In one hundred and fifty years, the kings of England went from being the undisputed leaders of their church to being vassals of the papacy. In order to understand such a shift in their policies towards the Church, this paper will focus on three crises to grasp the evolving balance of power between the king of England and the papacy. The first concerns the confrontation between William I and Alexander II and then Gregory VII, following the conquest of England. The second case is the penance Henry II had to make publicly in Avranches in 1172 for securing his salvation after the murder of Thomas Becket. The last one is the surrender of the kingdoms of England and Ireland by John to Innocent III in 1213. The reasons why Henry II and John choose to publicly humiliate themselves and to demonstrate their renunciation of their feudal suzerainty, whereas such a gesture was impossible to William, must be replaced in the context of changing nature of royal power and the new grounds of their sovereignty despite the growing authority of the popes lead by the reformed Church.