Thomas Cranmer was born July 2, 1489, at Aslacton, in Nottinghamshire. He was descended from an ancient family, which had long been resident in that county. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Jesus College, Cambridge; where he obtained a fellowship, which he soon vacated by marriage with a young woman who is said to have been of humble condition. Within a year after his marriage he became a widower, and was immediately, by unusual favour, restored to his fellowship. In 1523, he was admitted to the degree of doctor of divinity, and appointed one of the public examiners in that faculty. Here he found an opportunity of showing the fruits of that liberal course of study which he had been for some time pursuing. As soon as his teachers left him at liberty, he had wandered from the works of the schoolmen to the ancient classics and the Bible; and, thus prepared for the office of examiner, he alarmed the candidates for degrees in theology by the novelty of requiring from them some knowledge of the Scriptures.

It was from this useful employment that he was called to take part in the memorable proceedings of Henry the Eighth, in the matter of his divorce from Catherine.

Henry had been counselled to lay his case before the universities, both at home and abroad. Cranmer, to whom the subject had been mentioned by Gardiner and Fox, went a step farther, and suggested that he should receive their decision as sufficient without reference to the Pope. This suggestion was communicated to the king, who, observing, with his usual elegance of expression, that the man had got the sow by the right ear, summoned Cranmer to his presence, and immediately received him into his favour and confidence.

In 1531, Cranmer accompanied the unsuccessful embassy to Rome, and in the following year was appointed ambassador to the Emperor. In August, 1532, the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant by the death of Warham, and it was Henry’s pleasure to raise Cranmer to the primacy. The latter seems to have been truly unwilling to accept his promotion; and when he found that no reluctance on his part could shake the king’s resolution, he suggested a difficulty which there were no very obvious means of removing. The Archbishop must receive his investiture from the Pope, and at his consecration take an oath of fidelity to his Holiness, altogether inconsistent with another oath, taken at the same time, of allegiance to the king. All this had been done without scruple by other bishops; but Cranmer was already convinced that the Papal authority in England was a mere usurpation, and plainly told Henry that he would receive the archbishopric from him alone. Henry was not a man to be stopped by scruples of conscience of his own or others; so he consulted certain casuists, who settled the matter by suggesting that Cranmer should take the obnoxious oath, with a protest that he meant nothing by it. He yielded to the command of his sovereign and the judgment of the casuists. His protest was read by himself three times in the most public manner, and solemnly recorded. It is expedient to notice that the transaction was public, because some historians, to make a bad matter worse, still talk of a private protest.

In 1533, he pronounced sentence of divorce against the unhappy Catherine, and confirmed the marriage of the king with Anne Boleyn. He was now at leisure to contemplate all the difficulties of his situation. It is commonly said that Cranmer himself had, at this time, made but small progress in Protestantism. It is true that he yet adhered to many of the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Church; but he had reached, and firmly occupied, a position which placed him by many degrees nearer to the reformed faith than to that in which he had been educated. By recognising the Scriptures alone as the standard of the Christian faith, he had embraced the very principle out of which Protestantism flows. It had already led him to the Protestant doctrine respecting the pardon of sin, which necessarily swept away all respect for a large portion of the machinery of Romanism. As a religious reformer, Cranmer could look for no cordial and honest support from the king. Every one knows that Henry, when he left the Pope, had no mind to estrange himself more than was necessary from the Papal Church, and that the cause of religious reformation owes no more gratitude to him, than the cause of political liberty owes to those tyrants who, for their own security, and often by very foul means, have laboured to crush the power of equally tyrannical nobles. From Gardiner, who, with his party, had been most active and unscrupulous in helping the king to his divorce and destroying papal supremacy, Cranmer had nothing to expect but open or secret hostility, embittered by personal jealousy. Cromwell, indeed, was ready to go with him any lengths in reform consistent with his own safety; but a sincere reformer must have been occasionally hampered by an alliance with a worldly and unconscientious politician. The country at large was in a state of unusual excitement; but the rupture with Rome was regarded with at least as much alarm as satisfaction; and it was notorious that many, who were esteemed for their wisdom and piety, considered the position of the church to be monstrous and unnatural. The Lollards, who had been driven into concealment, but not extinguished, by centuries of persecution, and the Lutherans, wished well to Cranmer’s measures of reform: but he was not equally friendly to them. They had outstripped him in the search of truth; and he was unhappily induced to sanction at least a miserable persecution of those men with whom he was afterwards to be numbered and to suffer.

