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On March 30, 1533, Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury. From the article:
"The king needed a right-hand man to push through his reform of the Church and Thomas Cranmer was the ideal candidate. Well-educated, intelligent, loyal, and not an extremist, Cranmer was the most prominent figure in the pro-Reformist faction in England's Church hierarchy, a faction which pushed relentlessly for moderate Lutheran-inspired reforms. Cranmer had even written a book in 1529 CE which supported Henry's position in his quest to annul his first marriage. Cranmer had then served from 1531 CE as Henry's personal chaplain. Accordingly, Cranmer was selected as the successor to William Warham as the Archbishop of Canterbury on 30 March 1533 CE, an appointment subsequently approved by the Pope after diplomatic pressure was applied. Warham had not been very accommodating to the king's reforms but Cranmer would prove to be loyal to his king right to the end.
Thomas Cranmer duly annulled Henry's marriage on 23 May 1533 CE. The Act of Succession (30 April 1534 CE) declared Catherine's daughter Mary illegitimate. Before these momentous decisions, Cranmer had presided over the secret marriage of Henry to Anne Boleyn on 25 January 1533 CE. Unfortunately, Anne would soon fall out favour with the king. Three failed pregnancies and an increasingly stormy relationship between the two led to Henry looking elsewhere for an heir. The king's eye was caught by another lady-in-waiting, one Jane Seymour. Anne was accused of adultery, and the marriage was annulled by Cranmer on 17 May 1536 CE. Anne was imprisoned in the Tower of London and then executed on 19 May 1536. Henry wasted no time at all and married Jane Seymour on 30 May. Jane did finally give the king a legitimate son, Edward, born on 12 October 1537 CE, but she herself died from complications soon after the birth.
After a short and disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves (1519-1557 CE) in 1540 CE, Henry immediately moved on to wife number five, Catherine Howard (c. 1523-1542 CE), another young and pretty lady-in-waiting at court. Unfortunately, it turned out Catherine had been of loose morals both before and during the marriage. The news of her scandalous reputation was broken to the king by Cranmer after he had interviewed Mary Lascelles who had lived in Catherine's house in Norfolk. At first, Henry would not believe it but when Cranmer came back with ample evidence, Catherine's fate was sealed - executed at the Tower in February 1542 CE. The next year Henry married his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr (c. 1512-1548 CE), on 12 July 1543 CE.
The Reformation Gathers Pace
While the king had been busy in his private life, changing wives, the Reformation had also gathered pace. The Act of Supremacy of 28 November 1534 CE formally declared the king head of the Church in England, replacing the Pope in that exalted position. Cranmer was fully in support of this move and Henry's next one, the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1536 CE Henry presented Parliament with a bill to abolish all monasteries in his kingdom. The bill was passed and the estates of the monasteries were redistributed to the Crown and Henry's supporters. The abbots of Glastonbury, Colchester, Reading, and Woburn were all hanged, and the last monastery to close was Waltham Abbey in Essex in March 1540 CE. However, it was here that Henry met his first major obstacle to his reforms of the Church. An uprising against the closures began in Lincolnshire and then spread to Yorkshire and other northern counties in October 1536 CE. These rebellions, which involved up to 40,000 protestors, are collectively called the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' and one of the specific aims was to see the resignation of Cranmer. However, met by a royal army and given false promises of pardons and a return to Catholic ways, the protestors disbanded peacefully; many of the ringleaders would be executed the next year.
The consequences of failing to block the Six Articles were personal for Cranmer who had to divorce his wife.
Henry and Cranmer pressed on regardless. The Act of Ten Articles of 1536 CE introduced Lutheran-inspired principles into church practices and doctrine. Other reforms included the publication of a translation of the Bible in English in 1539 CE, for which Cranmer wrote the prologue. It is important to remember though, that Henry was not dead set on reforming the doctrine of the Church; his commitment to traditional Catholic practices such as mass, confession and clerical celibacy, is evidenced in the 1539 CE Act of Six Articles. Indeed, Cranmer was not always on the side of Henry, whom the archbishop considered not quite radical enough in his reforms, even if Cranmer himself was not an extremist. For example, the archbishop stood against the Act of Six Articles because it was too conservative and guaranteed many traditional Catholic church practices. The Six Articles had been pushed by Cranmer's rival faction in the church hierarchy, the Catholic conservatives led by Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester. The consequences of failing to block the Six Articles were personal for Cranmer who had to divorce his wife (she went back to Germany to live with relatives). He was also asked to resign from office but refused.
The Reforms of Edward VI
When Henry VIII died of illness in January 1547 CE, he was succeeded by his young son Edward. Cranmer was back at the top of the political pile, and he was on hand as Archbishop of Canterbury to crown the boy-king in Westminster Abbey on 20 February 1547 CE. Edward and his two successive regents (in all but name), Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset (l. c. 1500-1552 CE) and John Dudley, the Earl of Northumberland (l. 1504-1553 CE) continued the Reformation even more vigorously than Henry VIII had.
In 1547 CE Cranmer issued his Book of Homilies, a collection of set sermons to be used in church services. Cranmer then introduced his new Book of Common Prayer, issued in English in 1549 CE and made compulsory under the Act of Uniformity of the same year. The prayer book was updated with an even more radical departure from Catholicism in 1552 CE when the idea of transubstantiation was rejected (that the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ). The term Protestantism came into widespread use for the first time. Iconography, murals, and pictorial stained glass windows were all removed from churches, and services were now conducted in English, not Latin. Catholic altars were replaced by communion tables. The worship of saints was discouraged. Priests were now permitted to marry. Religious guilds were suppressed, endowments (chantries) were abolished for priests to sing mass for the souls of the dead, and church lands were confiscated. The riches gained often went straight into the pockets of the nobility.
There were protests, just like there had been over the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Again, the mix of a poor economic situation for many and resentment at changes in traditional parish life led to a rebellion, this time in Cornwall and then Norfolk in 1549 CE. The latter, known as the Kett Rebellion after its leader Robert Kett, was the more serious but was quashed without pity by a massacre of rebels at Dussindale in August. The Reformation was pursued relentlessly with more 'Popish' practices being banned such as eliminating the more garish elements of clergy's vestments and the abolition of prayers for the dead.
'Bloody' Mary & the Resurgence of Catholicism
When Edward died of tuberculosis in July 1553 CE, and after Cranmer had presided over his funeral, there was a brief and utterly unsuccessful attempt by John Dudley and Cranmer to install the late king's cousin Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554 CE) as queen. Lady Jane was a strict Protestant but the wide appeal of Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Edward's half-sister, had been woefully underestimated. Mary represented legitimacy and a continuance of the Tudor line, and she was swept onto the throne with the approval of both commoners and nobles. The problem now for Cranmer was that Mary, like her mother Catherine of Aragon, was a strict Catholic. Mary I of England would only reign for 5 years but in that time she swept away all the Reformist legislation that had been passed by her predecessors since 1529 CE.
Mary's anti-Reformation policies met with two problems. The first was that nobles were none too happy to hand back estates they had gained from the Church under the last two kings. The second problem was that Mary wanted to marry Prince Philip of Spain (l. 1527-1598 CE) and many feared England would become absorbed into the immensely rich and powerful Spanish Empire. There was yet another major rebellion, the Wyatt Rebellion in Kent in January 1554 CE, named after its leader Sir Thomas Wyatt (1521-1554 CE). The protestors wanted to stop the 'Spanish Marriage' but perhaps secretly they intended to replace Mary with her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth. Certainly, the queen considered the second motive the real one and so she first executed Lady Jane Grey in February 1554 CE, imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London and then set about executing prominent Protestants. This last policy earned the queen her nickname 'Bloody Mary' and spelt the end of Thomas Cranmer's long career.
Imprisonment & Execution
As with any person in a position of power, Cranmer had his enemies and critics. There were some who thought his reforms had gone too far while others were disappointed they did not go far enough. There were also accusations of his shifting position on ecclesiastical issues throughout his career. As one bishop had once asked, "What believe you, and how do you believe, my lord?" (Brigden, 189). However, this is to ignore the complexity of the changes going on in the Church and the practical reality of Tudor politics which meant that Cranmer very often had to satisfy and balance the triple demands of his monarch, the Church, and his own conscience. Of all his critics, one particular enemy proved to be lethal: Queen Mary.
Thomas Cranmer was arrested on Mary's orders in September 1555 CE for heresy and confined to the Tower of London. The archbishop's idea that kings were the supreme authority in everything now came back to haunt him: Mary had spoken her will. At his trial, Cranmer was forced to admit that he could not follow a monarch whose religion he opposed and he was therefore guilty of treason. The archbishop went so far as to recant his Protestantism, and he was made to do so again in public prior to his execution in Oxford. Mary could not quite resist the chance to deal one last blow to the man who had divorced her mother from Henry and disinherited her from her birthright. However, realising the folly of repudiating his own religious convictions, Cranmer took this final opportunity to reverse the showmanship on his monarch. On 21 March 1556 CE Cranmer was led to the stake at which he would be burned but before mounting the scaffold he thrust his right hand deep into the flames and shouted that he did this because that was the hand which had sinned in signing his own recantation. In one brutal action, Cranmer had saved his reputation and given hope to Protestants that the fight was far from over.
In a sense, Cranmer had the last laugh, for when Mary died of cancer in November 1558 CE she was succeeded by Elizabeth Tudor, crowned Elizabeth I of England on 15 January 1559 CE. Elizabeth would restore Protestantism in England, and this time it would be for good."
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard 1SG Steven Imerman SFC William Farrell Lt Col Charlie Brown Col Carl Whicker SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SP5 Geoffrey Vannerson MSG Felipe De Leon Brown LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price PO1 H Gene Lawrence LTC Jeff Shearer ] LTC Wayne Brandon PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SPC Douglas Bolton PVT Mark Zehner
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard 1SG Steven Imerman SFC William Farrell Lt Col Charlie Brown Col Carl Whicker SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SP5 Geoffrey Vannerson MSG Felipe De Leon Brown LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price PO1 H Gene Lawrence LTC Jeff Shearer ] LTC Wayne Brandon PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SPC Douglas Bolton PVT Mark Zehner
"The king needed a right-hand man to push through his reform of the Church and Thomas Cranmer was the ideal candidate. Well-educated, intelligent, loyal, and not an extremist, Cranmer was the most prominent figure in the pro-Reformist faction in England's Church hierarchy, a faction which pushed relentlessly for moderate Lutheran-inspired reforms. Cranmer had even written a book in 1529 CE which supported Henry's position in his quest to annul his first marriage. Cranmer had then served from 1531 CE as Henry's personal chaplain. Accordingly, Cranmer was selected as the successor to William Warham as the Archbishop of Canterbury on 30 March 1533 CE, an appointment subsequently approved by the Pope after diplomatic pressure was applied. Warham had not been very accommodating to the king's reforms but Cranmer would prove to be loyal to his king right to the end.
Thomas Cranmer duly annulled Henry's marriage on 23 May 1533 CE. The Act of Succession (30 April 1534 CE) declared Catherine's daughter Mary illegitimate. Before these momentous decisions, Cranmer had presided over the secret marriage of Henry to Anne Boleyn on 25 January 1533 CE. Unfortunately, Anne would soon fall out favour with the king. Three failed pregnancies and an increasingly stormy relationship between the two led to Henry looking elsewhere for an heir. The king's eye was caught by another lady-in-waiting, one Jane Seymour. Anne was accused of adultery, and the marriage was annulled by Cranmer on 17 May 1536 CE. Anne was imprisoned in the Tower of London and then executed on 19 May 1536. Henry wasted no time at all and married Jane Seymour on 30 May. Jane did finally give the king a legitimate son, Edward, born on 12 October 1537 CE, but she herself died from complications soon after the birth.
After a short and disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves (1519-1557 CE) in 1540 CE, Henry immediately moved on to wife number five, Catherine Howard (c. 1523-1542 CE), another young and pretty lady-in-waiting at court. Unfortunately, it turned out Catherine had been of loose morals both before and during the marriage. The news of her scandalous reputation was broken to the king by Cranmer after he had interviewed Mary Lascelles who had lived in Catherine's house in Norfolk. At first, Henry would not believe it but when Cranmer came back with ample evidence, Catherine's fate was sealed - executed at the Tower in February 1542 CE. The next year Henry married his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr (c. 1512-1548 CE), on 12 July 1543 CE.
The Reformation Gathers Pace
While the king had been busy in his private life, changing wives, the Reformation had also gathered pace. The Act of Supremacy of 28 November 1534 CE formally declared the king head of the Church in England, replacing the Pope in that exalted position. Cranmer was fully in support of this move and Henry's next one, the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1536 CE Henry presented Parliament with a bill to abolish all monasteries in his kingdom. The bill was passed and the estates of the monasteries were redistributed to the Crown and Henry's supporters. The abbots of Glastonbury, Colchester, Reading, and Woburn were all hanged, and the last monastery to close was Waltham Abbey in Essex in March 1540 CE. However, it was here that Henry met his first major obstacle to his reforms of the Church. An uprising against the closures began in Lincolnshire and then spread to Yorkshire and other northern counties in October 1536 CE. These rebellions, which involved up to 40,000 protestors, are collectively called the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' and one of the specific aims was to see the resignation of Cranmer. However, met by a royal army and given false promises of pardons and a return to Catholic ways, the protestors disbanded peacefully; many of the ringleaders would be executed the next year.
The consequences of failing to block the Six Articles were personal for Cranmer who had to divorce his wife.
Henry and Cranmer pressed on regardless. The Act of Ten Articles of 1536 CE introduced Lutheran-inspired principles into church practices and doctrine. Other reforms included the publication of a translation of the Bible in English in 1539 CE, for which Cranmer wrote the prologue. It is important to remember though, that Henry was not dead set on reforming the doctrine of the Church; his commitment to traditional Catholic practices such as mass, confession and clerical celibacy, is evidenced in the 1539 CE Act of Six Articles. Indeed, Cranmer was not always on the side of Henry, whom the archbishop considered not quite radical enough in his reforms, even if Cranmer himself was not an extremist. For example, the archbishop stood against the Act of Six Articles because it was too conservative and guaranteed many traditional Catholic church practices. The Six Articles had been pushed by Cranmer's rival faction in the church hierarchy, the Catholic conservatives led by Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester. The consequences of failing to block the Six Articles were personal for Cranmer who had to divorce his wife (she went back to Germany to live with relatives). He was also asked to resign from office but refused.
The Reforms of Edward VI
When Henry VIII died of illness in January 1547 CE, he was succeeded by his young son Edward. Cranmer was back at the top of the political pile, and he was on hand as Archbishop of Canterbury to crown the boy-king in Westminster Abbey on 20 February 1547 CE. Edward and his two successive regents (in all but name), Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset (l. c. 1500-1552 CE) and John Dudley, the Earl of Northumberland (l. 1504-1553 CE) continued the Reformation even more vigorously than Henry VIII had.
In 1547 CE Cranmer issued his Book of Homilies, a collection of set sermons to be used in church services. Cranmer then introduced his new Book of Common Prayer, issued in English in 1549 CE and made compulsory under the Act of Uniformity of the same year. The prayer book was updated with an even more radical departure from Catholicism in 1552 CE when the idea of transubstantiation was rejected (that the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ). The term Protestantism came into widespread use for the first time. Iconography, murals, and pictorial stained glass windows were all removed from churches, and services were now conducted in English, not Latin. Catholic altars were replaced by communion tables. The worship of saints was discouraged. Priests were now permitted to marry. Religious guilds were suppressed, endowments (chantries) were abolished for priests to sing mass for the souls of the dead, and church lands were confiscated. The riches gained often went straight into the pockets of the nobility.
There were protests, just like there had been over the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Again, the mix of a poor economic situation for many and resentment at changes in traditional parish life led to a rebellion, this time in Cornwall and then Norfolk in 1549 CE. The latter, known as the Kett Rebellion after its leader Robert Kett, was the more serious but was quashed without pity by a massacre of rebels at Dussindale in August. The Reformation was pursued relentlessly with more 'Popish' practices being banned such as eliminating the more garish elements of clergy's vestments and the abolition of prayers for the dead.
'Bloody' Mary & the Resurgence of Catholicism
When Edward died of tuberculosis in July 1553 CE, and after Cranmer had presided over his funeral, there was a brief and utterly unsuccessful attempt by John Dudley and Cranmer to install the late king's cousin Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554 CE) as queen. Lady Jane was a strict Protestant but the wide appeal of Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Edward's half-sister, had been woefully underestimated. Mary represented legitimacy and a continuance of the Tudor line, and she was swept onto the throne with the approval of both commoners and nobles. The problem now for Cranmer was that Mary, like her mother Catherine of Aragon, was a strict Catholic. Mary I of England would only reign for 5 years but in that time she swept away all the Reformist legislation that had been passed by her predecessors since 1529 CE.
Mary's anti-Reformation policies met with two problems. The first was that nobles were none too happy to hand back estates they had gained from the Church under the last two kings. The second problem was that Mary wanted to marry Prince Philip of Spain (l. 1527-1598 CE) and many feared England would become absorbed into the immensely rich and powerful Spanish Empire. There was yet another major rebellion, the Wyatt Rebellion in Kent in January 1554 CE, named after its leader Sir Thomas Wyatt (1521-1554 CE). The protestors wanted to stop the 'Spanish Marriage' but perhaps secretly they intended to replace Mary with her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth. Certainly, the queen considered the second motive the real one and so she first executed Lady Jane Grey in February 1554 CE, imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London and then set about executing prominent Protestants. This last policy earned the queen her nickname 'Bloody Mary' and spelt the end of Thomas Cranmer's long career.
Imprisonment & Execution
As with any person in a position of power, Cranmer had his enemies and critics. There were some who thought his reforms had gone too far while others were disappointed they did not go far enough. There were also accusations of his shifting position on ecclesiastical issues throughout his career. As one bishop had once asked, "What believe you, and how do you believe, my lord?" (Brigden, 189). However, this is to ignore the complexity of the changes going on in the Church and the practical reality of Tudor politics which meant that Cranmer very often had to satisfy and balance the triple demands of his monarch, the Church, and his own conscience. Of all his critics, one particular enemy proved to be lethal: Queen Mary.
