The Life and Times of Thomas Cranmer Quiz

Answer: 1489-1556

Cranmer was born in an England dominated by the Tudor Dynasty. He first saw the light of day during the reign of Henry VII, and met his end by burning at the stake during the reign of Mary I. Mary had him executed as a heretic because he was the first Archbishop of Canterbury of the newly-formed Church of England, which she was determined to destroy, and because he was instrumental in bringing about the divorce of her parents, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

She also never forgave him for marrying her father to Anne Boleyn, whom she hated.

Answer: He got married

In 1522, Thomas married the niece of the landlady of the Dolphin, a tavern frequented by Cambridge scholars. Very little is known about the young woman, except that her first name was Joan. As a scholar studying for ordination, Thomas was bound to celibacy, so it was a foregone conclusion that he would be expelled when the secret of his marriage leaked out. Poor Joan died in childbirth in 1523 and Thomas resumed his studies, earning his Master of Divinity degree.

He was ordained to the diaconate in that same year.

He continued his studies and went on to become a Doctor of Divinity.

Answer: To find legitimate means by which Henry's marriage to Catherine could be annulled

In 1528, there was a mild outbreak of the plague in Cambridge and Cranmer hied himself off to Essex to avoid infection. While there he became close to members of the Boleyn family. Like Anne, who was determined to supplant Catherine as Henry's wife, the Boleyns were an ambitious lot and all in favour of Anne's plans. Cranmer made it known that he supported the annulment on the basis of consanguinity - Catherine had been married to Henry's older brother Arthur, who had died in 1502. Catherine claimed that the marriage had never been consummated (something that historians have been arguing about ever since!), which meant that she was Arthur's wife in name only and therefore could legitimately marry Henry. One wonders, then, why it was necessary for the Pope to issue a dispensation to allow Henry to marry his brother's widow?

On a stopover in Essex on their trip back to London Gardiner and Fox happened to stay in the same lodging house as Cranmer. It is probable that all three had known one another at Cambridge. During this chance reunion, they certainly discussed the 'King's Great Matter' and Gardiner and Fox were sufficiently impressed by Cranmer's arguments in favour of the annulment that they mentioned his name to Henry on their return to London. Henry invited Cranmer to court, and the die was cast!

In 1530, Cranmer cemented his position with the king by compiling, with others, the 'Collectanea Satis Copiosa' (the Sufficiently Abundant Collection), citing a wealth of legal and historical precedents in cases such as Henry's. Consequently, Cranmer was sent as a member of the embassy to Rome to plead Henry's case. They failed, but the Collectanea provided a means by which Henry could set in motion the machinery to bring about the break with Rome.

Answer: Cranmer's second marriage

Cranmer's primary mission was to negotiate the removal of restrictions on trade with England, but while in Nuremberg he met and became friends with Osiander. Both men were ardent supporters of church reform but neither were sure what a reformed church would be like - what would be retained, what would be discarded. During his time in Germany, Cranmer secretly married Osiander's niece Margaret. Of course, as a Roman Catholic priest, Cranmer was bound by his ordination vow of celibacy, but Cranmer was ever one to ignore facts that were contrary to his personal interests and ambitions.

Answer: Archbishop of Canterbury

Talk about inconvenient! When William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1532, Anne Boleyn, still holding out for a crown and knowing that Cranmer was her main supporter, suggested that Cranmer receive the appointment and urged Henry to make sure it happened. The appointment was solely in the gift of the Pope, so Henry, fully aware that the Pope and his Papal Nuncio in England, would go to any lengths to avoid schism, contrived with the Pope's representatives to bring the appointment about. He even paid the costs! No one was more surprised than Cranmer, who had never even run a parish. He tried to refuse the appointment, but Henry - and Anne - would not be gainsaid, and so Thomas reluctantly returned to England in January 1533. He kept his marriage a secret even from the king. It wouldn't do to have a married man as Archbishop of Canterbury, now would it? Shortly after Cranmer's return, Anne informed Henry that she was pregnant, and the matter of the annulment became even more pressing. On January 25, 1533, Cranmer presided at the ceremony in which Henry and Anne were married. On March March 30, 1533 Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop and on May 23, he annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine, and followed that up two days later by declaring Henry's marriage to Anne legal. Anne's child, who grew up to be Elizabeth I, was born in September, and Cranmer was her Godfather.

