Archbishop Thomas Cranmer Is Burnt at the Stake
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, a pivotal figure in the establishment of the Church of England, was executed for heresy on March 21, 1556, by being burnt at the stake. Born in Nottinghamshire in 1489, Cranmer played a crucial role during the reign of King Henry VIII, advising on the annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and facilitating England's break from the Roman Catholic Church. This led to the formation of a national church independent of papal authority, aligning with the Protestant Reformation sweeping across Europe. Under King Edward VI, Cranmer further advanced Protestant reforms, including the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer.
However, the ascension of Mary I, a staunch Catholic, marked a dramatic shift in religious policy. Following his arrest for treason, Cranmer publicly recanted his Protestant beliefs under pressure, but ultimately, he reasserted his commitment to them just before his execution, choosing to have his right hand—the one he used to sign the recantations—burn first. This act of defiance symbolized the challenges Mary faced in restoring Catholicism in England, highlighting the enduring conflict between Protestant and Catholic factions during this tumultuous period.
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Archbishop Thomas Cranmer Is Burnt at the Stake
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer Is Burnt at the Stake
On March 21, 1556, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the highest church official in England, was executed for heresy by being burnt at the stake. The elderly archbishop had helped establish the Church of England and oversaw its development for more than 20 years.
Cranmer was born on July 2, 1489, in Nottinghamshire, England. He received a doctorate in divinity in 1526 from Cambridge University and took holy orders in the Roman Catholic Church, at that time the only church in England. Simultaneously, he entered the world of power politics, for the king of England, Henry VIII, was seeking an official annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon from the pope.
Henry was desperate to sire a male heir to his throne, but Catherine had borne him only one child that lived, the princess Mary. The king convinced himself that the marriage was cursed and became infatuated with Anne Boleyn, a flirtatious young woman. He wanted to marry Anne (immediately, once she became pregnant), hence his impatience to have the union with Catherine dissolved. Cranmer suggested that the question could be settled by local authorities without reference to Rome at all, which pleased Henry. Cranmer rose in favor, and Henry chose him to become the next archbishop of Canterbury, the highest church official in the land.
Almost immediately after he was ceremonially inducted into office on March 30, 1533, Cranmer began working with Henry to establish a separate national church, independent of Rome and the pope, thus beginning the modern Anglican Church. As archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer declared Henry's marriage to Catherine invalid, just as the king wished and decreed that the king, and not the pope, would henceforth be the supreme leader of what had previously been the English branch of the Roman Catholic Church. This declaration resulted in the establishment of a separate Church of England, headed by an archbishop accountable not to the pope in Rome but to the monarch in London. It was a move which had considerable popular support, for national feeling was on the rise and so was resentment of clerical privilege; also, the Protestant Reformation had reached England from the continent and had gained a number of sympathizers, Cranmer among them.
Although Cranmer served the king with self-effacing obedience, performing several more marriages and divorces (and incidentally standing godfather to Anne Boleyn's child, the princess Elizabeth), away from the king's fearsome presence he did have a mind of his own. He was a far more convinced reformer than Henry and worked diligently to move the new church into the Protestant camp. This became easier after Henry died on January 28, 1547, and was succeeded by his youngest child, the long-desired son. Young Edward VI was only nine when he ascended to the throne, and his affairs were managed by ambitious Protestant noblemen, for Catholics did not recognize either of Henry's younger children as legitimate. During Edward's reign, Cranmer promulgated the 42 (later 39) articles of belief, Protestant in every particular, which established the doctrinal position of the church (and to which all the king's subjects had to subscribe). He continued to encourage the printing and distribution of English-language Bibles and composed the Book of Common Prayer for the new church, considered a literary masterpiece.
Unfortunately for Cranmer, Edward VI, always a frail child, became fatally ill in 1553. Now Mary, Henry's oldest daughter and a devout Catholic, embittered by the treatment she and her mother Catherine had endured, was poised to take the throne. The Protestant regents persuaded the dying king to make a will leaving the crown to a relative named Lady Jane Grey, which would exclude Mary, assure a Protestant monarch instead, and prolong their own power (to say nothing of their lives); Cranmer acceded to this dubious project. Lady Jane did indeed reign, but only for nine days, until Mary and her followers could reach London and dispose of her. The archbishop was subsequently arrested for treason and charged with heresy as well. It was not only his actions that had offended the new queen; his Protestant beliefs were abhorrent to her as well. Mary regarded the break with Rome as endangering the souls of the entire kingdom and hoped to restore the Catholic faith now that she had become queen.
Cranmer was quickly convicted of treason, but the proceedings for heresy went more slowly. He was not tortured; the mere sight of the instruments of torture was sufficient to procure from him numerous recantations, each more abject than the last, in which he foreswore all his Protestant beliefs and submitted humbly to Rome. At last he was informed that his soul had now been saved but that his body would still have to burn, whereupon he recanted his recantations, saying that he had signed the papers only out of fear and weakness. He perished holding his right hand, which had signed the papers, steadily forward into the flames so that it would burn first. This unexpected gesture of defiance from a timid and pliable old man was an indication of the resistance Mary would encounter in her efforts to reestablish the Catholic faith in England.