Thomas Cranmer was arrested on Mary's orders in September 1555 CE for heresy and confined to the Tower of London. The archbishop's idea that kings were the supreme authority in everything now came back to haunt him: Mary had spoken her will. At his trial, Cranmer was forced to admit that he could not follow a monarch whose religion he opposed and he was therefore guilty of treason. The archbishop went so far as to recant his Protestantism, and he was made to do so again in public prior to his execution in Oxford. Mary could not quite resist the chance to deal one last blow to the man who had divorced her mother from Henry and disinherited her from her birthright. However, realising the folly of repudiating his own religious convictions, Cranmer took this final opportunity to reverse the showmanship on his monarch. On 21 March 1556 CE Cranmer was led to the stake at which he would be burned but before mounting the scaffold he thrust his right hand deep into the flames and shouted that he did this because that was the hand which had sinned in signing his own recantation. In one brutal action, Cranmer had saved his reputation and given hope to Protestants that the fight was far from over.
In a sense, Cranmer had the last laugh, for when Mary died of cancer in November 1558 CE she was succeeded by Elizabeth Tudor, crowned Elizabeth I of England on 15 January 1559 CE. Elizabeth would restore Protestantism in England, and this time it would be for good."
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard 1SG Steven Imerman SFC William Farrell Lt Col Charlie Brown Col Carl Whicker SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SP5 Geoffrey Vannerson MSG Felipe De Leon Brown LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price PO1 H Gene Lawrence LTC Jeff Shearer ] LTC Wayne Brandon PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SPC Douglas Bolton PVT Mark Zehner
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard 1SG Steven Imerman SFC William Farrell Lt Col Charlie Brown Col Carl Whicker SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SP5 Geoffrey Vannerson MSG Felipe De Leon Brown LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price PO1 H Gene Lawrence LTC Jeff Shearer ] LTC Wayne Brandon PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SPC Douglas Bolton PVT Mark Zehner
Thomas Cranmer
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Life and Legacy of Thomas Cranmer by Rev. Colin Mercer
Rev. Colin Mercer March 19, 2006Mourne Free Presbyterian ChurchText: Psalm 124:1 A Song of degrees of David. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on March 30, 1533 Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury.
Life and Legacy of Thomas Cranmer by Rev. Colin Mercer
Mourne Free Presbyterian Church
Text: Psalm 124:1 A Song of degrees of David. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel say;
2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us:
3 Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:
4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:
5 Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.
6 Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.
7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC3EhfC-wX8
Images:
1. Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, oil on oak painting 1605 - 1608 - 1629
2. Engraving of Thomas Cranmer
3. New arms granted circa 1544 to Thomas Cranmer by King Henry VIII, in lieu of his paternal arms: Argent, on a chevron azure between three pelicans sable vulning themselves proper as many cinquefoils or, telling him "That those birds should signify unto him, that he ought to be ready, as the pelican is, to shed his blood for his young ones, brought up in the faith of Chris
4. Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex after Hans Holbein the Younger, oil on panel, early 17th century, based on a work of 1532-1533
Background from {[http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/cranmerbio.htm}]
THOMAS CRANMER, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire on the 2nd of July 1489, was the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Anne Hatfield. He received his early education, according to Morice his secretary, from "a marvellous severe and cruel schoolmaster," whose discipline must have been severe indeed to deserve this special mention in an age when no schoolmaster bore the rod in vain. The same authority tells us that he was initiated by his father in those field sports, such as hunting and hawking, which formed one of his recreations in after life. To early training he also owed the skilful horsemanship for which he was conspicuous.
At the age of fourteen he was sent by his mother, who had in 1501 become a widow, to Cambridge. Little is known with certainty of his university career beyond the facts that he became a fellow of Jesus College in 1510 or 1511, that he had soon after to vacate his fellowship, owing to his marriage to "Black Joan," a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, and that he was reinstated in it on the death of his wife, which occurred in childbirth before the lapse of the year of grace allowed by the statutes. During the brief period of his married life he held the 'appointment of lecturer at Buckingham Hall, now Magdalene College. The fact of his marrying would seem to show that he did not at the time intend to enter the church; possibly the death of his wife caused him to qualify for holy orders. He was ordained in 1523, and soon after he took his doctor's degree in divinity.
According to Strype, he was invited about this time to become a fellow of the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford; but Dean Hook shows that there is some reason to doubt this. If the offer was made, it was declined, and Cranmer continued at Cambridge filling the offices of lecturer in divinity at his own college and of public examiner in divinity to the university. It is interesting, in view of his later efforts to spread the knowledge of the Bible among the people, to know that in the capacity of examiner he insisted on a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, and rejected several candidates who were deficient in this qualification.
It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father's house at Waltham in Essex. The King (Henry VIII) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, Secretary of State, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the Lord High Almoner, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy's house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the King's meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother's widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the King, who, when Cranmer's opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: "I will speak to him. Let him be sent for out of hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the ear."
At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the King to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn's father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the King appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that "the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated," and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed "Grand Penitentiary of England," but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.
Cranmer returned in September 1530, but in January 1531 he received a second commission from the King appointing him "Conciliarius Regius et ad Caesarem Orator." In the summer of 1531 he accordingly proceeded to Germany as sole ambassador to the Emperor. He was also to sound the Lutheran princes with a view to an alliance, and to obtain the removal of some restrictions on English trade. At Nuremberg he became acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer's opinions. But Osiander's house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and in 1532 they were married. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer's statement that he never expected or desired the primacy; and it seems probable enough that, if he had foreseen how soon the primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose.
Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532, Archbishop Warham died, and the King almost immediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against the Turks, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer's conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony had occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to the pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the pope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the King. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey's. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.
In the last as in the first step of Cranmer's promotion, Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce — or rather, of the legitimation of Anne Boleyn's expected issue — had now become very urgent, and in the new archbishop he had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with which Cranmer did the work intrusted to him must have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April, Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine's marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the King were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity.
The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the King, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally determining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the King, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear, she was declared contumacious, and on the 23rd of May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the King free to marry whom he pleased. The Act of Appeals had already prohibited any appeal from the archbishop's court. Five days later he pronounced the marriage between Henry and Anne — which had been secretly celebrated about the 25th of January 1533 — to be valid. On the 1st of June he crowned Anne as Queen, and on the l0th of September stood godfather to her child, the future Queen Elizabeth.
The breach with Rome and the subjection of the church in England to the royal supremacy had been practically achieved before Cranmer's appointment as archbishop: and he had little to do with the other constitutional changes of Henry's reign. But his position as chief minister of Henry's ecclesiastical jurisdiction forced him into unpleasant prominence in connexion with the King's matrimonial experiences. In 1536 he was required to revise his own sentence in favour of the validity of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn; and on the 17th of May the marriage was declared invalid. The ground on which this sentence is pronounced is fairly clear. Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry VIII's mistress; this by canon law was a bar to his marriage with Anne—a bar which had been removed by papal dispensation in 1527, but now the papal power to dispense in such cases had been repudiated, and the original objection revived. The sentence was grotesquely legal and unjust. With Anne's condemnation by the House of Lords, Cranmer had nothing to do. He interceded for her in vain with the King, as he had done in the cases of John Fisher, Thomas More and the monks of Christchurch. His share in the divorce of Anne of Cleves was less prominent than that of Bishop Gardiner, though he did preside over the Convocation in which nearly all the dignitaries of the church signified their approval of that measure. To his next and last interposition in the matrimonial affairs of the King no discredit attaches itself. When he was made cognizant of the charges against Catherine Howard, his duty to communicate them to the King was obvious, though painful.
Meanwhile Cranmer was actively carrying out the policy which has associated his name more closely, perhaps, than that of any other ecclesiastic with the Reformation in England. Its most important feature on the theological as distinct from the political side, was the endeavour to promote the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, by encouraging translation and procuring an order in 1538 that a copy of the Bible in English should be set up in every church in a convenient place for reading. Only second in importance to this was the re-adjustment of the creed and liturgy of the church, which formed Cranmer's principal work during the latter half of his life.
The progress of the archbishop's opinion towards that middle Protestantism, if it may be so called, which he did so much to impress on the formularies of the Church of England, was gradual, as a brief enumeration of the successive steps in that progress will show. In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries. This proved impracticable, but the frequent conferences Cranmer had with the theologians composing the embassy had doubtless a great influence in modifying his views. Both in parliament and in Convocation he opposed the Six Articles of 1539, but he stood almost alone. During the period between 1540 and 1543 the archbishop was engaged at the head of a commission in the revision of the "Bishop's Book" (1537) or Institutions of a Christian Man, and the preparation of the Necessary Erudition (1543) known as the "King's Book," which was a modification of the former work in the direction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In June 1545 was issued his Litany, which was substantially the same as that now in use, and shows his mastery of a rhythmical English style.
The course taken by Cranmer in promoting the Reformation exposed him to the bitter hostility of the reactionary party or "men of the old learning," of whom Gardiner and Bonner were leaders, and on various occasions — notably in 1543 and 1545 — conspiracies were formed in the council or elsewhere to effect his overthrow. The King, however, remained true to him, and all the conspiracies signally failed. It illustrates a favourable trait in the archbishop's character that he forgave all the conspirators. He was, as his secretary Morice testifies, "a man that delighted not in revenging." Cranmer was present with Henry VIII when he died (1547). By the will of the King he was nominated one of a council of regency composed of sixteen persons, but he acquiesced in the arrangement by which Somerset became Lord Protector. He officiated at the coronation of the boy King Edward VI, and is supposed to have instituted a sinister change in the order of the ceremony, by which the right of the monarch to reign was made to appear to depend upon inheritance alone, without the concurrent consent of the people. But Edward's title had been expressly sanctioned by act of parliament, so that there was no more room for election in his case than in that of George I, and the real motive of the changes was to shorten the weary ceremony for the frail child.
During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the Protector and of the young King being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. In 1547 appeared the Homilies prepared under his direction. Four of them are attributed to the archbishop himself—those on Salvation, Faith, Good Works and the Reading of Scripture. His translation of the German Catechism of Justus Jonas, known as Cranmer's Catechism, appeared in the following year. Important, as showing his views on a cardinal doctrine, was the Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, which he published in 1550. It was immediately answered from the side of the " old learning " by Gardiner. The first prayerbook of Edward VI was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in March 1549; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop did much of the work of compilation personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI, published in 1553, owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer.
The last great undertaKing in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but completed before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrangement. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames. But he naturally loathed persecution, and was as tolerant as any in that age.
Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward's "device" of the crown to Lady Jane Grey. On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the "nine days' Queen" when the others who had with him signed Edward's device deserted her.
On the accession of Queen Mary, he was summoned to the council—most of whom had signed the same device—reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen's pleasure was known. He refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the continent. Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more than nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the Queen, who could not forgive his share in her mother's divorce and her own disgrace. On the 14th of September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declaration he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored.
In November, with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two other Dudleys, Cranmer was condemned for treason. Renard thought he would be executed, but so true a Romanist as Mary could scarcely have an ecclesiastic put to death in consequence of a sentence by a secular court, and Cranmer was reserved for treatment as a heretic by the highest of clerical tribunals, which could not act until parliament had restored the papal jurisdiction. Accordingly in March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in the Bocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th of October 1555. Cranmer had been tried by a papal commission, over which Bishop Brooks of Gloucester presided, in September 1555. Brooks had no power to give sentence, but reported to Rome, where Cranmer was summoned, but not permitted, to attend. On the 25th of November he was pronounced contumacious by the pope and excommunicated, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th of February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power.
About the same time Cranmer subscribed the first two of his "recantations." His difficulty consisted in the fact that, like all Anglicans of the 16th century, he recognized no right of private judgment, but believed that the state, as represented by monarchy, parliament and Convocation, had an absolute right to determine the national faith and to impose it on every Englishman. All these authorities had now legally established Roman Catholicism as the national faith, and Cranmer had no logical ground on which to resist. His early recantations" are merely recognitions of his lifelong conviction of this right of the state. But his dilemma on this point led him into further doubts, and he was eventually induced to revile his whole career and the Reformation. This is what the government wanted. Northumberland's recantation had done much to discredit the Reformation, Cranmer's, it was hoped, would complete the work. Hence the enormous effect of Cranmer's recovery at the final scene.
On the 21st of March he was taken to St Mary's church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life; that he renounced and refused all his recantations as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames. The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.
It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was "too fearful about what might happen to him." This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer's character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom. As a theologian it is difficult to class him. As early as 1538 he had repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation; by 1550 he had rejected also the Real Presence (Pref. to his Answer to Dr Richard Smith). But here he used the term "real" somewhat unguardedly, for in his Defence he asserts a real presence, but defines it as exclusively a spiritual presence; and he repudiates the idea that the bread and wine were " bare tokens." His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divine hereditary right of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes. He set practically no limits to the ecclesiastical authority of kings; they were as fully the representatives of the church as the state, and Cranmer hardly distinguished between the two. Church and state to him were one."
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Life and Legacy of Thomas Cranmer by Rev. Colin Mercer
Mourne Free Presbyterian Church
Text: Psalm 124:1 A Song of degrees of David. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel say;
2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us:
3 Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:
4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:
5 Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.
6 Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.
7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC3EhfC-wX8
Images:
1. Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, oil on oak painting 1605 - 1608 - 1629
2. Engraving of Thomas Cranmer
3. New arms granted circa 1544 to Thomas Cranmer by King Henry VIII, in lieu of his paternal arms: Argent, on a chevron azure between three pelicans sable vulning themselves proper as many cinquefoils or, telling him "That those birds should signify unto him, that he ought to be ready, as the pelican is, to shed his blood for his young ones, brought up in the faith of Chris
4. Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex after Hans Holbein the Younger, oil on panel, early 17th century, based on a work of 1532-1533
Background from {[http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/cranmerbio.htm}]
THOMAS CRANMER, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire on the 2nd of July 1489, was the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Anne Hatfield. He received his early education, according to Morice his secretary, from "a marvellous severe and cruel schoolmaster," whose discipline must have been severe indeed to deserve this special mention in an age when no schoolmaster bore the rod in vain. The same authority tells us that he was initiated by his father in those field sports, such as hunting and hawking, which formed one of his recreations in after life. To early training he also owed the skilful horsemanship for which he was conspicuous.
At the age of fourteen he was sent by his mother, who had in 1501 become a widow, to Cambridge. Little is known with certainty of his university career beyond the facts that he became a fellow of Jesus College in 1510 or 1511, that he had soon after to vacate his fellowship, owing to his marriage to "Black Joan," a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, and that he was reinstated in it on the death of his wife, which occurred in childbirth before the lapse of the year of grace allowed by the statutes. During the brief period of his married life he held the 'appointment of lecturer at Buckingham Hall, now Magdalene College. The fact of his marrying would seem to show that he did not at the time intend to enter the church; possibly the death of his wife caused him to qualify for holy orders. He was ordained in 1523, and soon after he took his doctor's degree in divinity.
According to Strype, he was invited about this time to become a fellow of the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford; but Dean Hook shows that there is some reason to doubt this. If the offer was made, it was declined, and Cranmer continued at Cambridge filling the offices of lecturer in divinity at his own college and of public examiner in divinity to the university. It is interesting, in view of his later efforts to spread the knowledge of the Bible among the people, to know that in the capacity of examiner he insisted on a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, and rejected several candidates who were deficient in this qualification.
It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father's house at Waltham in Essex. The King (Henry VIII) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, Secretary of State, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the Lord High Almoner, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy's house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the King's meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother's widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the King, who, when Cranmer's opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: "I will speak to him. Let him be sent for out of hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the ear."
At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the King to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn's father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the King appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that "the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated," and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed "Grand Penitentiary of England," but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.
Cranmer returned in September 1530, but in January 1531 he received a second commission from the King appointing him "Conciliarius Regius et ad Caesarem Orator." In the summer of 1531 he accordingly proceeded to Germany as sole ambassador to the Emperor. He was also to sound the Lutheran princes with a view to an alliance, and to obtain the removal of some restrictions on English trade. At Nuremberg he became acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer's opinions. But Osiander's house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and in 1532 they were married. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer's statement that he never expected or desired the primacy; and it seems probable enough that, if he had foreseen how soon the primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose.
Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532, Archbishop Warham died, and the King almost immediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against the Turks, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer's conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony had occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to the pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the pope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the King. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey's. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.
In the last as in the first step of Cranmer's promotion, Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce — or rather, of the legitimation of Anne Boleyn's expected issue — had now become very urgent, and in the new archbishop he had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with which Cranmer did the work intrusted to him must have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April, Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine's marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the King were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity.
The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the King, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally determining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the King, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear, she was declared contumacious, and on the 23rd of May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the King free to marry whom he pleased. The Act of Appeals had already prohibited any appeal from the archbishop's court. Five days later he pronounced the marriage between Henry and Anne — which had been secretly celebrated about the 25th of January 1533 — to be valid. On the 1st of June he crowned Anne as Queen, and on the l0th of September stood godfather to her child, the future Queen Elizabeth.
The breach with Rome and the subjection of the church in England to the royal supremacy had been practically achieved before Cranmer's appointment as archbishop: and he had little to do with the other constitutional changes of Henry's reign. But his position as chief minister of Henry's ecclesiastical jurisdiction forced him into unpleasant prominence in connexion with the King's matrimonial experiences. In 1536 he was required to revise his own sentence in favour of the validity of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn; and on the 17th of May the marriage was declared invalid. The ground on which this sentence is pronounced is fairly clear. Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry VIII's mistress; this by canon law was a bar to his marriage with Anne—a bar which had been removed by papal dispensation in 1527, but now the papal power to dispense in such cases had been repudiated, and the original objection revived. The sentence was grotesquely legal and unjust. With Anne's condemnation by the House of Lords, Cranmer had nothing to do. He interceded for her in vain with the King, as he had done in the cases of John Fisher, Thomas More and the monks of Christchurch. His share in the divorce of Anne of Cleves was less prominent than that of Bishop Gardiner, though he did preside over the Convocation in which nearly all the dignitaries of the church signified their approval of that measure. To his next and last interposition in the matrimonial affairs of the King no discredit attaches itself. When he was made cognizant of the charges against Catherine Howard, his duty to communicate them to the King was obvious, though painful.