His first and most pressing care was by all means to reconcile the minds of men to the assertion of the king’s ecclesiastical supremacy, because all further changes must necessarily proceed from the royal authority. He then addressed himself to what seem to have been the three great objects of his official exertions,—the reformation of the clerical body, so as to make their ministerial services more useful; the removal of the worst part of the prevailing superstitious observances, which were a great bar to the introduction of a more spiritual worship; and above all, the free circulation of the Scriptures among the people in their own language. In this last object he was opportunely assisted by the printing of what is called Matthews’s Bible, by Grafton and Whitchurch. He procured, through the intervention of Cromwell, the king’s licence for the publication, and an injunction that a copy of it should be placed in every parish church. He hailed this event with unbounded joy; and to Cromwell, for the active part he took in the matter, he says, in a letter, “This deed you shall hear of at the great day, when all things shall be opened and made manifest.”

He had hardly witnessed the partial success of the cause of Reformation, when his influence over the king, and with it the cause which he had at heart, began to decline. He had no friendly feeling for those monastic institutions which the rapacity of Henry had marked for destruction; but he knew that their revenues might, as national property, be applied advantageously to the advancement of learning and religion, and he opposed their indiscriminate transfer to the greedy hands of the sycophants of the court. This opposition gave to the more unscrupulous of the Romanists an opportunity to recover their lost ground with the king, of which they were not slow to avail themselves. They were strong enough at least to obtain from Parliament, in 1539, (of course through the good will of their despotic master,) the act of the Six Articles, not improperly called the “Bloody Articles,” in spite of the determined opposition of Cranmer: an opposition which he refused to withdraw even at the express command of the king. Latimer and Shaxton immediately resigned their bishoprics. One of the clauses of this act, relating to the marriage of priests, inflicted a severe blow even on the domestic happiness of Cranmer. In his last visit to the continent, he had taken, for his second wife, a niece of the celebrated divine Osiander. By continuing to cohabit with her, he would now, by the law of the land, be guilty of felony; she was therefore sent back to her friends in Germany.

From this time till the death of Henry in 1546, Cranmer could do little more than strive against a stream which not only thwarted his plans of further reformation, but endangered his personal safety; and he had to strive alone, for Latimer and other friends among the clergy had retired from the battle, and Cromwell had been removed from it by the hands of the executioner. He was continually assailed by open accusation and secret conspiracy. On one occasion his enemies seemed to have compassed his ruin, when Henry himself interposed and rescued him from their malice. His continued personal regard for Cranmer, after he had in a measure rejected him from his confidence, is a remarkable anomaly in the life of this extraordinary king; of whom, on a review of his whole character, we are obliged to acknowledge, that in his best days he was a heartless voluptuary, and that he had become, long before his death, a remorseless and sanguinary tyrant. It is idle to talk of the complaisance of the servant to his master, as a complete solution of the difficulty. That he was, indeed, on some occasions subservient beyond the strict line of integrity, even his friends must confess; and for the part which he condescended to act in the iniquitous divorce of Anne of Cleves, no excuse can be found but the poor one of the general servility of the times: that infamous transaction has left an indelible stain of disgrace on the Archbishop, the Parliament, and the Convocation. But Cranmer could oppose as well as comply: his conduct in the case of the Six Articles, and his noble interference in favour of Cromwell between the tiger and his prey, would seem to have been sufficient to ruin the most accommodating courtier. Perhaps Henry had discovered that Cranmer had more real attachment to his person than any of his unscrupulous agents, and he may have felt pride in protecting one who, from his unsuspicious disposition and habitual mildness, was obviously unfit, in such perilous times, to protect himself. His mildness indeed was such, that it was commonly said, “Do my Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and you make him your friend for life.”

