Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury

b. Aslacton, Nottinghamshire 1489; d 1556

In 1503 he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow. He remained as divinity professor at this college until 1529, when he met Fox and Gardiner, to whom, in conversation on the questions of Henry VIII's desire for the annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, he made the remark which was the cause of all his later promotion. His suggestion was that Henry should have recourse to the canonists and universities rather than to the pope. Henry immediately commanded him to write a treatise on the subject, and to be prepared to support his position.

In 1530 Cranmer was sent on an embassy to Rome, and two years later to Germany. The pope made him grand penitentiary of England, and on his German embassy he married the niece of the reformer Osiander. He was summoned back to England on the death of Warham to fill the vacant archiepiscopal throne (1533).

Cranmer's sincere belief in the duty of obedience to the sovereign made him a pliable tool in Henry's hands. In May Cranmer pronounced the king's marriage with Catherine to be void ab initio, and that with Anne Boleyn, secretly celebrated the January before, to be valid. Three years later he annulled the marriage with Anne in the same fashion. In 1540 he divorced him from Anne of Cleves, and next year he was instrumental in securing Catherine Howard's condemnation. Yet, although Cranmer's weakness led him into culpable compliance with the king's wishes, he was naturally kind-hearted. He opposed the Six Articles, 1539, and attempted to save the lives of Fisher, More, and Anne. He had little to do with the dissolution of the monasteries, though he was connected with the deaths of Frith, Lambert, and other heretics.

Cranmer's chief work was in the direction of the English Reformation. From the beginning he had been zealous for the Bible, and in 1538 it was ordered that a copy should be placed in every church. In 1545 he published his Litany, almost identical with the one at present in use, which shows his great merit as a master of prose. In 1548 came his Catechismus, and in 1550 his Defence of the True and Catholicke Doctrine of the Sacrament, an attack on transubstantiation. His influence in the compilation of the Prayer Book itself can hardly be over estimated.

On the accession of Mary, Cranmer was brought to trial and deposed from his office of archbishop. Finally he was persuaded to recant. Then, right at the end, at the moment when he should publicly have proclaimed his recantation, he summoned the courage to restate his old position, and deplored his past cowardice. On 2 March 1566, he was burnt at the stake, near the junction between Broad Street and Cornmarket, Oxford, burning first the hand that had signed his recantation.

© JM Dent/Historybookshop.com

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