Biography
Thomas Cranmer was born on July 2, 1489, in Aslockton, in Nottinghamshire, England, the second son of a small landowner, Thomas Cranmer, and his wife, Agnes Hatfield. His family was of the lesser gentry, and it was a quiet country household. He was educated at a grammar school in the village, under a harsh master. He was fond of riding and hunting, and he kept a love of the outdoors all his life. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Jesus College, at Cambridge. It was a time of change in the university, when the new learning was spreading. He spent eight years there and took his degree in 1511. He became a fellow of his college. He was a diligent student of the Scriptures and the church fathers, but he was slow and cautious. He gave himself to a quiet life of study.
He married a young woman, Joan, in about 1515. He thus had to give up his fellowship, since the fellows were required to be celibate. He took a position as a reader at Buckingham College. His wife died in childbirth within a year. He was restored to his fellowship at Jesus College, and he went on to take a doctorate in divinity, in 1523. He became a lecturer in the university. He was a man of the library, who had no interest in politics. His life might have been spent in obscurity, but for a chance remark. In the summer of 1529, plague drove the Cambridge scholars out of the town, and he went to the home of a friend, in Waltham Cross, in Essex. There he met two of the king's advisers, Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox. They were discussing the matter of the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which had been blocked by the pope.
Cranmer suggested that the matter be taken from the pope and referred to the theologians of the universities of Europe. If the scholars said that the king's marriage was against the law of God, then the pope could not override it. The suggestion was passed to the king, who was delighted. He called Cranmer to the court, and he took him into his service. Cranmer wrote a treatise on the subject and was sent on a number of missions. In 1532, he went as the ambassador to the emperor, Charles V, in Germany. There he met a number of the reformers, and he met in Nuremberg Andreas Osiander, the Lutheran theologian. He married Osiander's niece, Margarete, in secret. It was a breach of the law of clerical celibacy in England.
In 1533, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, died. The king chose Cranmer as his successor. He was a reluctant candidate. He did not wish for the post. He was recalled from Germany, and he was consecrated on March 30, 1533. He was a man who found it hard to refuse the king. In May, he pronounced the king's marriage to Catherine null and void, and he declared valid the king's secret marriage to Anne Boleyn. He crowned her as queen. He was a man of conscience who obeyed. He also helped to bring about her fall in 1536, when the king had her put to death, though he pleaded for her.
He served the king for fourteen years. He was a loyal subject. He quietly pushed the cause of reform. He worked for the translation of the Bible into English and he wrote the preface to the Great Bible of 1539, which was ordered to be placed in every church. He tried to protect the reformers from persecution. He wrote the Litany in English in 1544, which is still in use. He was vulnerable at the time of the Act of Six Articles, in 1539, which affirmed traditional teaching, and he sent his wife abroad for safety. He also survived a plot against him in 1543. The king, who was fond of him, said that he was the greatest heretic in England, and then warned his enemies that he would not allow them to touch him.
When the king died in 1547, and the boy Edward VI came to the throne, he was free to advance the Reformation. He led the church toward a Protestant settlement. He wrote the first Book of Common Prayer, which was introduced in 1549, in English, in a language of beauty. It was revised, in a more clearly Protestant direction, in 1552. He drew up the Forty-Two Articles of Religion, which were the basis of the later Thirty-Nine Articles. He wrote a book of homilies to be read in the churches. He was a gifted liturgist, who adapted and translated ancient prayers.
When the young king died in 1553, he signed the document that named Lady Jane Grey as the successor, and when Mary came to the throne, he was charged with treason and then with heresy. He was imprisoned in the Tower and then in Oxford. In 1555, he watched from a window as his friends Ridley and Latimer were burned in the street. He was degraded from the priesthood in February 1556. In his fear, he signed a number of recantations, six in all. He was an old man, who was weakened and who dreaded the fire. When he was told that he would be burned in spite of the recantations, he found his courage.
On March 21, 1556, he was taken to the University Church at Oxford, where he was to deliver a public recantation. He spoke at first as expected. Then he declared that he renounced all the papers that he had signed, contrary to the truth that he held in his heart. He said that his hand had offended, in writing contrary to his heart, and that it should be the first to be punished. He was dragged from the church. At the stake, he thrust his right hand into the flames and held it there until it was burned to a stump, saying that it was his unworthy right hand. He died with calm. He was sixty-six. His life shows the effect of a timid scholar, who was made a martyr. He gave England its prayer book, and by his death, he redeemed his failure.