Thomas Cranmer

Some men are born heroes. They can look fear in the face and wonder what it is. Others are not born that way, but they end their life as heroes. Thomas Cranmer was such a man, born into a good family, a well to do family, here in the village of Ashlochton on 2 July 1489. Thomas Cranmer was educated from a young age and growing up we know that he was an expert bowman, hunter and a great horseman.

He enrolled at Cambridge University at the age of 14 and earned his BA in 1511. He was then elected a Fellow here at Jesus College and earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1523. He lost his fellowship a year later when he got married, but a year after that, when his wife and child died, he regained his fellowship.

His rise to Archbishop was unconventional and not sought after. The issue of the day was King Henry VIII's desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and Cranmer commented to some friends at a lunch that he thought the King should obtain a consensus of opinion from the leading universities around Europe regarding whether this was permissible. Word of these comments reached the King, who liked them and thought highly of Cranmer. This set in series a motion of events that ended up with Cranmer becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury, even though he had never been a bishop before and was quite content being a university scholar.

Henry subsequently divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn, whose daughter Elizabeth, later Queen of England, was goddaughter to Cranmer. Henry's gift to England was to break the yoke of Rome and to abolish monasticism, but he himself was a faithful papist in his beliefs until the end.

At the coron of Edward vi, Cranmer preached a sermon likening him to the biblical boy king, Josiah. Cranmer also was instrumental in translating the Book of Common Prayer into English for the first time, rather than using the traditional Latin. In 1553, following Edward's death, Mary Tudor ascended to the throne, despite an attempt by Lady Jane Grey to hold the throne, which lasted lasted only nine days. Mary then took Stephen Gardiner from the Tower of London and made him Lord Chancellor. She then threw Thomas Cranmer in prison for his role in Henry's divorce from her mother and for his Protestant beliefs.

Cranmer spent two and a half years in prison, during which time he was brought to the roof of the prison to watch the martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer in an attempt to make him recant, while which he eventually did, pledging his allegiance to Catholicism. But this did not secure his freedom. He was finally brought to trial here at St. Mary's Church, where he was forced to listen to a two hour sermon denouncing himself. When he was brought to make a public recantation, he stood on a wooden platform which rested against a pillar where a wedge was cut, which can still be seen today. He stood up, denounced the Pope as Antichrist, withdrew his former recantation and stood by his previous teachings.

He was taken to the place of his execution and as he reached the flames, he held his right hand in first the same that had signed the recantation, saying, this hand hath offended, it shall first be burned. He held it there for a while before collapsing into the flames.

Mary went on to slaughter two hundred and fifty more Protestants during her reign. And when she died, Elizabeth I took the throne. One of her first acts as regent was to revive the Book of Prayer written by Cranmer, which was a fitting tribute to the man who was her godfather.

Though Cranmer recanted in the face of pressure and persecution, he ended his life a hero, faithful to God at the very end. Proverbs 24:16 says that a just man falls seven times, but rises again. It's not how often you fall that matters, but that you rise at the end.