Mrs. Cranmer remained a secret. The story goes that when the Cranmers travelled, Mrs. C. did so in a box of books!

And, by the way, the first Prime Minister was Sir Robert Walpole, who served in that office from 1721 to 1742, during the reigns of George I and George II.

Answer: He excommunicated Henry VIII and Cranmer

Excommunication was a serious matter in the 16th century. However, thanks to the machinations of Henry's chief advisor, Thomas Cromwell, steps had already been taken to reduce papal authority in England and in 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, making Henry the Supreme head of the Church in England and the break with Rome was now possible.

The Act of Supremacy required all public men to take an oath, recognizing the king as the temporal head of the church in England. Those who refused to take the oath lost their positions (at best) and/or their lives (at worst). Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, was beheaded for refusing to take the oath.

Answer: All of these

The Ten Articles were drawn up, primarily by Cranmer, as a set of guidelines for the new Church of England as it went through the process of breaking away from Roman Catholicism. The first five articles dealt with doctrinal issues - the Bible, the creeds and the decisions of the Four Great Councils were declared to be the sole basis of faith; affirmation of only three sacraments (baptism, eucharist and penance) as being instituted by Christ (which eliminated as sacraments the Roman Catholic confirmation, matrimony, ordination and unction). The remaining five affirmed the continuance of ceremonies that had been part and parcel of Roman Catholicism - the use of icons; invocation of saints; prayers for the dead. The articles gave short shrift to both Catholic and Protestant practices. They were both anti-papacy and anti-Puritan, reformist in style, and emphasized uniformity in worship, which was henceforth to be in English and not Latin. They also exhibited Cranmer's exquisite turn of phrase and his superb talent as a writer.

The very Catholic north of England did not take kindly to the Articles, and they and the dissolution of the monasteries, masterminded by Thomas Cromwell, resulted in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The Pilgrimage of Grace was led by Robert Aske, a Yorkshire gentleman who was a barrister practicing in London. In 1536 Aske and nine thousand ardent followers occupied the city of York. They drove the king's tenants out of their newly acquired monastic holdings, and re-installed the dispersed monks and nuns. They also enforced Roman Catholic services in churches in the north. By the time the king got around to dealing with them, the Pilgrimage of Grace adherents numbered some 40,000, a sizeable portion of the population. Henry sent the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury to negotiate a peaceful compromise, and to offer a general pardon. Everybody went home, trusting in the king's word. When the promises made by the king were not kept, there was a second uprising in 1537, this time led by Sir Francis Bigod. Even though Aske tried to stop Bigod, he and Bigod, along with the other leaders, Lord Darcy and Lord Constable were arrested. Bigod, Darcy and Constable were tried for treason and executed, while Aske was hung in chains on the walls of York to serve as a pointed reminder of what happened to those who got in the king's way.

Answer: The fall of Anne Boleyn

By 1536, Anne Boleyn had lost her power over Henry VIII. In 1534 she miscarried a son, and in 1536, she suffered the miscarriage of yet another son. She was now in her mid-thirties, an age at which women in that era approached menopause. Henry, despairing of her ever producing a live male child, cast about for ways to rid himself of her. His eye had already lighted on Jane Seymour as a prospective third wife.

Anne was arrested and faced a battery of trumped-up charges, created by the devious Thomas Cromwell. She was accused of treason, adultery and even incest with her brother George. Cranmer, who owed his lofty position to Anne, did not raise a finger to help her, claiming that she had misled him! However, it was reported by Alesius the Scottish reformer that he and Cranmer were walking in the gardens of Lambeth Palace at the time of Anne's execution. Alesius said that when they heard the gunfire from the Tower across the river, signalling the queen's death, Cranmer collapsed onto a bench, weeping, and said "She who has been the English queen on earth will today be a queen in heaven."

