Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), archbishop of Canterbury, who was one of the leaders of the English Reformation.

Born in Aslacton, Nottinghamshire, July 2, 1489, Cranmer was the son of a village squire. In 1526 he received the degree of doctor of divinity from the University of Cambridge, where he had been ordained and was both a lecturer in divinity (at Jesus College) and a public examiner in divinity. In 1529 he gained the favor of King Henry VIII of England by suggesting that the monarch need not wait for annulment at Rome of his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragón, but might refer the question of the legality of the marriage to university scholars. Cranmer shortly thereafter was appointed archdeacon of Taunton, made a royal chaplain, and given a post in the household of Sir Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire, father of Anne Boleyn, the English noblewoman who was to become Henry's second wife. In 1530 Cranmer accompanied Wiltshire on an embassy to Rome, sent by the king to explain his request for annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Cranmer returned to England the same year, and in 1532 he became Henry's ambassador to the court of Charles V, Holy Roman emperor, remaining abroad until after Henry nominated him to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which had been vacant.

Cranmer was reluctant to return to England, for while in Germany in 1532 he had married a niece of the Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander; in an age when the English clergy was celibate, he would have to conceal his marriage if he were elevated to fill the vacant see. Papal bulls soon arrived confirming the nomination, however, and Cranmer was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury on March 30, 1533. On May 23 he declared that the marriage of Henry and Catherine had been invalid from the first, and within five days he pronounced legal the marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn, which had been performed secretly the preceding January. Cranmer served Henry similarly in subsequent proceedings against Anne herself and in the later matrimonial affairs of the king. In return for his services, he was made the highest ecclesiastical authority in England. He granted dispensations, consecrated bishops, issued bulls, and gradually exercised many of the prerogatives traditionally reserved to the pope.

Cranmer's policies more than ever identified him with the Reformation in England. He forswore allegiance to the pope, directed erasure of the pope's name from every prayer book, and pronounced the king of England head of the English church. He greatly facilitated distribution of the English translation of the Bible, done by the English clergyman Miles Coverdale, that had been introduced in 1535, and he took the lead in revising the creed and liturgy of the church. In 1538 Cranmer carried out Henry's orders for the desecration of the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and for the abolition of many festivals of the Roman Catholic church. He endeavored to secure a union of the Church of England with the Lutheran church of Germany and invited to England a number of Protestant refugees, including the Italian reformers Peter Martyr and Bernardino Ochino.

In 1547, when Henry VIII lay dying, Cranmer was at his side. The king's will named the prelate one of the regents of Edward VI, the young king of England, and Cranmer proceeded to carry out the religious reforms begun in the previous reign. He directed preparation of the Homilies (1547) and wrote those on salvation, good works, faith, and the reading of Scripture. He compiled the two prayer books of Edward VI, the first of which was sanctioned in 1549, the second in 1552, and wrote in whole or in part the original 42 articles of religion (1552), or doctrinal statements, of the Church of England, which later were reduced in number to become the Thirty-nine Articles.

Cranmer had pledged himself to carry out the will of Henry VIII, by which the right of succession fell to Mary Tudor, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragón. In 1553, however, Cranmer acceded to the deathbed request of Edward VI to support the transfer of the crown to Lady Jane Grey, great-granddaughter of Henry VII. Lady Jane was queen for nine days. On the accession of Mary Tudor, a Catholic, Cranmer was reprimanded for his perfidy and confined to his palace at Lambeth. On September 14, 1553, he was arrested and confined in the Tower of London. He was condemned to death for treason, but the order of the secular court was not carried out; instead he was held for trial as a heretic by a clerical court after Parliament had reestablished papal jurisdiction.

In March 1554 Cranmer was removed to Oxford and confined in a common prison. There he was subjected to almost constant examination and exhortation. He made no fewer than seven recantations of his earlier promulgated beliefs, declaring that he believed firmly in the articles of the Roman Catholic church and that his writings were contrary to the word of God. Nevertheless, he was publicly degraded from his archbishopric, excommunicated, and finally condemned by a secular court to death by burning at the stake. Just before he died, on March 21, 1556, he repudiated all his recantations, and exposed to the flames the right hand that had signed them.