Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 3 December 1533 to 4 December 1555, succeeding William Warham and preceding Reginald Pole. Cranmer was a notable leader of the English Reformation, supporting the principle of "Royal Supremacy" and the divorce of King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer served as Archbishop under King Henry, King Edward VI, and during the early reign of Queen Mary I, who had Cranmer executed for treason and heresy during her persecution of Protestants.
Biography[]
Cranmer in 1532
Thomas Cranmer was born in Aslockton, Nottinghamshire, England on 2 July 1489, and he came from an obscure family. He studied at the newly created Jesus College, Cambridge, and he served as a diplomat to Spain under Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Cranmer had an early antipathy for Martin Luther and an admiration for Desiderius Erasmus, but his patron at the English court, Thomas Cromwell, later introduced him to Lutheranism, and Cranmer found that these new views resonated with his own personal scholarship of the Bible. In 1532, Cromwell presented Cranmer to King Henry VIII at his court, and King Henry promoted Cranmer to Court Chaplain at the behest of Cromwell and the Boleyns. He brought with him to the court his wife, Margarete, a German Lutheran who was smuggled into England in a box.
Archbishop of Canterbury[]
Cranmer blessing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn
Following the death of Archbishop William Warham of Canterbury in 1533, King Henry decided to nominate the pro-Lutheran Cranmer as the new Archbishop. Pope Paul III, hoping to placate the King in exchange for his return to the Catholic Church, approved Cranmer's appointment. This would prove to be a fatal mistake, however, and Cranmer presided over the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn. He also helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, supported the principle of Royal Supremacy, established the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England, published the vernacular service Exhortation and Litany, wrote and compiled the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, and changed doctrine in areas such as the Eucharist, clerical celibacy, the role of images in places of worship, and veneration of saints. After the accession of the Catholic monarch Mary I of England, Cranmer was put on trial for treason and heresy. He was imprisoned for over two years and pressured by the Catholic Church into making several recantations and reconciling himself with the church. On the day of his execution (21 March 1556), however, Cranmer withdrew his recantation to die a heretic for the Catholic Church and a martyr for the principles of the English Reformation. Cranmer was burnt at the stake in Oxford, Oxfordshire in 1556 at the age of 66.