Answer: The Book of Common Prayer

While the Book of Homilies was first published in 1547, it has had nowhere near the lasting influence of the Book of Common Prayer. It is indeed a masterpiece, drawing on the Sarum Rite, the Roman Catholic breviary, missal, manual and pontifical, and incorporating the ideas of such continental scholars as Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer and Hermann of Wied. It contains everything an Anglican needs for the maintenance of his/her spiritual life: forms of worship for use on weekdays and on Sundays - morning prayer, evening prayer, Holy Communion (an entirely new version which allowed for lay people to receive both the bread and the wine), the Litany and Compline, and an order of service for use at home; a complete psalter; Old and New Testament readings for every day of the year, along with canticles (based on Bible passages) to be sung between the readings; liturgies for baptism, confirmation, visitation of the sick, the thanksgiving for the birth of a child, Harvest Thanksgiving, the funeral service, the ordination of deacons and priests, and the consecration of bishops; occasional prayers for all sorts of situations. It also included a calendar of saints, a table of consanguinity which identified those family members one could not marry, and more besides.

Since its first appearance in 1549, the BCP (that's Anglican shorthand) has undergone several revisions - most notably those of 1552 and 1662, and later in Anglican Communions around the world it has undergone further revision.
The beauty of Cranmer's language, however, has survived, and the prayer books in use in Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches have used the BCP as a source.

Many of the words and phrases coined by Cranmer have found their way into common English usage - "ashes to ashes, dust to dust", "speak now or forever hold your peace", "till death us do part" - and they crop up in literature(P.D. James, for instance, took the titles of 'Devices and Desires' and 'The Children of Men' straight out of the BCP, and Shakespeare wasn't above borrowing a few good lines for use in his plays, changing them slightly so that he wouldn't be indicted under the Act of Uniformity which made explicit use of bits of the BCP in "interludes, plays, songs and rhymes' a criminal offence.)

Just for the record, the first English translation of the Bible was produced in 1380 by John Wycliffe, and the five-volume history of Christianity in England was the work of the Venerable Bede of Durham. It was published in 731.

Answer: Oxford

Cranmer was charged with and convicted of treason for his part in the Lady Jane Grey affair, but Mary I did not sign his death warrant. She had other plans for Cranmer. He remained Archbishop of Canterbury, too, because Mary's plans to reunite with Rome were not yet complete. On November 20, 1554, Reginald Cardinal Pole arrived in England as papal legate to receive England back into the Roman Catholic Church. This was accomplished on November 30, 1554. Then followed the Act of Parliament that revived three former Acts against heresy (passed by Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V) that had been repealed by Henry VIII and Edward VI. This took a little while (you know how slowly politicians move), so it wasn't until November, 1555 that Cranmer was stripped of his office as Archbishop of Canterbury. He remained a prisoner until February 1556 when charges of heresy were brought against him. While in prison, Cranmer had recanted and signed documents declaring his belief in transubstantiation and papal supremacy. This should have protected him against the heresy charges and his subsequent conviction, but Mary had an axe to grind (remember her mother and her hatred of Anne Boleyn?). On March 21, 1556 Cranmer was brought from the Bocardo prison in Oxford to St. Mary's Church to make a public declaration of his recantation from the pulpit. To the consternation of his accusers and judges, Cranmer made a speech instead. He flatly denied his recantation, declared Roman Catholic doctrine invalid and called the Pope "Christ's enemy and Antichrist". Small wonder that he was hauled off to be burned alive. As the faggots were kindled, Cranmer thrust his right hand into the flames, claiming that because it had signed the document of recantation it was unworthy. He held it there until it was a mere stump of burned flesh. The day after Cranmer's death, Cardinal Pole was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury

Thomas Cranmer is commemorated in the Anglican Church as a martyr.

No one knows what happened to Mrs. Cranmer.