Phil D.
ὁ βαπτιστὴς
I have long enjoyed reading church history. One area I find uniquely edifying are the accounts of martyrs who have died valiantly for the truth. Here is the story of the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer which I put together based on various historical documents, as well as sources like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Christian History Magazine. It is a tad on the lengthy side, but I trust those who read it will find it both worthwhile and God-glorifying.
In July of 1553, as the sixteen year-old Protestant king of England approached his premature death from the ravages of tuberculosis, his close friend and spiritual mentor Archbishop Thomas Cranmer became fatally entangled in royal politics. Though he resisted for a time, Cranmer was eventually convinced by the dying Edward (VI) and his Lord Protector, the Duke of Northumberland, to support their choice of Lady Jane Grey (Edward’s seventeen year old Protestant cousin) as the new sovereign. This ill-conceived arrangement, however, clearly struck at England’s laws of succession, as well as the stated will of Edward’s deceased father, King Henry VIII.
Upon Edward’s death, a reluctant Lady Jane was indeed proclaimed queen, but her ascension was quickly and successfully challenged by Edward’s half-sister Mary. After reigning for only nine tumultuous days, a bewildered Jane (who was merely a pawn in the scheme) was arrested, deposed, and later beheaded for treason. The devoutly Catholic Mary made a grand and triumphant entry into London as the new head of both England’s civil government and state church.
With Mary’s coming to power, the fledgling English Reformation quickly began to unravel. Cranmer’s embittered personal enemy, Stephen Gardiner, was made chancellor (essentially the prime minister and leading advisor to the monarch), and the Pope’s dutiful disciple Cardinal Reginald Pole took Cranmer’s place as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary’s government unconditionally restored the dominion of Roman Catholicism throughout the realm, and began a relentless campaign to punish or drive-out the most committed Protestants. An intimidated and anxious Parliament nervously repealed the church-reform acts that had been enacted under Henry VIII and Edward VI, and reinstated previous laws for punishing heresy.
Meanwhile, Cranmer was charged with treason and imprisoned. In reality his trial was merely to be a sham, as the queen and her advisers had clearly predetermined to destroy him for his long-standing Protestantism. In March, 1554, Cranmer was moved to Oxford to stand trial along with his close friends and fellow reformers Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer,. Following his colleagues quick convictions in court, Cranmer was made to watch as they were burned at the stake - and Ridley’s death had been especially slow and tortuous.
After a lengthy imprisonment that involved both psychological and physical abuse, a haggard Cranmer himself was finally put on trial. At the beginning he put up a gallant defense of his Protestant beliefs. However, as events progressed the effects of Cranmer’s ongoing torture began to take their toll, and he began to display bouts of discouragement. To the amazement of many of his friends, Cranmer was even increasingly bested in the oral arguments with his Catholic interrogators.
The foregone verdict was officially reached in February, 1556. Then, in a ceremony carefully designed to humiliate, Cranmer was publicly divested of his priestly office. First, he was made to wear crude canvas garments which had been tailored to mimic the rich vestments that he had worn as archbishop. Next, his pallium, the symbolic mark of his archbishopric, was coarsely stripped from his back. A chalice like the ones used in the celebration of the Eucharist was mockingly placed into his hands, and then dramatically pulled away. Most humiliating of all, a copy of the New Testament that he so cherished proclaiming was thrust into his trembling hands - and then emphatically taken from him. Finally, a barber shaved his head completely bare, in contrast to his being anointed a priest some forty years earlier.
Yet Mary’s government wanted more still. The public punishment of this arch heretic, it was reasoned, could prove most useful in reestablishing state Catholicism, especially if the crowds were to hear him personally renounce his Protestant errors. As such a number of new means were employed to yet further break Cranmer down. A cadre of church agents incessantly worked to create doubt in his mind concerning his well-documented beliefs. A number of Spanish friars who were trained in the methods of the Inquisition were even called in to apply psychological pressure, and constantly hounded the wearied man. This mental and physical torment increasingly took its toll. So did Cranmer’s personal fear and dread of a painful, fiery death, as he himself would later confess.