On the accession of Edward new commissions were issued, at the suggestion of Cranmer, to himself and the other bishops, by which they were empowered to receive again their bishoprics, as though they had ceased with the demise of the crown, and to hold them during the royal pleasure. His object of course was to settle at once the question of the new king’s supremacy, and the proceeding was in conformity with an opinion which at one time he undoubtedly entertained, that there are no distinct orders of bishops and priests, and that the office of bishop, so far as it is distinguished from that of priests, is simply of civil origin. The government was now directed by the friends of Reformation, Cranmer himself being one of the Council of Regency; but still his course was by no means a smooth one. The unpopularity, which the conduct of the late king had brought on the cause, was even aggravated by the proceedings of its avowed friends during the short reign of his son. The example of the Protector Somerset was followed by a herd of courtiers, and not a few ecclesiastics, in making reform a plea for the most shameless rapacity, rendered doubly hateful by the hypocritical pretence of religious zeal. The remonstrances of Cranmer were of course disregarded; but his powerful friends were content that, whilst they were filling their pockets, he should complete, if he could, the establishment of the reformed church. Henry had left much for the Reformers to do. Some, indeed, of the peculiar doctrines of Romanism had been modified, and some of its superstitious observances abolished. The great step gained was the general permission to read the Scriptures; and, though even that had been partially recalled, it was impossible to recall the scriptural knowledge and the spirit of inquiry to which it had given birth. With the assistance of some able divines, particularly of his friend and chaplain Ridley, afterwards Bishop of London, Cranmer was able to bring the services and discipline of the church, well as the articles of faith, nearly to the state in which we now see them. In doing this he had to contend at once with the determined hostility of the Romanists, with dissensions in his own party, and conscientious opposition from sincere friends of the cause. In these difficult circumstances his conduct was marked generally by moderation, good judgment, and temper. But it must be acknowledged that he concurred in proceedings against some of the Romanists, especially against Gardiner, which were unfair and oppressive. In the composition of the New Service Book, as it was then generally called, and of the Articles, we know not what parts were the immediate work of Cranmer; but we have good evidence that he was the author of three of the Homilies, those of Salvation, of Faith, and of Good Works.

It should be observed, that Cranmer, though he early set out from a principle which might be expected eventually to lead him to the full extent of doctrinal reformation, made his way slowly and by careful study of the Scriptures, of which he left behind sufficient proof, to that point at which we find him in the reign of Edward. It is certain that during the greater part, if not the whole, of Henry’s reign, he agreed with the Romanists in the doctrine of the corporal presence and transubstantiation.

The death of Edward ushered in the storms which troubled the remainder of his days. All the members of the council affixed their signatures to the will of the young king, altering the order of succession in favour of the Lady Jane Grey. Cranmer’s accession to this illegal measure, the suggestion of the profligate Northumberland, cannot be justified, nor did he himself attempt to justify it. He appears, weakly and with great reluctance, to have yielded up his better judgment to the will of his colleagues, and the opinion of the judges.

Mary had not been long on the throne before Cranmer was committed to the Tower, attainted of high treason, brought forth to take part in what seems to have been little better than a mockery of disputation, and then sent to Oxford, where, with Latimer and Ridley, he was confined in a common prison. The charge of high treason, which might undoubtedly have been maintained, was not followed up, and it was not, perhaps, the intention of the government at any time to act upon it: it was their wish that he should fall as a heretic. At Oxford he was repeatedly brought before commissioners delegated by the Convocation, and, in what were called examinations and disputations, was subjected to the most unworthy treatment. On the 20th of April, 1554, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were publicly required to recant, and on their refusal were condemned as heretics. The commission however having been illegally made out, it was thought expedient to stay the execution till a new one had been obtained; which, in the case of Cranmer, was issued by the Pope. He was consequently dragged through the forms of another trial and examination; summoned, whilst still a close prisoner, to appear within eighty days at Rome; and then, by a sort of legal fiction, not more absurd perhaps than some which still find favour in our own courts, declared contumacious for failing to appear. Finally, he was degraded, and delivered over to the secular power. That no insult might be spared him, Bonner was placed on the commission for his degradation, in which employment he seems to have surpassed even his usual brutality.