Meanwhile Cranmer was actively carrying out the policy which has associated his name more closely, perhaps, than that of any other ecclesiastic with the Reformation in England. Its most important feature on the theological as distinct from the political side, was the endeavour to promote the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, by encouraging translation and procuring an order in 1538 that a copy of the Bible in English should be set up in every church in a convenient place for reading. Only second in importance to this was the re-adjustment of the creed and liturgy of the church, which formed Cranmer's principal work during the latter half of his life.
The progress of the archbishop's opinion towards that middle Protestantism, if it may be so called, which he did so much to impress on the formularies of the Church of England, was gradual, as a brief enumeration of the successive steps in that progress will show. In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries. This proved impracticable, but the frequent conferences Cranmer had with the theologians composing the embassy had doubtless a great influence in modifying his views. Both in parliament and in Convocation he opposed the Six Articles of 1539, but he stood almost alone. During the period between 1540 and 1543 the archbishop was engaged at the head of a commission in the revision of the "Bishop's Book" (1537) or Institutions of a Christian Man, and the preparation of the Necessary Erudition (1543) known as the "King's Book," which was a modification of the former work in the direction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In June 1545 was issued his Litany, which was substantially the same as that now in use, and shows his mastery of a rhythmical English style.
The course taken by Cranmer in promoting the Reformation exposed him to the bitter hostility of the reactionary party or "men of the old learning," of whom Gardiner and Bonner were leaders, and on various occasions — notably in 1543 and 1545 — conspiracies were formed in the council or elsewhere to effect his overthrow. The King, however, remained true to him, and all the conspiracies signally failed. It illustrates a favourable trait in the archbishop's character that he forgave all the conspirators. He was, as his secretary Morice testifies, "a man that delighted not in revenging." Cranmer was present with Henry VIII when he died (1547). By the will of the King he was nominated one of a council of regency composed of sixteen persons, but he acquiesced in the arrangement by which Somerset became Lord Protector. He officiated at the coronation of the boy King Edward VI, and is supposed to have instituted a sinister change in the order of the ceremony, by which the right of the monarch to reign was made to appear to depend upon inheritance alone, without the concurrent consent of the people. But Edward's title had been expressly sanctioned by act of parliament, so that there was no more room for election in his case than in that of George I, and the real motive of the changes was to shorten the weary ceremony for the frail child.
During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the Protector and of the young King being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. In 1547 appeared the Homilies prepared under his direction. Four of them are attributed to the archbishop himself—those on Salvation, Faith, Good Works and the Reading of Scripture. His translation of the German Catechism of Justus Jonas, known as Cranmer's Catechism, appeared in the following year. Important, as showing his views on a cardinal doctrine, was the Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, which he published in 1550. It was immediately answered from the side of the " old learning " by Gardiner. The first prayerbook of Edward VI was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in March 1549; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop did much of the work of compilation personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI, published in 1553, owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer.
The last great undertaKing in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but completed before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrangement. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames. But he naturally loathed persecution, and was as tolerant as any in that age.
Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward's "device" of the crown to Lady Jane Grey. On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the "nine days' Queen" when the others who had with him signed Edward's device deserted her.
On the accession of Queen Mary, he was summoned to the council—most of whom had signed the same device—reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen's pleasure was known. He refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the continent. Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more than nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the Queen, who could not forgive his share in her mother's divorce and her own disgrace. On the 14th of September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declaration he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored.
In November, with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two other Dudleys, Cranmer was condemned for treason. Renard thought he would be executed, but so true a Romanist as Mary could scarcely have an ecclesiastic put to death in consequence of a sentence by a secular court, and Cranmer was reserved for treatment as a heretic by the highest of clerical tribunals, which could not act until parliament had restored the papal jurisdiction. Accordingly in March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in the Bocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th of October 1555. Cranmer had been tried by a papal commission, over which Bishop Brooks of Gloucester presided, in September 1555. Brooks had no power to give sentence, but reported to Rome, where Cranmer was summoned, but not permitted, to attend. On the 25th of November he was pronounced contumacious by the pope and excommunicated, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th of February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power.
About the same time Cranmer subscribed the first two of his "recantations." His difficulty consisted in the fact that, like all Anglicans of the 16th century, he recognized no right of private judgment, but believed that the state, as represented by monarchy, parliament and Convocation, had an absolute right to determine the national faith and to impose it on every Englishman. All these authorities had now legally established Roman Catholicism as the national faith, and Cranmer had no logical ground on which to resist. His early recantations" are merely recognitions of his lifelong conviction of this right of the state. But his dilemma on this point led him into further doubts, and he was eventually induced to revile his whole career and the Reformation. This is what the government wanted. Northumberland's recantation had done much to discredit the Reformation, Cranmer's, it was hoped, would complete the work. Hence the enormous effect of Cranmer's recovery at the final scene.
On the 21st of March he was taken to St Mary's church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life; that he renounced and refused all his recantations as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames. The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.
It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was "too fearful about what might happen to him." This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer's character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom. As a theologian it is difficult to class him. As early as 1538 he had repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation; by 1550 he had rejected also the Real Presence (Pref. to his Answer to Dr Richard Smith). But here he used the term "real" somewhat unguardedly, for in his Defence he asserts a real presence, but defines it as exclusively a spiritual presence; and he repudiates the idea that the bread and wine were " bare tokens." His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divine hereditary right of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes. He set practically no limits to the ecclesiastical authority of kings; they were as fully the representatives of the church as the state, and Cranmer hardly distinguished between the two. Church and state to him were one."
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Thomas Cranmer taught by Jamey Miller
Heroes of the Faith 2017
Thomas Cranmer taught by Jamey Miller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfOl69Y5EM
Images:
1. Thomas Cranmer by an unknown artist (c. 1550)
2. Statue of Cranmer on the Martyrs' Memorial, Oxford
3. Thomas Cranmer at the Traitors Gate painted by Frederick-Goodall.
4. Thomas Cranmer by Gerlach Flicke
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDcranmer.htm}]
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer was born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire on 2nd July 1489. He was admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1503. According to Diarmaid MacCulloch: "Cranmer took eight years to 1511, a surprisingly long time, to acquire the degree of BA: perhaps his acknowledged problems in absorbing information quickly, or family financial worries, delayed his progress." (1)
Cranmer received his MA in 1515. Although not yet deacon or priest he still had to forfeit his fellowship of Jesus College when he married a woman who worked at an inn called The Dolphin. She became known as "Black Joan of the Dolphin" (2) He became a teacher at Buckingham College but Joan died in childbirth and he returned to Cambridge University. (3)
Thomas Cranmer took holy orders in 1520. In that year the university named him one of the preachers whom they were entitled by papal grant to license for preaching throughout the British Isles. During this period he was a loyal papalist and appeared to completely reject the ideas of Martin Luther. In fact, in 1523 he attacked him for "the arrogance of a most wicked man!" (4)
Thomas Cranmer & Henry VIII
Cranmer was a friend of Edward Lee, the Archbishop of York. In 1527 he joined him in a diplomatic mission to to the emperor Charles V in Spain. On his return he had a meeting with Henry VIII where they discussed the possible annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. At a meeting with Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Bishop Edward Foxe on 2nd August 1529, Cranmer suggested that Henry's marriage should not be decided by the canon lawyers in the ecclesiastical courts, but by theologians in the universities. (5) Henry liked the idea and from then on Cranmer became one of his key political advisors. It has been argued that Cranmer was the ideal man for Henry, since he believed in royal supremacy over the Church but also dreaded the disorder that uncontrolled reform might lead to. (6)
Henry VIII eventually sent a message to the Pope Clement VII arguing that his marriage to Catherine had been invalid as she had previously been married to his brother Arthur. Henry relied on Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to sort the situation out. During negotiations the Pope forbade Henry to contract a new marriage until a decision was reached in Rome. With the encouragement of Anne, Henry became convinced that Wolsey's loyalties lay with the Pope, not England, and in November 1529 he was dismissed from office. (7)
Henry now took up Cranmer's suggestion. In February 1530, Cranmer and Bishop Gardiner, began discussing the matter with theologians from Cambridge University. They discovered their was considerable opposition to the idea, but "eventually succeeded in obtaining the opinion that Henry required, after they had handpicked a number of university doctors, whom they knew supported Henry's case, to decide the question for the University." This included Hugh Latimer who was a Lutheran. The University pronounced that a marriage of a man with his brother's widow was against the divine law, and that a Papal dispensation could not make it valid. They encountered even stronger opposition at Oxford University, but at the end of consultation they obtained a 27 to 22 vote that Henry's marriage to Catherine was against God's law." (8)
Anne Boleyn
In 1532 Cranmer went on a further diplomatic mission to Germany. Cranmer befriended the leading Lutheran theologian, Andreas Osiander, and at some stage during a summer of diplomacy, probably in July, married Margaret, a niece of Osiander's wife, Katharina Preu. This act reflects Cranmer willingness to reject the old church's tradition of compulsory celibacy. In October 1532 he discovered that William Warham had died and Henry VIII had appointed him as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer reluctantly accepted the post but realised he would need to keep his marriage secret from the king. (9) Eustace Chapuys sent a report to Emperor Charles V that he believed that Cranmer was a supporter of Martin Luther. (10)
Henry's confidence in Cranmer was reflected by the decision to appoint him as a royal chaplain and he was attached to the household of Thomas Boleyn, the father of his mistress, Anne Boleyn. In December 1532 Henry discovered that Anne was pregnant. He realised he could not afford to wait for the Pope's permission to marry Anne. As it was important that the child should not be classed as illegitimate, arrangements were made for Henry and Anne to get married in secret. Cranmer later confirmed that the marriage ceremony took place on 25th January, 1533. (11)
Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in St Stephen's Church at Westminster on 30th March 1533. It was a necessary part of of the consecration ceremony that the Archbishop should take an oath, swearing to be obedient to Pope Clement VII and his successors and to defend the Roman Papacy against all men. This raised a problem for Henry. He wanted Cranmer's consecration ceremony to be correct in every detail, so that no one could claim that he had not been properly consecrated. This was because he intended in a few weeks time for Cranmer to state that the Pope had no authority in England.
Henry and his Archbishop of Canterbury eventually came up with a solution to the problem. Before entering the church, Cranmer made a statement in the chapter house at Westminster, in the presence of five lawyers. He declared that he did not intend to be bound by the oath of obedience to the Pope that he was about to take, "if it was against the law of God or against our illustrious King of England, or the laws of his realm of England". (12)
On 9th April, 1533, Eustace Chapuys had an audience with Henry VIII . Chapuys said that his duty to God and the Emperor required him to protest most strongly against the measures which were being taken in Parliament against Catherine of Aragon. Henry replied that he was obeying God's law in refusing to cohabit with his brother's widow. Henry also said he needed a son to ensure the succession, Chapuys pointed out that he could not be sure that he would have children by a second marriage. Henry protested at this, and asked three times if he was not like other men and hinted that Anne was pregnant.
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The following day Chapuys wrote a letter to Emperor Charles V and advised him to send an army to invade England. He argued that the intervention would succeed, because it would be welcomed not only by the English people but by most of the nobility, so that Henry would have no leaders to command his army and no horseman to serve in it. He went on to say that the Emperor did not have to fear King François, who would certainly not go to war with him for Henry's sake. (13)
Charles V eventually ruled out the use of military force. As Jasper Ridley pointed out: "The operation would be much too hazardous, and Henry would have the help of his various allies; war with England might endanger the Emperor's realms, particularly Germany, where the Lutheran Princes would enter the war on Henry's side. They also rejected the idea of a trade embargo against England, for this could easily lead to war, and would injure the interests of the Emperor's subjects in the Netherlands." (14)
Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn on 25th January, 1533. Elizabeth was born on 7th September. Thomas Cranmer became Elizabeth's godfather. Henry expected a son and selected the names of Edward and Henry. While Henry was furious about having another daughter, the supporters of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon were delighted and claimed that it proved God was punishing Henry for his illegal marriage to Anne. (15) Retha M. Warnicke, the author of The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) has pointed out: "As the king's only legitimate child, Elizabeth was, until the birth of a prince, his heir and was to be treated with all the respect that a female of her rank deserved. Regardless of her child's sex, the queen's safe delivery could still be used to argue that God had blessed the marriage. Everything that was proper was done to herald the infant's arrival." (16)
Elizabeth Barton
Archbishop Cranmer had to deal with the preacher, Elizabeth Barton. She had been claiming that if he married Anne Boleyn he would die within a month and that within six months the people would be struck down by a great plague. He was disturbed by her prophesies and ordered that she be kept under observation. Cranmer commented later that Henry put off his marriage to Anne because "of her visions". (17)
In the summer of 1533 Thomas More met Elizabeth Barton. Soon afterwards he wrote to her warning about the dangers she faced if she continued to speak with "lay persons, of any such manner things as pertain to princes' affairs, or the state of the realm... with any person, high and low, of such manner things as may to the soul be profitable for you to show and for them to know". (18)
In the summer of 1533 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote to the prioress of St Sepulchre's Nunnery asking her to bring Elizabeth Barton to his manor at Otford. On 11th August she was questioned, but was released without charge. Thomas Cromwell then questioned her and, towards the end of September, Edward Bocking was arrested and his premises were searched. Father Hugh Rich was also taken into custody. In early November, following a full scale investigation, Barton was imprisoned in the Tower of London. (19)
Peter Ackroyd, the author of Tudors (2012) has suggested: "It may be that she was put on the rack. In any case it was declared that she had confessed that all her visions and revelations had been impostures... It was then determined that the nun should be taken throughout the kingdom, and that she should in various places confess her fraudulence." (20) Barton secretly sent messages to her adherents that she had retracted only at the command of God, but when she was made to recant publicly, her supporters quickly began to lose faith in her. (21)
In March 1534 Elizabeth Barton, Edward Bocking, Hugh Rich (warden of Richmond Priory), Henry Risby (warden of Greyfriars, Canterbury), Henry Gold (parson of St Mary Aldermary) and two laymen, Edward Thwaites and Thomas Gold, were indicted of high treason. They were all found guilty and sentenced to be executed on 20th April, 1534. They were "dragged through the streets from the Tower to Tyburn". (22)
Act of Supremacy
Pope Clement VII eventually made his decision. He announced that Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was invalid. Henry reacted by declaring that the Pope no longer had authority in England. In November 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. This gave Henry the title of the "Supreme head of the Church of England". A Treason Act was also passed that made it an offence to attempt by any means, including writing and speaking, to accuse the King and his heirs of heresy or tyranny. All subjects were ordered to take an oath accepting this. (23)
Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused to take the oath and were imprisoned in the Tower of London. More was summoned before Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell at Lambeth Palace. More was happy to swear that the children of Anne Boleyn could succeed to the throne, but he could not declare on oath that all the previous Acts of Parliament had been valid. He could not deny the authority of the pope "without the jeoparding of my soul to perpetual damnation." (24)
Henry's daughter, Mary I, also refused to take the oath as it would mean renouncing her mother, Catherine of Aragon. On hearing this news, Anne Boleyn apparently said that the "cursed bastard" should be given "a good banging". Henry told Cranmer that he had decided to send her to the Tower of London, and if she refused to take the oath, she would be prosecuted for high treason and executed. According to Ralph Morice it was Cranmer who finally persuaded Henry not to put her to death. Morice claims that when Henry at last agreed to spare Mary's life, he warned Cranmer that he would live to regret it. (25) Henry decided to put her under house arrest and did not allow her to have contact with her mother. He also sent some of her servants who were sent to prison.
Execution of Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn was arrested and was taken to the Tower of London on 2nd May, 1536. Thomas Cromwell took this opportunity to destroy her brother, George Boleyn. He had always been close to his sister and in the circumstances it was not difficult to suggest to Henry that an incestuous relationship had existed. George was arrested on 2nd May, 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. David Loades has argued: "Both self control and a sense of proportion seem to have been completely abandoned, and for the time being Henry would believe any evil that he was told, however farfetched." (26)
On 12th May, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, as High Steward of England, presided over the trial of Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton at Westminster Hall. (27) Except for Smeaton they all pleaded not guilty to all charges. Thomas Cromwell made sure that a reliable jury was empanelled, consisting almost entirely of known enemies of the Boleyns. "These were not difficult to find, and they were all substantial men, with much to gain or lose by their behaviour in such a conspicuous theatre". (28)
Few details survive of the proceedings. Witnesses were called and several spoke of Anne Boleyn's alleged sexual activity. One witness said that there was "never such a whore in the realm". The evidence for the prosecution was very weak, but "Cromwell managed to contrive a case based on Mark Smeaton's questionable confession, a great deal of circumstantial evidence, and some very salacious details about what Anne had allegedly got up to with her brother." (29) At the end of the trial the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the four men were condemned by Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley to be drawn, hanged, castrated and quartered. Eustace Chapuys claimed that Brereton was "condemned on a presumption, not by proof or valid confession, and without any witnesses." (30)
George and Anne Boleyn were tried two days later in the Great Hall of the Tower. In Anne's case the verdict already pronounced against her accomplices made the outcome inevitable. She was charged, not only with a whole list of adulterous relationships going back to the autumn of 1533, but also with poisoning Catherine of Aragon, "afflicting Henry with actual bodily harm, and conspiring his death." (31)
George Boleyn was charged with having sexual relations with his sister at Westminster on 5th November 1535. However, records show she was with Henry on that day in Windsor Castle. Boleyn was also accused of being the father of the deformed child born in late January or early February, 1536. (32) This was a serious matter because in Tudor times Christians believed that a deformed child was God's way of punishing parents for committing serious sins. Henry VIII feared that people might think that the Pope Clement VII was right when he claimed that God was angry because Henry had divorced Catherine and married Anne. (33)
Eustace Chapuys reported King Charles V that Anne Boleyn "was principally charged with... having cohabited with her brother and other accomplices; that there was a promise between her and Norris to marry after the King's death, which it thus appeared they hoped for... and that she had poisoned Catherine and intrigued to do the same to Mary... These things, she totally denied, and gave a plausible answer to each." She admitted to giving presents to Francis Weston but this was not an unusual gesture on her part. (34) It is claimed that Thomas Cranmer told Alexander Ales that he was convinced that Anne Boleyn was innocent of all charges. (35)
George and Anne Boleyn were both found guilty of all charges. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, who presided over the trial left it to the King to decide whether Anne should be beheaded or burned alive. Between sentence and execution, neither admitted guilt. Anne declared herself ready to die because she had unwittingly incurred the King's displeasure, but grieved, as Eustace Chapuys reported, for the innocent men who were also to die on her account." (36)
On 18th May, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer sat as judge at Lambeth Palace to try Henry's petition for divorce against Anne Boleyn. Cranmer had the problem of finding a reason for reversing his decision of three years earlier that Henry's marriage to Anne had been valid. There were two possible grounds for invalidating it: the existence of a precontract between Anne and Henry Percy, and the fact that Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry's mistress. Percy denied that there had been a pre-contract. Henry VIII did not want the public to know he had an affair with Mary, so Cranmer tried the case in private and granted the divorce without publicly announcing the reason for his decision. (37) According to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, the grounds for the annulment included the king's previous relationship with Mary Boleyn. However, this information has never been confirmed. (38)
Anne went to the scaffold at Tower Green on 19th May, 1536. The Lieutenant of the Tower reported her as alternately weeping and laughing. The Lieutenant assured her she would feel no pain, and she accepted his assurance. "I have a little neck," she said, and putting her hand round it, she shrieked with laughter. The "hangman of Calais" had been brought from France at a cost of £24 since he was a expert with a sword. This was a favour to the victim since a sword was usually more efficient than "an axe that could sometimes mean a hideously long-drawn-out affair." (39)
Anne Boleyn's last words were: "Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the King, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign Lord.... And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me." (40)
Religious Reforms
In July 1537, a committee of bishops, archdeacons and Doctors of Divinity, headed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, published The Institution of the Christian Man (also called The Bishops' Book). The purpose of the work was to implement the reforms of Henry VIII in separating from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry did not attend the discussions, but took an active part in producing the book. He studied the proposed drafts, suggested amendments and argued about the precise theological significance of one word compared to another.
