Thomas Cranmer

“ These were More — Cranmer — Cromwell. Sir Thomas More, Thomas Cranmer, and Thomas Cromwell. More was the most accomplished, most learned, and most enlightened of the three. He was a Catholic, but very exemplary in his life, and charitable in his views. In moral elevation of character, and (p. 052) beautiful serenity of soul, the annals of the great men of his country furnish no superior. His extensive erudition and moral integrity alone secured him the official station which Wolsey held as lord chancellor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cromwell, unlike Wolsey, was hostile to the temporal power of Rome. He made Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, who was inclined toward Protestant views, but, though sincere in his beliefs, was a man of pliant temper, indisposed to resist the king's will, preferring to bow to a storm, and to wait for it to pass by. By Cranmer the divorce was decreed, but this was after the marriage with Anne Boleyn had taken place. Henry was excommunicated by the Pope. Acts of Parliament abolished the Pope's, and established the king's, supremacy in the Church of England. ”

“ When the king left England to go to Brussels, Carranza remained with the queen, to whom he was useful in supporting the Catholic doctrine in the universities, and arranging other affairs of the greatest importance. He revised, by the order of Cardinal Pole, the canons which had been decreed by a national council, and caused several obstinate heretics to be punished, particularly Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Martin Bucer; his zeal often exposed him to great danger.
In 1557 he went to Flanders, where he caused all books infected with the heresy of Luther to be burnt. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ One by one all the powers of the Pope were shorn away, the power of making laws for themselves was taken from the clergy, the Church was declared to be independent of any foreign influence, but wholly dependent on the Crown. Every one was obliged to swear that the King was the ‘Head of the Church’. Archbishop Cranmer.The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, pronounced the divorce from Katharine, and married his King to Anne Boleyn; the Princess Mary was set aside, and when Anne's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was born, she was declared heir to the throne. ”

“ Charges for burning Cranmer.
I will draw the curtain upon this dismal picture, by a short extract from one of Cranmer's letters, in which this great and good man thus ingeniously urges the necessity of the Scriptures being translated into the English language; a point, by the bye, upon which neither he, nor Cromwell, nor Latimer, I believe, were at first decided; "God's will and commandment is, (says Cranmer) that when the people be gathered together, the minister should use such language as the people may understand, and take profit thereby; or else hold their peace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He gained the confidence of Cranmer; became his chaplain, and subsequently, through the influence of Thomas Cromwell, he was appointed to the mastership of Michael House in 1533. In 1536 and again in 1540 he was made vice-chancellor, as one who would offer no effectual opposition to the designs of Cromwell for the pillage of the university and its colleges. He was, however, tardy in delivering up the foundation deeds of his own college in compliance with the royal injunctions. Cranmer wrote to Cromwell, 18 Jan. ”

“ I am afraid that my quotations from memory, in my letter of Saturday, were not exactly correct; for on examining Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire to-day, I find that it is stated (vol. iv. pp. 4-7.) on the monument of Samuel Cranmer at Astwood Bury, that he was "descended in a direct line from Richard Cranmer, elder brother to Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury;" and that it was found, on an inquisition held on April 7, 1640, that his son and heir Cæsar Cranmer (called on the monument "Sir Cæsar Wood Ate Cranmer, Kt.") was his heir at six years of age. ”

“ So he made Cranmer find some foolish excuse for breaking this marriage also, and was so angry with Thomas Crumwell for having led him into it, that this favorite was in turn thrown into prison and beheaded. ”

“ It required no great sagacity to perceive the inconsistency and dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost all Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves, who demanded freedom of conscience, yet refused to grant it, who execrated persecution, yet persecuted, who urged reason against the authority of one opponent, and authority against the reasons of another. Bonner acted at least in accordance with his own principles. Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer. ”

“ He had answered for him at the font in his infancy, and had been his father's favoured counsellor in his childhood, and his own guardian and adviser in his youth; and now Edward lay a-dying, and this was his last request to him, and was made in the interest of that very form of religion which Cranmer himself had done more than any living man to establish. It was a case in which even a strong man might have yielded, and Cranmer was not a strong man: in which a hard man might have been softened, and Cranmer was not a hard man. ”

“ The one point in it which interests us here is the conduct of Cranmer. Cranmer had floated on the full tide of prosperity during Edward's reign. On the whole, his conduct had been good. He may have been somewhat inclined to harshness in his treatment of Gardiner and Bonner, but his chastisements had been but with whips as compared with the scorpions which they themselves dealt out to their opponents both before and after. ”

“ Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an indecent fluid something—which as yet he had not had time to classify—lumping itself into a six-foot-high center before his very eyes! It looked like one of the micro-organisms he had studied! One grown to frightful dimensions. An amœba!
There, some minutes suffocated in the rubbery folds—yet still apparent beneath the glistening ooze of this monster—were two bodies.
They were dead. He knew it. Nevertheless he attacked the flowing, senseless monster with his knife. Shot would do no good. ”