Cranmer had now been a prisoner for more than two years, during the whole of which his conduct appears to have been worthy of the high office which he had held, and the situation in which he was placed. Whilst he expressed contrition for his political offence, and was earnest to vindicate his loyalty, he maintained with temper and firmness those religious opinions which had placed him in such fearful peril. Of the change which has thrown a cloud over his memory, we know hardly any thing with certainty but the fact of his recantation. Little reliance can be placed on the detailed accounts of the circumstances which accompanied it. He was taken from his miserable cell in the prison to comfortable lodgings in Christchurch, where he is said to have been assailed with promises of pardon, and allured, by a treacherous show of kindness, into repeated acts of apostacy. In the mean while the government had decreed his death. On the 21st of March, 1556, he was taken from his prison to St. Mary’s Church, and exhibited to a crowded audience, on an elevated platform, in front of the pulpit. After a sermon from Dr. Cole, the Provost of Eton, he uttered a short and affecting prayer on his knees; then rising, addressed an exhortation to those around him; and, finally, made a full and distinct avowal of his penitence and remorse for his apostacy, declaring, that the unworthy hand which had signed his recantation should be the first member that perished. Amidst the reproaches of his disappointed persecutors he was hurried from the church to the stake, where he fulfilled his promise by holding forth his hand to the flames. We have undoubted testimony that he bore his sufferings with inflexible constancy. A spectator of the Romanist party says, “If it had been either for the glory of God, the wealth of his country, or the testimony of the truth, as it was for a pernicious error, and subversion of true religion, I could worthily have commended the example, and matched it with the fame of any Father of ancient time.” He perished in his sixty-seventh year.

All that has been left of his writings will be found in an edition of “The Remains of Archbishop Cranmer,” lately published at Oxford, in four volumes 8vo. They give proof that he was deeply imbued with the spirit of Protestantism, and that his opinions were the result of reflection and study; though the effect of early impressions occasionally appears, as in the manner of his appeals to the Apocryphal books, and a submission to the judgment of the early fathers, in a degree barely consistent with his avowed principles. See his First Letter to Queen Mary.

This brief memoir does not pretend to supply the reader with materials for examining that difficult question, the character of the Archbishop. It is hardly necessary to refer him to such well-known books as Strype’s Life of Cranmer, and the recent works of Mr. Todd and Mr. Le Bas.

The time, it seems, has not arrived for producing a strictly impartial life of this celebrated man. Yet there is doubtless a much nearer agreement among candid inquirers, whether members of the Church of England or Roman Catholics, than the language of those who have told their thoughts to the public might lead us to expect. Those who are cool enough to understand that the credit and truth of their respective creeds are in no way interested in the matter, will probably allow, that the course of reform which Cranmer directed was justified to himself by his private convictions; and that his motive was a desire to establish what he really believed to be the truth. Beyond this they will acknowledge that there is room for difference of opinion. Some will see, in the errors of his life, only human frailty, not irreconcileable with a general singleness of purpose; occasional deviations from the habitual courage of a confirmed Christian. Others may honestly, and not uncharitably, suspect, that the habits of a court, and constant engagement in official business, may have somewhat marred the simplicity of his character, weakened the practical influence of religious belief, and caused him, whilst labouring for the improvement of others, to neglect his own; and hence they may account for his unsteadfastness in times of trial.

In addition to the works mentioned above, we may name as easily accessible, among Protestant authorities, Burnet’s History of the Reformation; among Roman Catholic, Lingard’s History of England. Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, stands, perhaps, more nearly on neutral ground, but can hardly be cited as an impartial historian. Though a Protestant, in his hatred and dread of all innovators, and especially of the Puritans, he seems ready to take refuge even with Popery; and examines always with jealousy, sometimes with malignity, the motives and conduct of Reformers, from his first notice of Wiclif to the close of his history.