The book repeatedly proclaimed the royal supremacy over the Church and the duty of all good subjects to obey the King. For example, "Thou shalt not kill" meant that no one should kill except the reigning monarch and those acting under their orders. This meant that Henry and future monarchs were "above the law of the realm". Henry tried to change it to state that "inferior rulers" should not have the same rights as kings like himself. Cranmer thought that this change would be undesirable and it was not altered. (41)
Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell and Hugh Latimer joined forces to introduce religious reforms. They wanted the Bible to be available in English. This was a controversial issue as William Tyndale had been denounced as a heretic and ordered to be burnt at the stake by Henry VIII eleven years before, for producing such a Bible. The edition they wanted to use was that of Miles Coverdale, an edition that was a reworking of the one produced by Tyndale. Cranmer approved the Coverdale version on 4th August 1538, and asked Cromwell to present it to the king in the hope of securing royal authority for it to be available in England. (42)
Henry agreed to the proposal on 30th September. Every parish had to purchase and display a copy of the Coverdale Bible in the nave of their church for everybody who was literate to read it. "The clergy was expressly forbidden to inhibit access to these scriptures, and were enjoined to encourage all those who could do so to study them." (43) Cranmer was delighted and wrote to Cromwell praising his efforts and claiming that "besides God's reward, you shall obtain perpetual memory for the same within the realm." (44)
David Starkey has praised the way that Cranmer was able to adapt his religious views during his period of power: "What Cranmer lacked in brilliance, he made up for in steadiness; he was thorough, organized and a superb note-taker. In contrast with the instinctively partisan Gardiner, he was also blessed (and sometimes cursed) with an ability to see both sides of the question. This, combined with his essential fair-mindedness, meant that his opinions were in a state of slow but constant change. The individual steps were scarcely ever revolutionary. But his lifetime's journey - from orthodoxy to advanced reform - was." (45)
The Six Articles
In 1539 Parliament was summoned to consider matters of religion. It was reported at the time that it was assembled to negotiate "a thorough unity and uniformity established for the reformation of the church of this realm". One issue that was in dispute was the orthodox Catholic belief in transubstantiation, whereby the bread and wine became in actual fact the body and blood of Christ. It was believed because it is impossible, and proof of the overwhelming power of God. Radical reformers saw this as a superstitious ritual and was only a commemoration of Christ's sacrifice.
Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, the leading religious conservative, presented what became known as the Six Articles. This restated the orthodox position on such matters as transubstantiation, confession and clerical celibacy. Despite the opposition of Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, the Six Articles was passed by Parliament. The French ambassador wrote to his court that "the people show great joy at the king's declaration touching the sacrament, being much more inclined to the old religion than to the new opinions".
The denial of transubstantiation was now to be punished by the death in the fire, while the refusal to subscribe to the other five articles led to the forfeiture of all goods and imprisonment at the king's pleasure. It is claimed that some 200 people were arrested and held in prison. Peter Ackroyd, the author of Tudors (2012), has described it as the "most severe religious law in English history". (46) Two bishops were forced to resign their sees as a result of the new measures; Hugh Latimer left Worcester and Nicholas Shaxton left Salisbury. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was able to hold on to his post but he was forced to send his wife, Margaret Cranmer, and their children into exile. (47)
The Fall of Thomas Cromwell
Henry VIII was angry with Thomas Cromwell for arranging the marriage with Anne of Cleves. The conservatives, led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, saw this as an opportunity to remove him from power. Gardiner considered Cromwell a heretic for introducing the Bible in the native tongue. He also opposed the way Cromwell had attacked the monasteries and the religious shrines. Gardiner pointed out to the King that it was Cromwell who had allowed radical preachers such as Robert Barnes to return to England.
Robert Barnes was clearly in danger but on 28th February, 1540, he preached a sermon attacking Bishop Gardiner. On 5th March, Barnes was summoned to appear before Henry VIII and Gardiner. Barnes begged forgiveness but continued to preach against the religious conservatives. On 3rd April, he was arrested along with two of his followers, William Jerome and Thomas Garrard, and taken to the Tower of London. (48)
Thomas Cromwell retaliated by arresting Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester and Nicholas Wotton, staunch conservatives in religious matters. He then began negotiating the release of Barnes. However, this was unsuccessful and it was now clear that Cromwell was in serious danger. (49) The French ambassador reported on 10th April, 1540, that Cromwell was "tottering" and began speculating about who would succeed to his offices. Although he he resigned the duties of the secretaryship to his protégés Ralph Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley he did not lose his power and on 18th April the King granted him the earldom of Essex.
Quarrels in the Privy Council continued and Charles de Marillac reported to François I on 1st June, 1540, that "things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell's party or that of the Bishop of Winchester must succumb". On 10th June, Cromwell arrived slightly late for a meeting of the Privy Council. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, shouted out, "Cromwell! Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit among gentlemen." The captain of the guard came forward and arrested him. Cromwell was charged with treason and heresy. Norfolk went over and ripped the chains of authority from his neck, "relishing the opportunity to restore this low-born man to his former status". Cromwell was led out through a side door which opened down onto the river and taken by boat the short journey from Westminster to the Tower of London. (50)
On 12th June, Thomas Cromwell wrote a letter to Henry VIII saying he was amazed that such a good servant of the king should be found to have committed treason. He pointed out that he had shown "wisdom, diligence, faithfulness and experience as no prince in the realm ever had". Cranmer told Henry that he loved Cromwell as a friend, "but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace singularly above all others. But now if he be a traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason has been discovered in time. But yet again I am very sorrowful, for whom should your grace trust hereafter." (51)
Thomas Cromwell was convicted by Parliament of treason and heresy on 29th June and sentenced him to be hung, drawn and quartered. He wrote to Henry VIII soon afterwards and admitted "I have meddled in so many matters under your Highness that I am not able to answer them all". He finished the letter with the plea, "Most gracious prince I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." Henry commuted the sentence to decapitation, even though the condemned man was of lowly birth. (52)
On 28th July, Cromwell walked out onto Tower Green for his execution. In his speech from the scaffold he denied that he had aided heretics, but acknowledged the judgment of the law. He then prayed for a short while before placing his head on the block. The executioner bungled his work, and took two strokes to sever the neck of Cromwell. He suffered a particularly gruesome execution before what was left of his head was set upon a pike on London Bridge. (53)
Thomas Cranmer in Danger
Ralph Morice wrote that in the summer of 1545 Bishop Stephen Gardiner and some of his conservative supporters on the Privy Council went to see Henry VIII and accused Cranmer of heresy and suggested he should be sent to the Tower of London. Henry agreed that Cranmer should be arrested at the Privy Council meeting the next day. Henry sent for Cranmer to come to him at Whitehall. When he arrived Henry told him that he was going to be arrested as a heretic and sent to the Tower. Cranmer replied: "Oh, Lord God! what fond simplicity have you, so to permit yourself to be imprisoned, that every enemy of yours may take vantage against you. Do not you think that if they have you once in prison, three or four false knaves will be soon procured to witness against you and to condemn you, which else now being at your liberty dare not once open their lips or appear before your face. No, not so, my lord, I have better regard unto you than to permit your enemies so to overthrow you." Henry then gave Cranmer his ring, and told him to produce it when he was arrested next day. (54)
When Cranmer attended the meeting of the Council next day, he was told that he was being sent to the Tower on a charge of heresy; but he then produced the ring. They all then went to see the King, who strongly criticised them for having attempted to send Cranmer to the Tower. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, protested that they had only done so in order to give him the opportunity to prove his innocence. Henry then ordered them all to shake hands with Cranmer. (55)
Reign of Edward VI
When Henry VIII died on 28th January, 1547. Edward was too young to rule, so his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, took over the running of the country. At the beginning of the new reign Cranmer grew a beard. "This may be seen as a token of mourning for his old master, but in fact the clergy of the reformed Church favoured beards; it may be seen as a decisive rejection of the tonsure and of the clean-shaven popish priests." (56)
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer fully supported the religious direction of the new government and invited several Protestant reformers to England. Cranmer now openly acknowledged his married state. At Edward's coronation Cranmer gave a short address that was a forceful statement of royal supremacy against Rome, as well as an emphatic call to the young king to become a destroyer of idolatry. (57)
Attempts were made to destroy those aspects of religion that were associated with the Catholic Church, for example, the removal of stained-glass windows in churches and the destruction of religious wall-paintings. Somerset made sure that Edward VI was educated as a Protestant, as he hoped that when he was old enough to rule he would continue the policy of supporting the Protestant religion.
Somerset's programme of religious reformation was accompanied by bold measures of political, social, and agrarian reform. Legislation in 1547 abolished all the treasons and felonies created under Henry VIII and did away with existing legislation against heresy. Two witnesses were required for proof of treason instead of only one. Although the measure received support in the House of Commons, its passage contributed to Somerset's reputation for what later historians perceived as his liberalism. (58)
In 1548 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer converted the Mass into Communion and constructed a new Prayer Book. These events upset those conservatives such as Bishop Stephen Gardiner who pointed out that some of his actions were considered to be heretical. Princess Mary was also concerned by these developments and wrote a letter to Lord Protector Edward Seymour to protest against the direction of events. (59)
The Kett Rebellion took place in the summer of 1549. Lord Protector Edward Seymour was blamed by the nobility and gentry for the social unrest. They believed his statements about political reform had encouraged rebellion. His reluctance to employ force and refusal to assume military leadership merely made matters worse. Seymour's critics also disliked his popularity with the common people and considered him to be a potential revolutionary. His main opponents, including John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, and Ralph Sadler met in London to demand his removal as Lord Protector. (60)
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer supported the Duke of Somerset but few others took his side. (61) Seymour no longer had the support of the aristocracy and had no choice but to give up his post. On 14th January 1550 his deposition as lord protector was confirmed by act of parliament, and he was also deprived of all his other positions, of his annuities, and of lands to the value of £2000 a year. He was sent to the Tower of London where he remained until the following February, when he was released by the Earl of Warwick who was now the most powerful figure in the government. Roger Lockyer suggests that this "gesture of conciliation on Warwick's part served its turn by giving him time to gain the young King's confidence and to establish himself more firmly in power". (62) This upset the nobility and in October 1551, Warwick was forced to arrest the Duke of Somerset.
Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. He skillfully conducted his own defence and was acquitted of treason but found guilty of felony under the terms of a recent statute against bringing together men for a riot and sentenced to death. (63) "Historians sympathetic to Somerset argue that the indictment was largely fictitious, that the trial was packed with his enemies, and that Northumberland's subtle intrigue was responsible for his conviction. Other historians, however, have noted that Northumberland agreed that the charge of treason should be dropped and that the evidence suggests that Somerset was engaged in a conspiracy against his enemies." (64) Although the king had supported Somerset's religious policies with enthusiasm he did nothing to save him from his fate and he was executed on 22nd January, 1552. (65)
Attempts were made by conservatives on the Privy Council to engineer the execution of Thomas Cranmer and John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick. The two men formed an alliance and managed to keep control of the government. According to his biographer, Diarmaid MacCulloch "from now on evangelical ascendancy was unchallenged". (66) In 1559 there were further revisions of the Prayer Book. "Cranmer's second prayer book remains at the heart of all Anglican liturgical forms. (67)
Lady Jane Grey
In April 1552 Edward VI fell ill with a disease that was diagnosed first as smallpox and later as measles. He made a surprising recovery and wrote to his sister, Elizabeth, that he had never felt better. However, in December he developed a cough. Elizabeth asked to see her brother but John Dudley, the lord protector, said it was too dangerous. In February 1553, his doctors believed he was suffering from tuberculosis. In March the Venetian envoy saw him and said that although still quite handsome, Edward was clearly dying. Edward's heir was Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and a Roman Catholic. (68)
In order to secure his hold on power, Dudley devised a plan where Lady Jane Grey would marry his son, Guildford Dudley. According to Philippa Jones, the author Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (2010): "Early in 1553, Dudley... began working to persuade the King to change the succession. Edward VI was reminded that Mary and Elizabeth were both illegitimate, and more importantly, that Mary would bring Catholicism back to England. Dudley reasoned that if Mary were to be struck out of the succession, how could Elizabeth, her equal, be left in? Furthermore, he argued that both the princesses would seek foreign husbands, jeopardizing English sovereignty." (69)
Under the influence of the Lord Protector, Edward made plans for the succession. Sir Edward Montague, chief justice of the common pleas, testified that "the king by his own mouth said" that he was prepared to alter the succession because the marriage of either Princess Mary or Princess Elizabeth to a foreigner might undermine both "the laws of this realm" and "his proceedings in religion". According to Montague, Edward also thought his sisters bore the "shame" of illegitimacy. (70)
The marriage took place on 21st May 1553 at Durham House, the Dudleys' London residence, and afterwards Jane went back to her parents. She was told Edward was dying and she must hold herself in readiness for a summons at any moment. "According to her own account, Jane did not take this seriously. Nevertheless she was obliged to return to Durham House. After a few days she fell sick and, convinced that she was being poisoned, begged leave to go out to the royal manor at Chelsea to recuperate." (71) It is not known if Thomas Cranmer was involved in this plan to grab power from Mary. (72)
King Edward VI died on 6th July, 1553. Three days later one of Northumberland's daughters came to take Lady Jane Grey to Syon House, where she was ceremoniously informed that the king had indeed nominated her to succeed him. Jane was apparently "stupefied and troubled" by the news, falling to the ground weeping and declaring her "insufficiency", but at the same time praying that if what was given to her was "‘rightfully and lawfully hers", God would grant her grace to govern the realm to his glory and service. (73)
On 10th July, Queen Jane arrived in London. An Italian spectator, witnessing her arrival, commented: "She is very short and thin, but prettily shaped and graceful. She has small features and a well-made nose, the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in colour." (74) Guildford Dudley, "a tall strong boy with light hair’, walked beside her, but Jane apparently refused to make him king, saying that "the crown was not a plaything for boys and girls." (75)
Jane was proclaimed queen at the Cross in Cheapside, a letter announcing her accession was circulated to the lords lieutenant of the counties, and Bishop Nicholas Ridley of London preached a sermon in her favour at Paul's Cross, denouncing both Mary and Elizabeth as bastards, but Mary especially as a papist who would bring foreigners into the country. It was only at this point that Jane realised that she was "deceived by the Duke of Northumberland and the council and ill-treated by my husband and his mother". (76)
Mary, who had been warned of what John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, had done and instead of going to London as requested, she fled to Kenninghall in Norfolk. As Ann Weikel has pointed out: "Both the earl of Bath and Huddleston joined Mary while others rallied the conservative gentry of Norfolk and Suffolk. Men like Sir Henry Bedingfield arrived with troops or money as soon as they heard the news, and as she moved to the more secure fortress at Framlingham, Suffolk, local magnates like Sir Thomas Cornwallis, who had hesitated at first, also joined her forces." (77)
Mary summoned the nobility and gentry to support her claim to the throne. Richard Rex argues that this development had consequences for her sister, Elizabeth: "Once it was clear which way the wind was blowing, she (Elizabeth) gave every indication of endorsing her sister's claim to the throne. Self-interest dictated her policy, for Mary's claim rested on the same basis as her own, the Act of Succession of 1544. It is unlikely that Elizabeth could have outmanoeuvred Northumberland if Mary had failed to overcome him. It was her good fortune that Mary, in vindicating her own claim to the throne, also safeguarded Elizabeth's." (78)
The problem for Dudley was that the vast majority of the English people still saw themselves as "Catholic in religious feeling; and a very great majority were certainly unwilling to see - King Henry's eldest daughter lose her birthright." (79) When most of Dudley's troops deserted he surrendered at Cambridge on 23rd July, along with his sons and a few friends, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London two days later. Tried for high treason on 18th August he claimed to have done nothing save by the king's command and the privy council's consent. Mary had him executed at Tower Hill on 22nd August. In his final speech he warned the crowd to remain loyal to the Catholic Church. (80)
Queen Mary and Thomas Cranmer
On 5th September 1553 Cranmer appeared before royal commissioners at St Paul's deanery to answer questions about his role in the Jane Grey coup. Nine days later he was sent to the Tower of London. His household was broken up, much of his goods sold off, most of his Protestant books destroyed, and the bulk of his magnificent library given away to his enemies. So many Protestants were arrested that Cranmer had to share his apartment with Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and John Bradford. (81)
On 14th February, 1555, Cranmer was stripped of his church offices, and turned over to the secular authorities. John Foxe pointed out: "The doctors and divines of Oxford all tried to make him recant, even allowing him to stay in the dean's house while they argued with him, and eventually Cranmer gave in to their requests and signed a recantation accepting the pope's authority in all things." (82)
Cranmer was put on trial for heresy on 12th September 1555. Pope Paul IV appointed James Brooks, Bishop of Gloucester, to act as judge, which was held in St Mary's Church in Oxford. Thomas Martin, counsel for the prosecution, subjected Cranmer to what has been described as a "brilliant and merciless cross-examination", asking him about his relationship to "Black Joan of the Dolphin" in Cambridge, and his marriage to Margaret in Germany in 1532. Martin also spent time on the oath he gave on 30th March 1533 during the consecration ceremony when he became Archbishop of Canterbury.