“ Unfortunately for all concerned, Cranmer, dazed and indubitably stark insane, chose to perform a strange travesty on fishing four miles to the west of his lodge—on the further border of Moccasin Swamp. His clothing had been torn to shreds, his hat was gone, and he was coated from head to foot with gluey mire. It was far from strange that the good folk of Shanksville, who never had glimpsed the eccentric millionaire, failed to associate him with Cranmer. ”

“ He is said to have contributed to the cause of enlightenment, and so perhaps he did with all his blackness, as the coal contributes to the gas; and never was a bit of Wallsend half so hard, or a tenth part so black, as the heart of this despicable sovereign. He never had a friend; but he was surrounded by sycophants, whom, one after the other, he atrociously sacrificed.
Cranmer being a man of superior mind, exercised an influence over him, and was sent for to his death-bed, when he pressed the prelate's hand ”

“ Both life and dignities were promised if he would recant. "Confounded, heart-broken, old," the love of life and the fear of death were stronger for a time than the power of conscience or dignity of character. Six several times was he induced to recant the doctrines he had preached, and profess an allegiance which could only be a solemn mockery.
True, Cranmer came to himself; he perceived that he was mocked, and felt both grief and shame in view of his apostasy. His last hours were glorious. Never did a good man more splendidly redeem his memory from shame. ”

“ For while the doctrine has visibly progressed in a direction towards a Swiss rather than a German form of Protestantism, the persons responsible for the authorship of the two books are mainly the same; and as the distance of time is very short, it affords an excuse for suspecting that they may have intended to proceed to still greater extremes. At the same time, as already noticed, the opinions of Cranmer, and probably also of many of his coadjutors, were changing rapidly, and the two books may therefore represent their sincere convictions at the time of publication. ”

“ The king, touched by his simplicity and candor, disclosed to him the conspiracy, and promised to nominate a commission; insisting, however, that the primate should be the chief member and that he should proceed against his accusers. Cranmer refused to do this. The commission was nominated. Dr. Lee, dean of York, made diligent inquiry, and found that men to whom Cranmer had rendered great services were in the number of the conspirators. Cranmer bore himself with great meekness towards them. He declined to confound and put them to shame as the king had required him to do ”

“ By virtue of this instrument, Cranmer was gradually degraded, by putting mere rags on him to represent the dress of an archbishop; then stripping him of his attire, they took off his own gown, and put an old worn one upon him instead. This he bore unmoved, and his enemies, finding that severity only rendered him more determined, tried the opposite course, and placed him in the house of the dean of Christ-church, where he was treated with every indulgence. ”

“ In the latter years of his life, under the influence of Ridley and Peter Martyr, Cranmer's opinions had advanced rapidly, and he had become, as is shown in the Articles and the second Prayer-book of Edward, and as he himself tacitly admitted in his second examination at Oxford, Zwinglian in doctrine. Nevertheless he remained true to the conservative instincts characteristic of the English Reformation throughout, and altered as little as his new principles would permit. He may doubtless also have considered that a manual of devotion is one thing and a formula of doctrine another. ”

“ I may mention that these Cranmers were from Warwickshire. The monument states that Samuel Cranmer was born at "Aulcester" in that county, "about the year 1575."
R. E. W.
DUTCH POPULAR SONG-BOOK. (Vol. iii., p. 22.)
The second edition of the song-book mentioned by the Hermit of Holyport must have been published between 1781 and 1810, as the many popular works printed for S. and W. Koene may testify. In 1798 they lived on the Linde gracht, but shifted afterwards their dwelling-place to the Boomstraat. ”

“ On the eve of the surrender of the city to the imperial forces in January 1547 (N.S.) he escaped to Basel, whence, at Cranmer's invitation, he migrated to England, arriving in London with Peter Martyr on 20 Dec. following [see Vermigli, Pietro Martire] . Cranmer received the exiles under the hospitable roof of Lambeth Palace, and provided Ochino, 9 May 1548, with a non-residentiary prebend in the church of Canterbury. He was also granted a crown pension of one hundred marks, and appointed preacher to the Italian church. Some of his sermons were translated into English [cf. Bacon, Ann, Lady] ”

“ Though it is most eminently true of Cranmer that his faults were always the effect of circumstances, and not of intention; yet this palliating consideration is rather weakened when we recollect that he consented to place himself in a station where those circumstances occurred. At the time of Cranmer's elevation to the see of Canterbury, Henry, though on the point of separating for ever from Rome, had not absolutely determined upon so strong a measure; and his policy required that the new archbishop should solicit the usual bulls from the pope, and take the oath of canonical obedience to him. ”

“ Rolls House MSS. In these late times, when men whose temper has not been tried by danger, feel themselves entitled, nevertheless, by their own innocence of large errors, to sit in judgment on the greatest of their forefathers, Cranmer has received no tender treatment. Because, in the near prospect of a death of agony, his heart for a moment failed him, the passing weakness has been accepted as the key to his life, and he has been railed at as a coward and a sycophant. ”