Cranmer, Thomas 1489-1556
English prelate and Archbishop of Canterbury

Thomas Cranmer was born in Aslacton or Aslockton, Nottinghamshire, and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. He took holy orders in 1523. In 1529, during an epidemic of the plague, he and two of his pupils left Cambridge for Waltham, where he met John Foxe and Stephen Gardiner and with them discussed Henry VIII's proposed divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested an appeal to the universities of Christendom, which pleased Henry, and he subsequently became a counsel in the suit. Appointed a royal chaplain and archdeacon of Taunton, he was also attached to the household of Anne Boleyn's father (Anne at the time being Henry's paramour), and was sent on two embassies, to Italy in 1530 and to Charles V in Germany in 1532.

Appointed Grand Penitentiary of England at Rome by Pope Clement VII, he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, and took the oath of allegiance to the pope 'for form's sake'. In May, Cranmer pronounced Catherine's marriage null and void ab initio and the private marriage to Anne Boleyn, which had taken place four months earlier, valid; in September he was godfather to Anne's daughter Elizabeth. In 1536 he annulled Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn, divorced him from Anne of Cleves (1540), informed him of Catherine Howard's premarital affairs, then strove to coax her into confessing them (1541).

He did what he dared to oppose the Six Articles of 1539, which sought to impose uniformity of dogma. He promoted the translation of the Bible and a service book, and curtailed the number of holy days. In 1547 Henry died, and Cranmer sang mass of requiem for his soul. He had been slowly drifting into Protestantism, but now was quickly swept into great religious changes. In 1548 he compiled Edward VI's First Prayer Book (which converted the Mass into Communion), composed the 42 articles of religion (1553), later called the 39 Articles, and in 1552 rephrased the Prayer Book.

During this, as during the preceding reign, he took little part in affairs of state, although he was one of the council of regency. However, he signed Thomas Seymour's death warrant (1549); played a major part in the deposition and imprisonment of bishops Edmund Bonner, Gardiner and Day; and, won over by the dying boy-king's pleading, reluctantly subscribed the instrument diverting the succession from the princess Mary (later Mary I) to Lady Jane Grey (1553). By this he was guilty of conscious perjury, yet when the 12-day reign was over he made no attempt to escape. On 14 September he was sent to the Tower, on 13 November was arraigned for treason, and, pleading guilty, was condemned to die. In March 1554 he went to Oxford where he bravely faced his trial before the papal commissioner, whose jurisdiction he refused to recognize.

In October, from jail, he witnessed Hugh Latimer's and Nicholas Ridley's martyrdom, and on 14 February 1556, he was formally degraded. In rapid succession he signed seven increasingly submissive recantations. The last he transcribed on 21 March, and was immediately taken to St Mary's Church, where he heard that he was to be burnt. When the time came for him to read his recantation, he retracted all that he had written. Taken to the stake, he thrust his right hand into the flame and kept it there, crying: 'This hath offended! Oh this unworthy hand!'.

Bibliography: Among Cranmer's 42 writings are his prefaces to the Bible (1540) and the first Prayer Book (1549); the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (1571); and A Defence of the Doctrine of the Sacrament (1550). See also Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1962); Jasper G Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (1962).