According to Jasper Ridley, the author of Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002): "Cranmer gave a piteous exhibition; he was utterly broken by his imprisonment, by the humiliations heaped upon him, and by the defeat of all his hopes; and the fundamental weakness in his character, his hesitations and his doubts were clearly displayed. But he steadfastly refused to recant and to acknowledge Papal Supremacy. He was condemned as a heretic." (83)
On 16th October, Cranmer was forced to watch his friends, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, burnt at the stake for heresy. "It is reported that he fell to his knees in tears. Some of the tears may have been for himself. He had always given his allegiance to the established state; for him it represented the divine rule. Should he not now obey the monarch and the supreme head of the Church even if she wished to bring back the jurisdiction of Rome? In his conscience he denied papal supremacy. In his conscience, too, he was obliged to obey his sovereign." (84)
In November 1555 Cranmer wrote to Queen Mary urging her to assert and defend her royal supremacy over the Church of England and not to submit to the domination of the Bishop of Rome. When Mary received the letter she said that she considered it a sin to read, or even to receive, a letter from a heretic, and handed the letter to Archbishop Reginald Pole for him to reply to Cranmer. "There could have been nothing more painful for Cranmer, after he had appealed to his Queen to assert her royal supremacy against the foreign Pope, than to receive a reply from the Bishop of Rome's Legate informing him that the Queen had asked him to reply to Cranmer's letter to her." (85)
Cranmer was guarded by Nicholas Woodson, a devout Catholic, who attempted to persuade him to change his views. It has been claimed that this friendship came to be his only emotional support, and, to please Woodson, he began giving way to everything that he had hated. On 28th January, 1556, he signed his first hesitant submission to papal authority. This was followed by submissions on 14th, 15th and 16th February. On 24th February he was made aware that his execution would take place in a few days time. In an attempt to save his life, he signed a statement that was truly a recantation. He probably did not write it himself; the Catholic commentary on it merely says that Cranmer was ordered to sign it. (86)
Despite these recantations, Queen Mary I refused to pardon him and ordered Thomas Cranmer to be burnt at the stake. When he was told the news he probably remembered what Henry VIII said to him when he successfully persuaded the king not to execute his daughter. According to Ralph Morice Henry warned Cranmer that he would live to regret this action. (87)
On 21st March, 1556, Thomas Cranmer was brought to St Mary's Church in Oxford, where he stood on a platform as a sermon was directed against him. He was then expected to deliver a short address in which he would repeat his acceptance of the truths of the Catholic Church. Instead he proceeded to recant his recantations and deny the six statements he had previously made and described the Pope as "Christ's enemy, and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine." The officials pulled him down from the platform and dragged him towards the scaffold. (88)
Cranmer had said in the Church that he regretted the signing of the recantations and claimed that "since my hand offended, it will be punished... when I come to the fire, it first will be burned." According to John Foxe: "When he came to the place where Hugh Latimer and Ridley had been burned before him, Cranmer knelt down briefly to pray then undressed to his shirt, which hung down to his bare feet. His head, once he took off his caps, was so bare there wasn't a hair on it. His beard was long and thick, covering his face, which was so grave it moved both his friends and enemies. As the fire approached him, Cranmer put his right hand into the flames, keeping it there until everyone could see it burned before his body was touched." Cranmer was heard to cry: "this unworthy right hand!" (89)
It was claimed that just before he died Cranmer managed to throw the speech he intended to make in St Mary's Church into the crowd. A man whose initials were J.A. picked it up and made a copy of it. Although he was a Catholic, he was impressed by Cranmer's courage, and decided to keep it and it was later passed on to John Foxe, who published in his Book of Martyrs.
Jasper Ridley has argued that as a propaganda exercise, Cranmer's death was a disaster for Queen Mary. "An event which has been witnessed by hundreds of people cannot be kept secret and the news quickly spread that Cranmer was repudiated his recantations before he died. The government then changed their line; they admitted that Cranmer had retracted his recantations were insincere, that he had recanted only to save his life, and that they had been justified in burning him despite his recantations. The Protestants then circulated the story of Cranmer's statement at the stake in an improved form; they spread the rumour that Cranmer had denied at the stake that he had ever signed any recantations, and that the alleged recantations had all been forged by King Philip's Spanish friars." (90)
By John Simkin ( [login to see] ) © September 1997 (updated January 2020).
Primary Sources
(1) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984)
Clement continued to play his former game, using every excuse for delay and promising everything to everybody. He promised Charles's ambassador that he would issue the bull ordering Henry to stop committing adultry with Anne, and that he would give judgement for Catherine. He then promised Henry's agents that he would not do this. Eventually he issued the bull against Henry, but refused to publish it. He suggested to Henry's agent, Carne, that he might grant Henry a dispensation to commit bigamy and marry Anne without divorcing Catherine; he said this would be less embarrassing than to give Henry the divorce.
Henry had meanwhile acted on Cranmer's suggestion to consult universities. He began at Cambridge, where Gardiner and Fox set to work in February 1530. They found that there was strong opposition in Cambridge to complying with Henry's wishes; but they eventually succeeded in obtaining the opinion that Henry required, after they had handpicked a number of university doctors, whom they knew supported Henry's case, to decide the question for the University. One of those selected was Hugh Latimer, who had attended discussions at the White Horse Inn, was a close friend of Bilney's, and was suspected of being a Lutheran. The University pronounced that a marriage of a man with his brother's widow was against the divine law, and that a Papal dispensation could not make it valid.
(2) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003)
What Cranmer lacked in brilliance, he made up for in steadiness; he was thorough, organized and a superb note-taker. In contrast with the instinctively partisan Gardiner, he was also blessed (and sometimes cursed) with an ability to see both sides of the question. This, combined with his essential fair-mindedness, meant that his opinions were in a state of slow but constant change. The individual steps were scarcely ever revolutionary. But his lifetime's journey - from orthodoxy to advanced reform - was.
References
(1) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(2) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 13
(3) John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1563) page 204 of 2014 edition.
(4) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1997) page 27
(5) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 181
(6) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 41
(7) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) pages 430-433
(8) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) pages 190-191
(9) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(10) Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (27th January, 1533)
(11) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 215
(12) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 42
(13) Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (10th April, 1533)
(14) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 223
(15) Patrick Collinson, Queen Elizabeth I : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(16) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 168
(17) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 68
(18) Jasper Ridley, The Statesman and the Fanatic (1982) page 271
(19) Diane Watt, Elizabeth Barton : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(20) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 76
(21) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 210
(22) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 76
(23) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) pages 43-44
(24) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 82
(25) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 274
(26) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(27) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(28) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(29) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(30) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(31) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(32) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(33) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(34) Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (May, 1536)
(35) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 271
(36) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 253
(37) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 270
(38) Jonathan Hughes, Mary Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(39) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(40) Anne Boleyn, statement on the scaffold at Tower Green (19th May, 1536). Quoted by Edward Hall, in his book, History of England (1548) page 268-269
(41) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 302
(42) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 294
(43) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 190
(44) John Schofield, The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant (2011) page 227
(45) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 385
(46) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 143
(47) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(48) Carl R. Trueman, Robert Barnes : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(49) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(50) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(51) Thomas Cranmer, letter to Henry VIII (12th June, 1540)
(52) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 79
(53) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(54) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 397
(55) Jasper Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (1962) page 238-239
(56) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 187
(57) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1997) page 349
(58) Barrett L. Beer, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(59) David Loades, Mary Tudor (2012) page 99
(60) Barrett L. Beer, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(61) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(62) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 92
(63) Jennifer Loach, Edward VI (2002) pages 101-102
(64) Barrett L. Beer, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(65) Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (1958) page 37 (66)
(66) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(67) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1997) page 512
(68) Dale Hoak, Edward VI: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(69) Philippa Jones, Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (2010) page 86
(70) Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain: Volume IV (1845) pages 138-9
(71) Ann Weikel, Mary Tudor : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(72) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(73) J. M. Stone, The History of Mary I, Queen of England (1901) page 497
(74) Richard Davey, The Nine Days' Queen: Lady Jane Grey and her Times (1909) page 253
(75) Alison Plowden, Lady Jane Grey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(76) J. M. Stone, The History of Mary I, Queen of England (1901) page 499
(77) Ann Weikel, Mary Tudor : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(78) Richard Rex, Elizabeth: Fortune's Bastard (2007) pages 35-36
(79) Christopher Morris, The Tudors (1955) page 113
(80) S. J. Gunn, Edmund Dudley : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(81) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(82) John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1563) page 217 of 2014 edition.
(83) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 112
(84) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 278
(85) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 127
(86) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(87) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 274
(88) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 279
(89) John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1563) page 219 of 2014 edition.
(90) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 137
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Images:
1. Thomas Cranmer by an unknown artist (c. 1550)
2. Statue of Cranmer on the Martyrs' Memorial, Oxford
3. Thomas Cranmer at the Traitors Gate painted by Frederick-Goodall.
4. Thomas Cranmer by Gerlach Flicke
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDcranmer.htm}]
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer was born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire on 2nd July 1489. He was admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1503. According to Diarmaid MacCulloch: "Cranmer took eight years to 1511, a surprisingly long time, to acquire the degree of BA: perhaps his acknowledged problems in absorbing information quickly, or family financial worries, delayed his progress." (1)
Cranmer received his MA in 1515. Although not yet deacon or priest he still had to forfeit his fellowship of Jesus College when he married a woman who worked at an inn called The Dolphin. She became known as "Black Joan of the Dolphin" (2) He became a teacher at Buckingham College but Joan died in childbirth and he returned to Cambridge University. (3)
Thomas Cranmer took holy orders in 1520. In that year the university named him one of the preachers whom they were entitled by papal grant to license for preaching throughout the British Isles. During this period he was a loyal papalist and appeared to completely reject the ideas of Martin Luther. In fact, in 1523 he attacked him for "the arrogance of a most wicked man!" (4)
Thomas Cranmer & Henry VIII
Cranmer was a friend of Edward Lee, the Archbishop of York. In 1527 he joined him in a diplomatic mission to to the emperor Charles V in Spain. On his return he had a meeting with Henry VIII where they discussed the possible annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. At a meeting with Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Bishop Edward Foxe on 2nd August 1529, Cranmer suggested that Henry's marriage should not be decided by the canon lawyers in the ecclesiastical courts, but by theologians in the universities. (5) Henry liked the idea and from then on Cranmer became one of his key political advisors. It has been argued that Cranmer was the ideal man for Henry, since he believed in royal supremacy over the Church but also dreaded the disorder that uncontrolled reform might lead to. (6)
Henry VIII eventually sent a message to the Pope Clement VII arguing that his marriage to Catherine had been invalid as she had previously been married to his brother Arthur. Henry relied on Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to sort the situation out. During negotiations the Pope forbade Henry to contract a new marriage until a decision was reached in Rome. With the encouragement of Anne, Henry became convinced that Wolsey's loyalties lay with the Pope, not England, and in November 1529 he was dismissed from office. (7)
Henry now took up Cranmer's suggestion. In February 1530, Cranmer and Bishop Gardiner, began discussing the matter with theologians from Cambridge University. They discovered their was considerable opposition to the idea, but "eventually succeeded in obtaining the opinion that Henry required, after they had handpicked a number of university doctors, whom they knew supported Henry's case, to decide the question for the University." This included Hugh Latimer who was a Lutheran. The University pronounced that a marriage of a man with his brother's widow was against the divine law, and that a Papal dispensation could not make it valid. They encountered even stronger opposition at Oxford University, but at the end of consultation they obtained a 27 to 22 vote that Henry's marriage to Catherine was against God's law." (8)
Anne Boleyn
In 1532 Cranmer went on a further diplomatic mission to Germany. Cranmer befriended the leading Lutheran theologian, Andreas Osiander, and at some stage during a summer of diplomacy, probably in July, married Margaret, a niece of Osiander's wife, Katharina Preu. This act reflects Cranmer willingness to reject the old church's tradition of compulsory celibacy. In October 1532 he discovered that William Warham had died and Henry VIII had appointed him as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer reluctantly accepted the post but realised he would need to keep his marriage secret from the king. (9) Eustace Chapuys sent a report to Emperor Charles V that he believed that Cranmer was a supporter of Martin Luther. (10)
Henry's confidence in Cranmer was reflected by the decision to appoint him as a royal chaplain and he was attached to the household of Thomas Boleyn, the father of his mistress, Anne Boleyn. In December 1532 Henry discovered that Anne was pregnant. He realised he could not afford to wait for the Pope's permission to marry Anne. As it was important that the child should not be classed as illegitimate, arrangements were made for Henry and Anne to get married in secret. Cranmer later confirmed that the marriage ceremony took place on 25th January, 1533. (11)
Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in St Stephen's Church at Westminster on 30th March 1533. It was a necessary part of of the consecration ceremony that the Archbishop should take an oath, swearing to be obedient to Pope Clement VII and his successors and to defend the Roman Papacy against all men. This raised a problem for Henry. He wanted Cranmer's consecration ceremony to be correct in every detail, so that no one could claim that he had not been properly consecrated. This was because he intended in a few weeks time for Cranmer to state that the Pope had no authority in England.
Henry and his Archbishop of Canterbury eventually came up with a solution to the problem. Before entering the church, Cranmer made a statement in the chapter house at Westminster, in the presence of five lawyers. He declared that he did not intend to be bound by the oath of obedience to the Pope that he was about to take, "if it was against the law of God or against our illustrious King of England, or the laws of his realm of England". (12)
On 9th April, 1533, Eustace Chapuys had an audience with Henry VIII . Chapuys said that his duty to God and the Emperor required him to protest most strongly against the measures which were being taken in Parliament against Catherine of Aragon. Henry replied that he was obeying God's law in refusing to cohabit with his brother's widow. Henry also said he needed a son to ensure the succession, Chapuys pointed out that he could not be sure that he would have children by a second marriage. Henry protested at this, and asked three times if he was not like other men and hinted that Anne was pregnant.
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The following day Chapuys wrote a letter to Emperor Charles V and advised him to send an army to invade England. He argued that the intervention would succeed, because it would be welcomed not only by the English people but by most of the nobility, so that Henry would have no leaders to command his army and no horseman to serve in it. He went on to say that the Emperor did not have to fear King François, who would certainly not go to war with him for Henry's sake. (13)
Charles V eventually ruled out the use of military force. As Jasper Ridley pointed out: "The operation would be much too hazardous, and Henry would have the help of his various allies; war with England might endanger the Emperor's realms, particularly Germany, where the Lutheran Princes would enter the war on Henry's side. They also rejected the idea of a trade embargo against England, for this could easily lead to war, and would injure the interests of the Emperor's subjects in the Netherlands." (14)
Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn on 25th January, 1533. Elizabeth was born on 7th September. Thomas Cranmer became Elizabeth's godfather. Henry expected a son and selected the names of Edward and Henry. While Henry was furious about having another daughter, the supporters of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon were delighted and claimed that it proved God was punishing Henry for his illegal marriage to Anne. (15) Retha M. Warnicke, the author of The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) has pointed out: "As the king's only legitimate child, Elizabeth was, until the birth of a prince, his heir and was to be treated with all the respect that a female of her rank deserved. Regardless of her child's sex, the queen's safe delivery could still be used to argue that God had blessed the marriage. Everything that was proper was done to herald the infant's arrival." (16)
Elizabeth Barton
Archbishop Cranmer had to deal with the preacher, Elizabeth Barton. She had been claiming that if he married Anne Boleyn he would die within a month and that within six months the people would be struck down by a great plague. He was disturbed by her prophesies and ordered that she be kept under observation. Cranmer commented later that Henry put off his marriage to Anne because "of her visions". (17)
In the summer of 1533 Thomas More met Elizabeth Barton. Soon afterwards he wrote to her warning about the dangers she faced if she continued to speak with "lay persons, of any such manner things as pertain to princes' affairs, or the state of the realm... with any person, high and low, of such manner things as may to the soul be profitable for you to show and for them to know". (18)
In the summer of 1533 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote to the prioress of St Sepulchre's Nunnery asking her to bring Elizabeth Barton to his manor at Otford. On 11th August she was questioned, but was released without charge. Thomas Cromwell then questioned her and, towards the end of September, Edward Bocking was arrested and his premises were searched. Father Hugh Rich was also taken into custody. In early November, following a full scale investigation, Barton was imprisoned in the Tower of London. (19)
Peter Ackroyd, the author of Tudors (2012) has suggested: "It may be that she was put on the rack. In any case it was declared that she had confessed that all her visions and revelations had been impostures... It was then determined that the nun should be taken throughout the kingdom, and that she should in various places confess her fraudulence." (20) Barton secretly sent messages to her adherents that she had retracted only at the command of God, but when she was made to recant publicly, her supporters quickly began to lose faith in her. (21)
In March 1534 Elizabeth Barton, Edward Bocking, Hugh Rich (warden of Richmond Priory), Henry Risby (warden of Greyfriars, Canterbury), Henry Gold (parson of St Mary Aldermary) and two laymen, Edward Thwaites and Thomas Gold, were indicted of high treason. They were all found guilty and sentenced to be executed on 20th April, 1534. They were "dragged through the streets from the Tower to Tyburn". (22)
Act of Supremacy
Pope Clement VII eventually made his decision. He announced that Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was invalid. Henry reacted by declaring that the Pope no longer had authority in England. In November 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. This gave Henry the title of the "Supreme head of the Church of England". A Treason Act was also passed that made it an offence to attempt by any means, including writing and speaking, to accuse the King and his heirs of heresy or tyranny. All subjects were ordered to take an oath accepting this. (23)
Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused to take the oath and were imprisoned in the Tower of London. More was summoned before Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell at Lambeth Palace. More was happy to swear that the children of Anne Boleyn could succeed to the throne, but he could not declare on oath that all the previous Acts of Parliament had been valid. He could not deny the authority of the pope "without the jeoparding of my soul to perpetual damnation." (24)
Henry's daughter, Mary I, also refused to take the oath as it would mean renouncing her mother, Catherine of Aragon. On hearing this news, Anne Boleyn apparently said that the "cursed bastard" should be given "a good banging". Henry told Cranmer that he had decided to send her to the Tower of London, and if she refused to take the oath, she would be prosecuted for high treason and executed. According to Ralph Morice it was Cranmer who finally persuaded Henry not to put her to death. Morice claims that when Henry at last agreed to spare Mary's life, he warned Cranmer that he would live to regret it. (25) Henry decided to put her under house arrest and did not allow her to have contact with her mother. He also sent some of her servants who were sent to prison.
