and Luther spawned, Luther’s criticisms of the Church and their hand-rubbing friends were surely deserved and just.