Execution of Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn was arrested and was taken to the Tower of London on 2nd May, 1536. Thomas Cromwell took this opportunity to destroy her brother, George Boleyn. He had always been close to his sister and in the circumstances it was not difficult to suggest to Henry that an incestuous relationship had existed. George was arrested on 2nd May, 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. David Loades has argued: "Both self control and a sense of proportion seem to have been completely abandoned, and for the time being Henry would believe any evil that he was told, however farfetched." (26)
On 12th May, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, as High Steward of England, presided over the trial of Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton at Westminster Hall. (27) Except for Smeaton they all pleaded not guilty to all charges. Thomas Cromwell made sure that a reliable jury was empanelled, consisting almost entirely of known enemies of the Boleyns. "These were not difficult to find, and they were all substantial men, with much to gain or lose by their behaviour in such a conspicuous theatre". (28)
Few details survive of the proceedings. Witnesses were called and several spoke of Anne Boleyn's alleged sexual activity. One witness said that there was "never such a whore in the realm". The evidence for the prosecution was very weak, but "Cromwell managed to contrive a case based on Mark Smeaton's questionable confession, a great deal of circumstantial evidence, and some very salacious details about what Anne had allegedly got up to with her brother." (29) At the end of the trial the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the four men were condemned by Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley to be drawn, hanged, castrated and quartered. Eustace Chapuys claimed that Brereton was "condemned on a presumption, not by proof or valid confession, and without any witnesses." (30)
George and Anne Boleyn were tried two days later in the Great Hall of the Tower. In Anne's case the verdict already pronounced against her accomplices made the outcome inevitable. She was charged, not only with a whole list of adulterous relationships going back to the autumn of 1533, but also with poisoning Catherine of Aragon, "afflicting Henry with actual bodily harm, and conspiring his death." (31)
George Boleyn was charged with having sexual relations with his sister at Westminster on 5th November 1535. However, records show she was with Henry on that day in Windsor Castle. Boleyn was also accused of being the father of the deformed child born in late January or early February, 1536. (32) This was a serious matter because in Tudor times Christians believed that a deformed child was God's way of punishing parents for committing serious sins. Henry VIII feared that people might think that the Pope Clement VII was right when he claimed that God was angry because Henry had divorced Catherine and married Anne. (33)
Eustace Chapuys reported King Charles V that Anne Boleyn "was principally charged with... having cohabited with her brother and other accomplices; that there was a promise between her and Norris to marry after the King's death, which it thus appeared they hoped for... and that she had poisoned Catherine and intrigued to do the same to Mary... These things, she totally denied, and gave a plausible answer to each." She admitted to giving presents to Francis Weston but this was not an unusual gesture on her part. (34) It is claimed that Thomas Cranmer told Alexander Ales that he was convinced that Anne Boleyn was innocent of all charges. (35)
George and Anne Boleyn were both found guilty of all charges. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, who presided over the trial left it to the King to decide whether Anne should be beheaded or burned alive. Between sentence and execution, neither admitted guilt. Anne declared herself ready to die because she had unwittingly incurred the King's displeasure, but grieved, as Eustace Chapuys reported, for the innocent men who were also to die on her account." (36)
On 18th May, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer sat as judge at Lambeth Palace to try Henry's petition for divorce against Anne Boleyn. Cranmer had the problem of finding a reason for reversing his decision of three years earlier that Henry's marriage to Anne had been valid. There were two possible grounds for invalidating it: the existence of a precontract between Anne and Henry Percy, and the fact that Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry's mistress. Percy denied that there had been a pre-contract. Henry VIII did not want the public to know he had an affair with Mary, so Cranmer tried the case in private and granted the divorce without publicly announcing the reason for his decision. (37) According to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, the grounds for the annulment included the king's previous relationship with Mary Boleyn. However, this information has never been confirmed. (38)
Anne went to the scaffold at Tower Green on 19th May, 1536. The Lieutenant of the Tower reported her as alternately weeping and laughing. The Lieutenant assured her she would feel no pain, and she accepted his assurance. "I have a little neck," she said, and putting her hand round it, she shrieked with laughter. The "hangman of Calais" had been brought from France at a cost of £24 since he was a expert with a sword. This was a favour to the victim since a sword was usually more efficient than "an axe that could sometimes mean a hideously long-drawn-out affair." (39)
Anne Boleyn's last words were: "Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the King, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign Lord.... And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me." (40)
Religious Reforms
In July 1537, a committee of bishops, archdeacons and Doctors of Divinity, headed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, published The Institution of the Christian Man (also called The Bishops' Book). The purpose of the work was to implement the reforms of Henry VIII in separating from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry did not attend the discussions, but took an active part in producing the book. He studied the proposed drafts, suggested amendments and argued about the precise theological significance of one word compared to another.
The book repeatedly proclaimed the royal supremacy over the Church and the duty of all good subjects to obey the King. For example, "Thou shalt not kill" meant that no one should kill except the reigning monarch and those acting under their orders. This meant that Henry and future monarchs were "above the law of the realm". Henry tried to change it to state that "inferior rulers" should not have the same rights as kings like himself. Cranmer thought that this change would be undesirable and it was not altered. (41)
Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell and Hugh Latimer joined forces to introduce religious reforms. They wanted the Bible to be available in English. This was a controversial issue as William Tyndale had been denounced as a heretic and ordered to be burnt at the stake by Henry VIII eleven years before, for producing such a Bible. The edition they wanted to use was that of Miles Coverdale, an edition that was a reworking of the one produced by Tyndale. Cranmer approved the Coverdale version on 4th August 1538, and asked Cromwell to present it to the king in the hope of securing royal authority for it to be available in England. (42)
Henry agreed to the proposal on 30th September. Every parish had to purchase and display a copy of the Coverdale Bible in the nave of their church for everybody who was literate to read it. "The clergy was expressly forbidden to inhibit access to these scriptures, and were enjoined to encourage all those who could do so to study them." (43) Cranmer was delighted and wrote to Cromwell praising his efforts and claiming that "besides God's reward, you shall obtain perpetual memory for the same within the realm." (44)
David Starkey has praised the way that Cranmer was able to adapt his religious views during his period of power: "What Cranmer lacked in brilliance, he made up for in steadiness; he was thorough, organized and a superb note-taker. In contrast with the instinctively partisan Gardiner, he was also blessed (and sometimes cursed) with an ability to see both sides of the question. This, combined with his essential fair-mindedness, meant that his opinions were in a state of slow but constant change. The individual steps were scarcely ever revolutionary. But his lifetime's journey - from orthodoxy to advanced reform - was." (45)
The Six Articles
In 1539 Parliament was summoned to consider matters of religion. It was reported at the time that it was assembled to negotiate "a thorough unity and uniformity established for the reformation of the church of this realm". One issue that was in dispute was the orthodox Catholic belief in transubstantiation, whereby the bread and wine became in actual fact the body and blood of Christ. It was believed because it is impossible, and proof of the overwhelming power of God. Radical reformers saw this as a superstitious ritual and was only a commemoration of Christ's sacrifice.
Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, the leading religious conservative, presented what became known as the Six Articles. This restated the orthodox position on such matters as transubstantiation, confession and clerical celibacy. Despite the opposition of Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, the Six Articles was passed by Parliament. The French ambassador wrote to his court that "the people show great joy at the king's declaration touching the sacrament, being much more inclined to the old religion than to the new opinions".
The denial of transubstantiation was now to be punished by the death in the fire, while the refusal to subscribe to the other five articles led to the forfeiture of all goods and imprisonment at the king's pleasure. It is claimed that some 200 people were arrested and held in prison. Peter Ackroyd, the author of Tudors (2012), has described it as the "most severe religious law in English history". (46) Two bishops were forced to resign their sees as a result of the new measures; Hugh Latimer left Worcester and Nicholas Shaxton left Salisbury. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was able to hold on to his post but he was forced to send his wife, Margaret Cranmer, and their children into exile. (47)
The Fall of Thomas Cromwell
Henry VIII was angry with Thomas Cromwell for arranging the marriage with Anne of Cleves. The conservatives, led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, saw this as an opportunity to remove him from power. Gardiner considered Cromwell a heretic for introducing the Bible in the native tongue. He also opposed the way Cromwell had attacked the monasteries and the religious shrines. Gardiner pointed out to the King that it was Cromwell who had allowed radical preachers such as Robert Barnes to return to England.
Robert Barnes was clearly in danger but on 28th February, 1540, he preached a sermon attacking Bishop Gardiner. On 5th March, Barnes was summoned to appear before Henry VIII and Gardiner. Barnes begged forgiveness but continued to preach against the religious conservatives. On 3rd April, he was arrested along with two of his followers, William Jerome and Thomas Garrard, and taken to the Tower of London. (48)
Thomas Cromwell retaliated by arresting Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester and Nicholas Wotton, staunch conservatives in religious matters. He then began negotiating the release of Barnes. However, this was unsuccessful and it was now clear that Cromwell was in serious danger. (49) The French ambassador reported on 10th April, 1540, that Cromwell was "tottering" and began speculating about who would succeed to his offices. Although he he resigned the duties of the secretaryship to his protégés Ralph Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley he did not lose his power and on 18th April the King granted him the earldom of Essex.
Quarrels in the Privy Council continued and Charles de Marillac reported to François I on 1st June, 1540, that "things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell's party or that of the Bishop of Winchester must succumb". On 10th June, Cromwell arrived slightly late for a meeting of the Privy Council. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, shouted out, "Cromwell! Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit among gentlemen." The captain of the guard came forward and arrested him. Cromwell was charged with treason and heresy. Norfolk went over and ripped the chains of authority from his neck, "relishing the opportunity to restore this low-born man to his former status". Cromwell was led out through a side door which opened down onto the river and taken by boat the short journey from Westminster to the Tower of London. (50)
On 12th June, Thomas Cromwell wrote a letter to Henry VIII saying he was amazed that such a good servant of the king should be found to have committed treason. He pointed out that he had shown "wisdom, diligence, faithfulness and experience as no prince in the realm ever had". Cranmer told Henry that he loved Cromwell as a friend, "but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace singularly above all others. But now if he be a traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason has been discovered in time. But yet again I am very sorrowful, for whom should your grace trust hereafter." (51)
Thomas Cromwell was convicted by Parliament of treason and heresy on 29th June and sentenced him to be hung, drawn and quartered. He wrote to Henry VIII soon afterwards and admitted "I have meddled in so many matters under your Highness that I am not able to answer them all". He finished the letter with the plea, "Most gracious prince I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." Henry commuted the sentence to decapitation, even though the condemned man was of lowly birth. (52)
On 28th July, Cromwell walked out onto Tower Green for his execution. In his speech from the scaffold he denied that he had aided heretics, but acknowledged the judgment of the law. He then prayed for a short while before placing his head on the block. The executioner bungled his work, and took two strokes to sever the neck of Cromwell. He suffered a particularly gruesome execution before what was left of his head was set upon a pike on London Bridge. (53)
Thomas Cranmer in Danger
Ralph Morice wrote that in the summer of 1545 Bishop Stephen Gardiner and some of his conservative supporters on the Privy Council went to see Henry VIII and accused Cranmer of heresy and suggested he should be sent to the Tower of London. Henry agreed that Cranmer should be arrested at the Privy Council meeting the next day. Henry sent for Cranmer to come to him at Whitehall. When he arrived Henry told him that he was going to be arrested as a heretic and sent to the Tower. Cranmer replied: "Oh, Lord God! what fond simplicity have you, so to permit yourself to be imprisoned, that every enemy of yours may take vantage against you. Do not you think that if they have you once in prison, three or four false knaves will be soon procured to witness against you and to condemn you, which else now being at your liberty dare not once open their lips or appear before your face. No, not so, my lord, I have better regard unto you than to permit your enemies so to overthrow you." Henry then gave Cranmer his ring, and told him to produce it when he was arrested next day. (54)
When Cranmer attended the meeting of the Council next day, he was told that he was being sent to the Tower on a charge of heresy; but he then produced the ring. They all then went to see the King, who strongly criticised them for having attempted to send Cranmer to the Tower. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, protested that they had only done so in order to give him the opportunity to prove his innocence. Henry then ordered them all to shake hands with Cranmer. (55)
Reign of Edward VI
When Henry VIII died on 28th January, 1547. Edward was too young to rule, so his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, took over the running of the country. At the beginning of the new reign Cranmer grew a beard. "This may be seen as a token of mourning for his old master, but in fact the clergy of the reformed Church favoured beards; it may be seen as a decisive rejection of the tonsure and of the clean-shaven popish priests." (56)
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer fully supported the religious direction of the new government and invited several Protestant reformers to England. Cranmer now openly acknowledged his married state. At Edward's coronation Cranmer gave a short address that was a forceful statement of royal supremacy against Rome, as well as an emphatic call to the young king to become a destroyer of idolatry. (57)
Attempts were made to destroy those aspects of religion that were associated with the Catholic Church, for example, the removal of stained-glass windows in churches and the destruction of religious wall-paintings. Somerset made sure that Edward VI was educated as a Protestant, as he hoped that when he was old enough to rule he would continue the policy of supporting the Protestant religion.
Somerset's programme of religious reformation was accompanied by bold measures of political, social, and agrarian reform. Legislation in 1547 abolished all the treasons and felonies created under Henry VIII and did away with existing legislation against heresy. Two witnesses were required for proof of treason instead of only one. Although the measure received support in the House of Commons, its passage contributed to Somerset's reputation for what later historians perceived as his liberalism. (58)
In 1548 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer converted the Mass into Communion and constructed a new Prayer Book. These events upset those conservatives such as Bishop Stephen Gardiner who pointed out that some of his actions were considered to be heretical. Princess Mary was also concerned by these developments and wrote a letter to Lord Protector Edward Seymour to protest against the direction of events. (59)
The Kett Rebellion took place in the summer of 1549. Lord Protector Edward Seymour was blamed by the nobility and gentry for the social unrest. They believed his statements about political reform had encouraged rebellion. His reluctance to employ force and refusal to assume military leadership merely made matters worse. Seymour's critics also disliked his popularity with the common people and considered him to be a potential revolutionary. His main opponents, including John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, and Ralph Sadler met in London to demand his removal as Lord Protector. (60)
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer supported the Duke of Somerset but few others took his side. (61) Seymour no longer had the support of the aristocracy and had no choice but to give up his post. On 14th January 1550 his deposition as lord protector was confirmed by act of parliament, and he was also deprived of all his other positions, of his annuities, and of lands to the value of £2000 a year. He was sent to the Tower of London where he remained until the following February, when he was released by the Earl of Warwick who was now the most powerful figure in the government. Roger Lockyer suggests that this "gesture of conciliation on Warwick's part served its turn by giving him time to gain the young King's confidence and to establish himself more firmly in power". (62) This upset the nobility and in October 1551, Warwick was forced to arrest the Duke of Somerset.
Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. He skillfully conducted his own defence and was acquitted of treason but found guilty of felony under the terms of a recent statute against bringing together men for a riot and sentenced to death. (63) "Historians sympathetic to Somerset argue that the indictment was largely fictitious, that the trial was packed with his enemies, and that Northumberland's subtle intrigue was responsible for his conviction. Other historians, however, have noted that Northumberland agreed that the charge of treason should be dropped and that the evidence suggests that Somerset was engaged in a conspiracy against his enemies." (64) Although the king had supported Somerset's religious policies with enthusiasm he did nothing to save him from his fate and he was executed on 22nd January, 1552. (65)
Attempts were made by conservatives on the Privy Council to engineer the execution of Thomas Cranmer and John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick. The two men formed an alliance and managed to keep control of the government. According to his biographer, Diarmaid MacCulloch "from now on evangelical ascendancy was unchallenged". (66) In 1559 there were further revisions of the Prayer Book. "Cranmer's second prayer book remains at the heart of all Anglican liturgical forms. (67)
Lady Jane Grey
In April 1552 Edward VI fell ill with a disease that was diagnosed first as smallpox and later as measles. He made a surprising recovery and wrote to his sister, Elizabeth, that he had never felt better. However, in December he developed a cough. Elizabeth asked to see her brother but John Dudley, the lord protector, said it was too dangerous. In February 1553, his doctors believed he was suffering from tuberculosis. In March the Venetian envoy saw him and said that although still quite handsome, Edward was clearly dying. Edward's heir was Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and a Roman Catholic. (68)
In order to secure his hold on power, Dudley devised a plan where Lady Jane Grey would marry his son, Guildford Dudley. According to Philippa Jones, the author Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (2010): "Early in 1553, Dudley... began working to persuade the King to change the succession. Edward VI was reminded that Mary and Elizabeth were both illegitimate, and more importantly, that Mary would bring Catholicism back to England. Dudley reasoned that if Mary were to be struck out of the succession, how could Elizabeth, her equal, be left in? Furthermore, he argued that both the princesses would seek foreign husbands, jeopardizing English sovereignty." (69)
Under the influence of the Lord Protector, Edward made plans for the succession. Sir Edward Montague, chief justice of the common pleas, testified that "the king by his own mouth said" that he was prepared to alter the succession because the marriage of either Princess Mary or Princess Elizabeth to a foreigner might undermine both "the laws of this realm" and "his proceedings in religion". According to Montague, Edward also thought his sisters bore the "shame" of illegitimacy. (70)
The marriage took place on 21st May 1553 at Durham House, the Dudleys' London residence, and afterwards Jane went back to her parents. She was told Edward was dying and she must hold herself in readiness for a summons at any moment. "According to her own account, Jane did not take this seriously. Nevertheless she was obliged to return to Durham House. After a few days she fell sick and, convinced that she was being poisoned, begged leave to go out to the royal manor at Chelsea to recuperate." (71) It is not known if Thomas Cranmer was involved in this plan to grab power from Mary. (72)
King Edward VI died on 6th July, 1553. Three days later one of Northumberland's daughters came to take Lady Jane Grey to Syon House, where she was ceremoniously informed that the king had indeed nominated her to succeed him. Jane was apparently "stupefied and troubled" by the news, falling to the ground weeping and declaring her "insufficiency", but at the same time praying that if what was given to her was "‘rightfully and lawfully hers", God would grant her grace to govern the realm to his glory and service. (73)
On 10th July, Queen Jane arrived in London. An Italian spectator, witnessing her arrival, commented: "She is very short and thin, but prettily shaped and graceful. She has small features and a well-made nose, the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in colour." (74) Guildford Dudley, "a tall strong boy with light hair’, walked beside her, but Jane apparently refused to make him king, saying that "the crown was not a plaything for boys and girls." (75)
Jane was proclaimed queen at the Cross in Cheapside, a letter announcing her accession was circulated to the lords lieutenant of the counties, and Bishop Nicholas Ridley of London preached a sermon in her favour at Paul's Cross, denouncing both Mary and Elizabeth as bastards, but Mary especially as a papist who would bring foreigners into the country. It was only at this point that Jane realised that she was "deceived by the Duke of Northumberland and the council and ill-treated by my husband and his mother". (76)
Mary, who had been warned of what John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, had done and instead of going to London as requested, she fled to Kenninghall in Norfolk. As Ann Weikel has pointed out: "Both the earl of Bath and Huddleston joined Mary while others rallied the conservative gentry of Norfolk and Suffolk. Men like Sir Henry Bedingfield arrived with troops or money as soon as they heard the news, and as she moved to the more secure fortress at Framlingham, Suffolk, local magnates like Sir Thomas Cornwallis, who had hesitated at first, also joined her forces." (77)
Mary summoned the nobility and gentry to support her claim to the throne. Richard Rex argues that this development had consequences for her sister, Elizabeth: "Once it was clear which way the wind was blowing, she (Elizabeth) gave every indication of endorsing her sister's claim to the throne. Self-interest dictated her policy, for Mary's claim rested on the same basis as her own, the Act of Succession of 1544. It is unlikely that Elizabeth could have outmanoeuvred Northumberland if Mary had failed to overcome him. It was her good fortune that Mary, in vindicating her own claim to the throne, also safeguarded Elizabeth's." (78)
The problem for Dudley was that the vast majority of the English people still saw themselves as "Catholic in religious feeling; and a very great majority were certainly unwilling to see - King Henry's eldest daughter lose her birthright." (79) When most of Dudley's troops deserted he surrendered at Cambridge on 23rd July, along with his sons and a few friends, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London two days later. Tried for high treason on 18th August he claimed to have done nothing save by the king's command and the privy council's consent. Mary had him executed at Tower Hill on 22nd August. In his final speech he warned the crowd to remain loyal to the Catholic Church. (80)
Queen Mary and Thomas Cranmer
On 5th September 1553 Cranmer appeared before royal commissioners at St Paul's deanery to answer questions about his role in the Jane Grey coup. Nine days later he was sent to the Tower of London. His household was broken up, much of his goods sold off, most of his Protestant books destroyed, and the bulk of his magnificent library given away to his enemies. So many Protestants were arrested that Cranmer had to share his apartment with Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and John Bradford. (81)
On 14th February, 1555, Cranmer was stripped of his church offices, and turned over to the secular authorities. John Foxe pointed out: "The doctors and divines of Oxford all tried to make him recant, even allowing him to stay in the dean's house while they argued with him, and eventually Cranmer gave in to their requests and signed a recantation accepting the pope's authority in all things." (82)
Cranmer was put on trial for heresy on 12th September 1555. Pope Paul IV appointed James Brooks, Bishop of Gloucester, to act as judge, which was held in St Mary's Church in Oxford. Thomas Martin, counsel for the prosecution, subjected Cranmer to what has been described as a "brilliant and merciless cross-examination", asking him about his relationship to "Black Joan of the Dolphin" in Cambridge, and his marriage to Margaret in Germany in 1532. Martin also spent time on the oath he gave on 30th March 1533 during the consecration ceremony when he became Archbishop of Canterbury.
According to Jasper Ridley, the author of Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002): "Cranmer gave a piteous exhibition; he was utterly broken by his imprisonment, by the humiliations heaped upon him, and by the defeat of all his hopes; and the fundamental weakness in his character, his hesitations and his doubts were clearly displayed. But he steadfastly refused to recant and to acknowledge Papal Supremacy. He was condemned as a heretic." (83)
On 16th October, Cranmer was forced to watch his friends, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, burnt at the stake for heresy. "It is reported that he fell to his knees in tears. Some of the tears may have been for himself. He had always given his allegiance to the established state; for him it represented the divine rule. Should he not now obey the monarch and the supreme head of the Church even if she wished to bring back the jurisdiction of Rome? In his conscience he denied papal supremacy. In his conscience, too, he was obliged to obey his sovereign." (84)
In November 1555 Cranmer wrote to Queen Mary urging her to assert and defend her royal supremacy over the Church of England and not to submit to the domination of the Bishop of Rome. When Mary received the letter she said that she considered it a sin to read, or even to receive, a letter from a heretic, and handed the letter to Archbishop Reginald Pole for him to reply to Cranmer. "There could have been nothing more painful for Cranmer, after he had appealed to his Queen to assert her royal supremacy against the foreign Pope, than to receive a reply from the Bishop of Rome's Legate informing him that the Queen had asked him to reply to Cranmer's letter to her." (85)
Cranmer was guarded by Nicholas Woodson, a devout Catholic, who attempted to persuade him to change his views. It has been claimed that this friendship came to be his only emotional support, and, to please Woodson, he began giving way to everything that he had hated. On 28th January, 1556, he signed his first hesitant submission to papal authority. This was followed by submissions on 14th, 15th and 16th February. On 24th February he was made aware that his execution would take place in a few days time. In an attempt to save his life, he signed a statement that was truly a recantation. He probably did not write it himself; the Catholic commentary on it merely says that Cranmer was ordered to sign it. (86)
Despite these recantations, Queen Mary I refused to pardon him and ordered Thomas Cranmer to be burnt at the stake. When he was told the news he probably remembered what Henry VIII said to him when he successfully persuaded the king not to execute his daughter. According to Ralph Morice Henry warned Cranmer that he would live to regret this action. (87)
On 21st March, 1556, Thomas Cranmer was brought to St Mary's Church in Oxford, where he stood on a platform as a sermon was directed against him. He was then expected to deliver a short address in which he would repeat his acceptance of the truths of the Catholic Church. Instead he proceeded to recant his recantations and deny the six statements he had previously made and described the Pope as "Christ's enemy, and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine." The officials pulled him down from the platform and dragged him towards the scaffold. (88)
Cranmer had said in the Church that he regretted the signing of the recantations and claimed that "since my hand offended, it will be punished... when I come to the fire, it first will be burned." According to John Foxe: "When he came to the place where Hugh Latimer and Ridley had been burned before him, Cranmer knelt down briefly to pray then undressed to his shirt, which hung down to his bare feet. His head, once he took off his caps, was so bare there wasn't a hair on it. His beard was long and thick, covering his face, which was so grave it moved both his friends and enemies. As the fire approached him, Cranmer put his right hand into the flames, keeping it there until everyone could see it burned before his body was touched." Cranmer was heard to cry: "this unworthy right hand!" (89)
It was claimed that just before he died Cranmer managed to throw the speech he intended to make in St Mary's Church into the crowd. A man whose initials were J.A. picked it up and made a copy of it. Although he was a Catholic, he was impressed by Cranmer's courage, and decided to keep it and it was later passed on to John Foxe, who published in his Book of Martyrs.
Jasper Ridley has argued that as a propaganda exercise, Cranmer's death was a disaster for Queen Mary. "An event which has been witnessed by hundreds of people cannot be kept secret and the news quickly spread that Cranmer was repudiated his recantations before he died. The government then changed their line; they admitted that Cranmer had retracted his recantations were insincere, that he had recanted only to save his life, and that they had been justified in burning him despite his recantations. The Protestants then circulated the story of Cranmer's statement at the stake in an improved form; they spread the rumour that Cranmer had denied at the stake that he had ever signed any recantations, and that the alleged recantations had all been forged by King Philip's Spanish friars." (90)
By John Simkin ( [login to see] ) © September 1997 (updated January 2020).
Primary Sources
(1) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984)
Clement continued to play his former game, using every excuse for delay and promising everything to everybody. He promised Charles's ambassador that he would issue the bull ordering Henry to stop committing adultry with Anne, and that he would give judgement for Catherine. He then promised Henry's agents that he would not do this. Eventually he issued the bull against Henry, but refused to publish it. He suggested to Henry's agent, Carne, that he might grant Henry a dispensation to commit bigamy and marry Anne without divorcing Catherine; he said this would be less embarrassing than to give Henry the divorce.
Henry had meanwhile acted on Cranmer's suggestion to consult universities. He began at Cambridge, where Gardiner and Fox set to work in February 1530. They found that there was strong opposition in Cambridge to complying with Henry's wishes; but they eventually succeeded in obtaining the opinion that Henry required, after they had handpicked a number of university doctors, whom they knew supported Henry's case, to decide the question for the University. One of those selected was Hugh Latimer, who had attended discussions at the White Horse Inn, was a close friend of Bilney's, and was suspected of being a Lutheran. The University pronounced that a marriage of a man with his brother's widow was against the divine law, and that a Papal dispensation could not make it valid.
(2) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003)
What Cranmer lacked in brilliance, he made up for in steadiness; he was thorough, organized and a superb note-taker. In contrast with the instinctively partisan Gardiner, he was also blessed (and sometimes cursed) with an ability to see both sides of the question. This, combined with his essential fair-mindedness, meant that his opinions were in a state of slow but constant change. The individual steps were scarcely ever revolutionary. But his lifetime's journey - from orthodoxy to advanced reform - was.
References
(1) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(2) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 13
(3) John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1563) page 204 of 2014 edition.
(4) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1997) page 27
(5) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 181
(6) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 41
(7) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) pages 430-433
(8) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) pages 190-191
(9) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(10) Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (27th January, 1533)
(11) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 215
(12) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 42
(13) Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (10th April, 1533)
(14) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 223
(15) Patrick Collinson, Queen Elizabeth I : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(16) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 168
(17) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 68
(18) Jasper Ridley, The Statesman and the Fanatic (1982) page 271
(19) Diane Watt, Elizabeth Barton : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(20) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 76
(21) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 210
(22) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 76
(23) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) pages 43-44
(24) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 82
(25) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 274
(26) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(27) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(28) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(29) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(30) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(31) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(32) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(33) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(34) Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (May, 1536)
(35) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 271
(36) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 253
(37) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 270
(38) Jonathan Hughes, Mary Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(39) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(40) Anne Boleyn, statement on the scaffold at Tower Green (19th May, 1536). Quoted by Edward Hall, in his book, History of England (1548) page 268-269
(41) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 302
(42) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 294
(43) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 190
(44) John Schofield, The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant (2011) page 227
(45) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 385
(46) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 143
(47) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(48) Carl R. Trueman, Robert Barnes : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(49) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(50) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(51) Thomas Cranmer, letter to Henry VIII (12th June, 1540)
(52) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 79
(53) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(54) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 397
(55) Jasper Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (1962) page 238-239
(56) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 187
(57) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1997) page 349
(58) Barrett L. Beer, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(59) David Loades, Mary Tudor (2012) page 99
(60) Barrett L. Beer, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(61) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(62) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 92
(63) Jennifer Loach, Edward VI (2002) pages 101-102
(64) Barrett L. Beer, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(65) Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (1958) page 37 (66)
(66) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(67) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1997) page 512
(68) Dale Hoak, Edward VI: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(69) Philippa Jones, Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (2010) page 86
(70) Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain: Volume IV (1845) pages 138-9
(71) Ann Weikel, Mary Tudor : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(72) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(73) J. M. Stone, The History of Mary I, Queen of England (1901) page 497
(74) Richard Davey, The Nine Days' Queen: Lady Jane Grey and her Times (1909) page 253
(75) Alison Plowden, Lady Jane Grey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(76) J. M. Stone, The History of Mary I, Queen of England (1901) page 499
(77) Ann Weikel, Mary Tudor : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(78) Richard Rex, Elizabeth: Fortune's Bastard (2007) pages 35-36
(79) Christopher Morris, The Tudors (1955) page 113
(80) S. J. Gunn, Edmund Dudley : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(81) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(82) John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1563) page 217 of 2014 edition.
(83) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 112
(84) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 278
(85) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 127
(86) Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(87) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 274
(88) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 279
(89) John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1563) page 219 of 2014 edition.
(90) Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary's Martyrs (2002) page 137
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The DOWNFALL And Execution Of Thomas Cromwell
One of Henry VIII's closest friends and advisors was Thomas Cromwell who became the King's chief minister. He is an incredibly controversial figure who rose ...
The DOWNFALL And Execution Of Thomas Cromwell
One of Henry VIII's closest friends and advisors was Thomas Cromwell who became the King's chief minister. He is an incredibly controversial figure who rose to prominence during the Tudor period and Henry's reign, and today is synonymous with the brutal religious policies of the King such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Cromwell led this, which led to one of biggest land grabs in English History with the King becoming incredibly rich.
Thomas Cromwell started out with humble beginnings, and rose to fame in London as a popular lawyer working closely with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. They were both close, but following Wolsey's fall from grace he entered the service of Henry VIII. Cromwell became close with the King and his second wife Anne Boleyn, after helping to annul Henry's first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Cromwell also orchestrated a seditious and brutal web of lies and deceit against Anne Boleyn which resulted in her execution, of which he personally witnessed stabbing the Queen in the back.
But Cromwell's luck would run out. After failing with his proposal of Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves in which the King felt he'd been conned, he fell quickly from grace. His enemies dug in their claws and had Cromwell arrested, and he was sentenced to death with no trial at all. He lost his head on Tower Hill and his head was then placed on a spike above London Bridge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoJUNLi_Ws0
Images:
1. The Arrest of Thomas Cranmer During Cole's Sermon in St. Mary's Church
2. March 21st, 1556 - The Burning of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury - 19th-century Book Illustration.
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Background from {[ https://anglicanway.org/2019/03/24/thomas-cranmer-his-life-and-martyrdom-21st-march-1556/}]
Thomas Cranmer, His Life and Martyrdom (21st March, 1556)
March 24, 2019 By sinetortus Leave a Comment
In the week when we recalled the anniversary of Cranmer’s execution, it is fitting to cite a short biography (as set out in the celebrated 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910-11)
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire on the 2nd of July 1489, was the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Anne Hatfield. He received his early education, according to Morice his secretary, from “a marvellous severe and cruel schoolmaster,” whose discipline must have been severe indeed to deserve this special mention in an age when no schoolmaster bore the rod in vain. The same authority tells us that he was initiated by his father in those field sports, such as hunting and hawking, which formed one of his recreations in after life. To early training he also owed the skilful horsemanship for which he was conspicuous.
At the age of fourteen he was sent by his mother, who had in 1501 become a widow, to Cambridge. Little is known with certainty of his university career beyond the facts that he became a fellow of Jesus College in 1510 or 1511, that he had soon after to vacate his fellowship, owing to his marriage to “Black Joan,” a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, and that he was reinstated in it on the death of his wife, which occurred in childbirth before the lapse of the year of grace allowed by the statutes. During the brief period of his married life he held the
appointment of lecturer at Buckingham Hall, now Magdalene College. The fact of his marrying would seem to show that he did not at the time intend to enter the church; possibly the death of his wife caused him to qualify for holy orders. He was ordained in 1523, and soon after he took his doctor’s degree in divinity.
According to Strype, he was invited about this time to become a fellow of the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford; but Dean Hook shows that there is some reason to doubt this. If the offer was made, it was declined, and Cranmer continued at Cambridge filling the offices of lecturer in divinity at his own college and of public examiner in divinity to the university. It is interesting, in view of his later efforts to spread the knowledge of the Bible among the people, to know that in the capacity of examiner he insisted on a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, and rejected several candidates who were deficient in this qualification.
It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father’s house at Waltham in Essex. The King (Henry VIII) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, Secretary of State, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the Lord High Almoner, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy’s house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the King’s meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother’s widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the King, who, when Cranmer’s opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: “I will speak to him. Let him be sent for out of hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the ear.”
At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the King to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn’s father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the King appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that “the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated,” and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed “Grand Penitentiary of England,” but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.
Cranmer returned in September 1530, but in January 1531 he received a second commission from the King appointing him “Conciliarius Regius et ad Caesarem Orator.” In the summer of 1531 he accordingly proceeded to Germany as sole ambassador to the Emperor. He was also to sound the Lutheran princes with a view to an alliance, and to obtain the removal of some restrictions on English trade. At Nuremberg he became acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer’s opinions. But Osiander’s house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and in 1532 they were married. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer’s statement that he never expected or desired the primacy; and it seems probable enough that, if he had foreseen how soon the primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose.
Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532, Archbishop Warham died, and the King almost immediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against the Turks, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer’s conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony had occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to the pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the pope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the King. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey’s. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.
In the last as in the first step of Cranmer’s promotion, Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce — or rather, of the legitimation of Anne Boleyn’s expected issue — had now become very urgent, and in the new archbishop he had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with which Cranmer did the work intrusted to him must have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April, Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine’s marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the King were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity.
The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the King, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally determining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the King, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear, she was declared contumacious, and on the 23rd of May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the King free to marry whom he pleased. The Act of Appeals had already prohibited any appeal from the archbishop’s court. Five days later he pronounced the marriage between Henry and Anne — which had been secretly celebrated about the 25th of January 1533 — to be valid. On the 1st of June he crowned Anne as Queen, and on the l0th of September stood godfather to her child, the future Queen Elizabeth.
The breach with Rome and the subjection of the church in England to the royal supremacy had been practically achieved before Cranmer’s appointment as archbishop: and he had little to do with the other constitutional changes of Henry’s reign. But his position as chief minister of Henry’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction forced him into unpleasant prominence in connexion with the King’s matrimonial experiences. In 1536 he was required to revise his own sentence in favour of the validity of Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn; and on the 17th of May the marriage was declared invalid. The ground on which this sentence is pronounced is fairly clear. Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry VIII’s mistress; this by canon law was a bar to his marriage with Anne—a bar which had been removed by papal dispensation in 1527, but now the papal power to dispense in such cases had been repudiated, and the original objection revived. The sentence was grotesquely legal and unjust. With Anne’s condemnation by the House of Lords, Cranmer had nothing to do. He interceded for her in vain with the King, as he had done in the cases of John Fisher, Thomas More and the monks of Christchurch. His share in the divorce of Anne of Cleves was less prominent than that of Bishop Gardiner, though he did preside over the Convocation in which nearly all the dignitaries of the church signified their approval of that measure. To his next and last interposition in the matrimonial affairs of the King no discredit attaches itself. When he was made cognizant of the charges against Catherine Howard, his duty to communicate them to the King was obvious, though painful.
Meanwhile Cranmer was actively carrying out the policy which has associated his name more closely, perhaps, than that of any other ecclesiastic with the Reformation in England. Its most important feature on the theological as distinct from the political side, was the endeavour to promote the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, by encouraging translation and procuring an order in 1538 that a copy of the Bible in English should be set up in every church in a convenient place for reading. Only second in importance to this was the re-adjustment of the creed and liturgy of the church, which formed Cranmer’s principal work during the latter half of his life.
The progress of the archbishop’s opinion towards that middle Protestantism, if it may be so called, which he did so much to impress on the formularies of the Church of England, was gradual, as a brief enumeration of the successive steps in that progress will show. In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries. This proved impracticable, but the frequent conferences Cranmer had with the theologians composing the embassy had doubtless a great influence in modifying his views. Both in parliament and in Convocation he opposed the Six Articles of 1539, but he stood almost alone. During the period between 1540 and 1543 the archbishop was engaged at the head of a commission in the revision of the “Bishop’s Book” (1537) or Institutions of a Christian Man, and the preparation of the Necessary Erudition (1543) known as the “King’s Book,” which was a modification of the former work in the direction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In June 1545 was issued his Litany, which was substantially the same as that now in use, and shows his mastery of a rhythmical English style.
The course taken by Cranmer in promoting the Reformation exposed him to the bitter hostility of the reactionary party or “men of the old learning,” of whom Gardiner and Bonner were leaders, and on various occasions — notably in 1543 and 1545 — conspiracies were formed in the council or elsewhere to effect his overthrow. The King, however, remained true to him, and all the conspiracies signally failed. It illustrates a favourable trait in the archbishop’s character that he forgave all the conspirators. He was, as his secretary Morice testifies, “a man that delighted not in revenging.” Cranmer was present with Henry VIII when he died (1547). By the will of the King he was nominated one of a council of regency composed of sixteen persons, but he acquiesced in the arrangement by which Somerset became Lord Protector. He officiated at the coronation of the boy King Edward VI, and is supposed to have instituted a sinister change in the order of the ceremony, by which the right of the monarch to reign was made to appear to depend upon inheritance alone, without the concurrent consent of the people. But Edward’s title had been expressly sanctioned by act of parliament, so that there was no more room for election in his case than in that of George I, and the real motive of the changes was to shorten the weary ceremony for the frail child.
During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the Protector and of the young King being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. In 1547 appeared the Homiliesprepared under his direction. Four of them are attributed to the archbishop himself—those on Salvation, Faith, Good Works and the Reading of Scripture. His translation of the German Catechismof Justus Jonas, known as Cranmer’s Catechism, appeared in the following year. Important, as showing his views on a cardinal doctrine, was the Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, which he published in 1550. It was immediately answered from the side of the ” old learning ” by Gardiner. The first prayerbook of Edward VI was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in March 1549; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop did much of the work of compilation personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI, published in 1553, owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer.
The last great undertaking in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but completed before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrangement. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames. But he naturally loathed persecution, and was as tolerant as any in that age.
Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward’s “device” of the crown to Lady Jane Grey. On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the “nine days’ Queen” when the others who had with him signed Edward’s device deserted her.
On the accession of Queen Mary, he was summoned to the council—most of whom had signed the same device—reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen’s pleasure was known. He refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the continent. Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more than nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the Queen, who could not forgive his share in her mother’s divorce and her own disgrace. On the 14th of September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declaration he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored.
In November, with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two other Dudleys, Cranmer was condemned for treason. Renard thought he would be executed, but so true a Romanist as Mary could scarcely have an ecclesiastic put to death in consequence of a sentence by a secular court, and Cranmer was reserved for treatment as a heretic by the highest of clerical tribunals, which could not act until parliament had restored the papal jurisdiction. Accordingly in March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in the Bocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th of October 1555. Cranmer had been tried by a papal commission, over which Bishop Brooks of Gloucester presided, in September 1555. Brooks had no power to give sentence, but reported to Rome, where Cranmer was summoned, but not permitted, to attend. On the 25th of November he was pronounced contumacious by the pope and excommunicated, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th of February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power.
About the same time Cranmer subscribed the first two of his “recantations.” His difficulty consisted in the fact that, like all Anglicans of the 16th century, he recognized no right of private judgment, but believed that the state, as represented by monarchy, parliament and Convocation, had an absolute right to determine the national faith and to impose it on every Englishman. All these authorities had now legally established Roman Catholicism as the national faith, and Cranmer had no logical ground on which to resist. His early recantations” are merely recognitions of his lifelong conviction of this right of the state. But his dilemma on this point led him into further doubts, and he was eventually induced to revile his whole career and the Reformation. This is what the government wanted. Northumberland’s recantation had done much to discredit the Reformation, Cranmer’s, it was hoped, would complete the work. Hence the enormous effect of Cranmer’s recovery at the final scene.
On the 21st of March he was taken to St Mary’s church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life; that he renounced and refused all his recantations as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames. The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.
It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was “too fearful about what might happen to him.” This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer’s character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom.
As a theologian it is difficult to class him. As early as 1538 he had repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation; by 1550 he had rejected also the Real Presence (Pref. to his Answer to Dr Richard Smith). But here he used the term “real” somewhat unguardedly, for in his Defencehe asserts a real presence, but defines it as exclusively a spiritual presence; and he repudiates the idea that the bread and wine were “bare tokens.” His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divine hereditary right of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes. He set practically no limits to the ecclesiastical authority of kings; they were as fully the representatives of the church as the state, and Cranmer hardly distinguished between the two. Church and state to him were one.
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One of Henry VIII's closest friends and advisors was Thomas Cromwell who became the King's chief minister. He is an incredibly controversial figure who rose to prominence during the Tudor period and Henry's reign, and today is synonymous with the brutal religious policies of the King such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Cromwell led this, which led to one of biggest land grabs in English History with the King becoming incredibly rich.
Thomas Cromwell started out with humble beginnings, and rose to fame in London as a popular lawyer working closely with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. They were both close, but following Wolsey's fall from grace he entered the service of Henry VIII. Cromwell became close with the King and his second wife Anne Boleyn, after helping to annul Henry's first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Cromwell also orchestrated a seditious and brutal web of lies and deceit against Anne Boleyn which resulted in her execution, of which he personally witnessed stabbing the Queen in the back.
But Cromwell's luck would run out. After failing with his proposal of Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves in which the King felt he'd been conned, he fell quickly from grace. His enemies dug in their claws and had Cromwell arrested, and he was sentenced to death with no trial at all. He lost his head on Tower Hill and his head was then placed on a spike above London Bridge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoJUNLi_Ws0
Images:
1. The Arrest of Thomas Cranmer During Cole's Sermon in St. Mary's Church
2. March 21st, 1556 - The Burning of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury - 19th-century Book Illustration.
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Background from {[ https://anglicanway.org/2019/03/24/thomas-cranmer-his-life-and-martyrdom-21st-march-1556/}]
Thomas Cranmer, His Life and Martyrdom (21st March, 1556)
March 24, 2019 By sinetortus Leave a Comment
In the week when we recalled the anniversary of Cranmer’s execution, it is fitting to cite a short biography (as set out in the celebrated 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910-11)
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire on the 2nd of July 1489, was the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Anne Hatfield. He received his early education, according to Morice his secretary, from “a marvellous severe and cruel schoolmaster,” whose discipline must have been severe indeed to deserve this special mention in an age when no schoolmaster bore the rod in vain. The same authority tells us that he was initiated by his father in those field sports, such as hunting and hawking, which formed one of his recreations in after life. To early training he also owed the skilful horsemanship for which he was conspicuous.
At the age of fourteen he was sent by his mother, who had in 1501 become a widow, to Cambridge. Little is known with certainty of his university career beyond the facts that he became a fellow of Jesus College in 1510 or 1511, that he had soon after to vacate his fellowship, owing to his marriage to “Black Joan,” a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, and that he was reinstated in it on the death of his wife, which occurred in childbirth before the lapse of the year of grace allowed by the statutes. During the brief period of his married life he held the
appointment of lecturer at Buckingham Hall, now Magdalene College. The fact of his marrying would seem to show that he did not at the time intend to enter the church; possibly the death of his wife caused him to qualify for holy orders. He was ordained in 1523, and soon after he took his doctor’s degree in divinity.
According to Strype, he was invited about this time to become a fellow of the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford; but Dean Hook shows that there is some reason to doubt this. If the offer was made, it was declined, and Cranmer continued at Cambridge filling the offices of lecturer in divinity at his own college and of public examiner in divinity to the university. It is interesting, in view of his later efforts to spread the knowledge of the Bible among the people, to know that in the capacity of examiner he insisted on a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, and rejected several candidates who were deficient in this qualification.
It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father’s house at Waltham in Essex. The King (Henry VIII) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, Secretary of State, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the Lord High Almoner, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy’s house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the King’s meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother’s widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the King, who, when Cranmer’s opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: “I will speak to him. Let him be sent for out of hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the ear.”
At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the King to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn’s father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the King appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that “the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated,” and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed “Grand Penitentiary of England,” but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.
Cranmer returned in September 1530, but in January 1531 he received a second commission from the King appointing him “Conciliarius Regius et ad Caesarem Orator.” In the summer of 1531 he accordingly proceeded to Germany as sole ambassador to the Emperor. He was also to sound the Lutheran princes with a view to an alliance, and to obtain the removal of some restrictions on English trade. At Nuremberg he became acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer’s opinions. But Osiander’s house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and in 1532 they were married. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer’s statement that he never expected or desired the primacy; and it seems probable enough that, if he had foreseen how soon the primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose.
Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532, Archbishop Warham died, and the King almost immediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against the Turks, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer’s conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony had occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to the pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the pope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the King. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey’s. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.
In the last as in the first step of Cranmer’s promotion, Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce — or rather, of the legitimation of Anne Boleyn’s expected issue — had now become very urgent, and in the new archbishop he had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with which Cranmer did the work intrusted to him must have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April, Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine’s marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the King were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity.
The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the King, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally determining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the King, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear, she was declared contumacious, and on the 23rd of May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the King free to marry whom he pleased. The Act of Appeals had already prohibited any appeal from the archbishop’s court. Five days later he pronounced the marriage between Henry and Anne — which had been secretly celebrated about the 25th of January 1533 — to be valid. On the 1st of June he crowned Anne as Queen, and on the l0th of September stood godfather to her child, the future Queen Elizabeth.
The breach with Rome and the subjection of the church in England to the royal supremacy had been practically achieved before Cranmer’s appointment as archbishop: and he had little to do with the other constitutional changes of Henry’s reign. But his position as chief minister of Henry’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction forced him into unpleasant prominence in connexion with the King’s matrimonial experiences. In 1536 he was required to revise his own sentence in favour of the validity of Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn; and on the 17th of May the marriage was declared invalid. The ground on which this sentence is pronounced is fairly clear. Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry VIII’s mistress; this by canon law was a bar to his marriage with Anne—a bar which had been removed by papal dispensation in 1527, but now the papal power to dispense in such cases had been repudiated, and the original objection revived. The sentence was grotesquely legal and unjust. With Anne’s condemnation by the House of Lords, Cranmer had nothing to do. He interceded for her in vain with the King, as he had done in the cases of John Fisher, Thomas More and the monks of Christchurch. His share in the divorce of Anne of Cleves was less prominent than that of Bishop Gardiner, though he did preside over the Convocation in which nearly all the dignitaries of the church signified their approval of that measure. To his next and last interposition in the matrimonial affairs of the King no discredit attaches itself. When he was made cognizant of the charges against Catherine Howard, his duty to communicate them to the King was obvious, though painful.
Meanwhile Cranmer was actively carrying out the policy which has associated his name more closely, perhaps, than that of any other ecclesiastic with the Reformation in England. Its most important feature on the theological as distinct from the political side, was the endeavour to promote the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, by encouraging translation and procuring an order in 1538 that a copy of the Bible in English should be set up in every church in a convenient place for reading. Only second in importance to this was the re-adjustment of the creed and liturgy of the church, which formed Cranmer’s principal work during the latter half of his life.
The progress of the archbishop’s opinion towards that middle Protestantism, if it may be so called, which he did so much to impress on the formularies of the Church of England, was gradual, as a brief enumeration of the successive steps in that progress will show. In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries. This proved impracticable, but the frequent conferences Cranmer had with the theologians composing the embassy had doubtless a great influence in modifying his views. Both in parliament and in Convocation he opposed the Six Articles of 1539, but he stood almost alone. During the period between 1540 and 1543 the archbishop was engaged at the head of a commission in the revision of the “Bishop’s Book” (1537) or Institutions of a Christian Man, and the preparation of the Necessary Erudition (1543) known as the “King’s Book,” which was a modification of the former work in the direction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In June 1545 was issued his Litany, which was substantially the same as that now in use, and shows his mastery of a rhythmical English style.
The course taken by Cranmer in promoting the Reformation exposed him to the bitter hostility of the reactionary party or “men of the old learning,” of whom Gardiner and Bonner were leaders, and on various occasions — notably in 1543 and 1545 — conspiracies were formed in the council or elsewhere to effect his overthrow. The King, however, remained true to him, and all the conspiracies signally failed. It illustrates a favourable trait in the archbishop’s character that he forgave all the conspirators. He was, as his secretary Morice testifies, “a man that delighted not in revenging.” Cranmer was present with Henry VIII when he died (1547). By the will of the King he was nominated one of a council of regency composed of sixteen persons, but he acquiesced in the arrangement by which Somerset became Lord Protector. He officiated at the coronation of the boy King Edward VI, and is supposed to have instituted a sinister change in the order of the ceremony, by which the right of the monarch to reign was made to appear to depend upon inheritance alone, without the concurrent consent of the people. But Edward’s title had been expressly sanctioned by act of parliament, so that there was no more room for election in his case than in that of George I, and the real motive of the changes was to shorten the weary ceremony for the frail child.
During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the Protector and of the young King being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. In 1547 appeared the Homiliesprepared under his direction. Four of them are attributed to the archbishop himself—those on Salvation, Faith, Good Works and the Reading of Scripture. His translation of the German Catechismof Justus Jonas, known as Cranmer’s Catechism, appeared in the following year. Important, as showing his views on a cardinal doctrine, was the Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, which he published in 1550. It was immediately answered from the side of the ” old learning ” by Gardiner. The first prayerbook of Edward VI was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in March 1549; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop did much of the work of compilation personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI, published in 1553, owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer.
The last great undertaking in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but completed before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrangement. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames. But he naturally loathed persecution, and was as tolerant as any in that age.
Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward’s “device” of the crown to Lady Jane Grey. On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the “nine days’ Queen” when the others who had with him signed Edward’s device deserted her.
On the accession of Queen Mary, he was summoned to the council—most of whom had signed the same device—reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen’s pleasure was known. He refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the continent. Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more than nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the Queen, who could not forgive his share in her mother’s divorce and her own disgrace. On the 14th of September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declaration he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored.
In November, with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two other Dudleys, Cranmer was condemned for treason. Renard thought he would be executed, but so true a Romanist as Mary could scarcely have an ecclesiastic put to death in consequence of a sentence by a secular court, and Cranmer was reserved for treatment as a heretic by the highest of clerical tribunals, which could not act until parliament had restored the papal jurisdiction. Accordingly in March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in the Bocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th of October 1555. Cranmer had been tried by a papal commission, over which Bishop Brooks of Gloucester presided, in September 1555. Brooks had no power to give sentence, but reported to Rome, where Cranmer was summoned, but not permitted, to attend. On the 25th of November he was pronounced contumacious by the pope and excommunicated, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th of February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power.
About the same time Cranmer subscribed the first two of his “recantations.” His difficulty consisted in the fact that, like all Anglicans of the 16th century, he recognized no right of private judgment, but believed that the state, as represented by monarchy, parliament and Convocation, had an absolute right to determine the national faith and to impose it on every Englishman. All these authorities had now legally established Roman Catholicism as the national faith, and Cranmer had no logical ground on which to resist. His early recantations” are merely recognitions of his lifelong conviction of this right of the state. But his dilemma on this point led him into further doubts, and he was eventually induced to revile his whole career and the Reformation. This is what the government wanted. Northumberland’s recantation had done much to discredit the Reformation, Cranmer’s, it was hoped, would complete the work. Hence the enormous effect of Cranmer’s recovery at the final scene.
On the 21st of March he was taken to St Mary’s church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life; that he renounced and refused all his recantations as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames. The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.
It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was “too fearful about what might happen to him.” This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer’s character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom.
As a theologian it is difficult to class him. As early as 1538 he had repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation; by 1550 he had rejected also the Real Presence (Pref. to his Answer to Dr Richard Smith). But here he used the term “real” somewhat unguardedly, for in his Defencehe asserts a real presence, but defines it as exclusively a spiritual presence; and he repudiates the idea that the bread and wine were “bare tokens.” His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divine hereditary right of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes. He set practically no limits to the ecclesiastical authority of kings; they were as fully the representatives of the church as the state, and Cranmer hardly distinguished between the two. Church and state to him were one.
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Got caught in the middle of Henry's behaviors...but England did end up Protestant in the long run
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