Cranmer’s mind was also in confusion as how to reconcile his longstanding belief in royal absolutism, which required obedience to his queen even if a Catholic, and maintaining his personal, heart-felt Protestant beliefs. A broken and depressed Cranmer at last convinced himself that he was indeed required to submit even to a Catholic sovereign, which was really all that the first four coerced statements that he wrote addressed. In a fifth, however, he utterly capitulated: “I, Thomas Cranmer, anathematize every heresy of Luther and Zwingli … I confess and believe in one, holy, catholic visible church … I recognize as its supreme head upon earth the Bishop of Rome … Pope and vicar of Christ, to whom all the faithful are bound subject… ” He went on to clearly affirm the validity of the seven sacraments and even transubstantiation, one of the Catholic doctrines most despised by Protestants. He concluded, “I beg and pray God to deign of His goodness to forgive me the faults I have committed against Him and His church…” Cranmer’s degradation was finally complete.
Still, Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole insisted that Cranmer’s ultimate punishment must be a very public and horrible death, in repayment for having led the state church into Protestantism. Yes, it was determined, even though Cranmer had recanted he would still be burned at the stake - but only after he was made to give a very public profession of his newly re-found Catholic faith…
…The bleak, foreboding dawn of March 21, 1556, broke with a dark, lowering sky and a cold driving rain. But during the long night a sleepless Cranmer had seemingly experienced a clearing of the dark haze in which his mind and soul had so long been entombed. At 9:00 a.m., a noticeably more alert Cranmer was escorted from his cell. As he left the dreary chamber for the last time, he dutifully handed over 14 signed copies of his recantation to the warden. But hidden inside his cloak was another document, which he secretly determined would guide his final speech.
The frigid rain meant the formalities that were to precede the burning had to be moved indoors to St. Mary’s Church. The long processional chanted some psalms as it slowly wound its way through the soggy streets to the church, where Cranmer was led to a small stage that was hastily constructed in the middle of the sanctuary. There, clothed in a stained cap and ragged, thread-bare clothes, he was required to stand and listen as Henry Cole, provost of Eaton College at Oxford, preached.
Cole spoke solemnly of Cranmer’s grave crimes against the Church. He also deigned to ask for God’s mercy, yet incessantly stressed the need for Cranmer’s death in recompense for the deaths of various Catholic officials under Henry VIII many years earlier. (This, even though it was often a brave and daring Cranmer who had personally tried to intercede on behalf of the ill-tempered king’s doomed victims.) At times tears were seen trickling down Cranmer’s sunken cheeks as Cole droned on for nearly half an hour. The provost at last looked down at Cranmer and gravely concluded, “I pray you, Master Cranmer, that you will now perform that what you promised long ago, namely, that you would openly express the true and undoubted profession of your faith.”
The chamber fell utterly silent, with all eyed firmly focused on Cranmer. He slowly looked up at Cole and nodded his assent, and with a hoarse voice asked those in the congregation behind him to kneel with him in prayer. Afterward, he slowly arose, removed his cap, withdrew an old wrinkled-up piece of paper from his garment, and began to read it in a quiet voice. He started by thanking the people for their prayers, and exhorted them in four points he believed to be of the highest importance: to care less for the material and physical things of this world and more for the spiritual things of the world to come; to obey as much as possible their lawful sovereigns out of the fear of God; to strive to display Christ-like love and goodness to all people; and to be especially mindful and responsive to the practical needs of the poor among them.
After a lengthy pause, he continued in a slightly shaking voice: “And now, forasmuch as I am come to the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth all my life past and all my life to come … I shall therefore declare unto you my very faith how I believe, without any color or dissimulation.”
Cranmer’s next words were those of the Nicene Creed, orthodox for both Protestants and Catholics. Those immediately following also started off much as had been expected by the court, but then suddenly took a dramatic turn: “I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that I ever said or did in my life, and that is setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which here now I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death and to save my life if it might be—and that is all such bills which I have written or signed with my own hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue."
Loud murmurs began to ripple through the stunned assembly, but Cranmer continued in a now more resonant voice, as he made a solemn pledge before his startled accusers: “And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned.” Cranmer boldly continued, loudly enough to be heard above the growing din around him: “And as for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ’s enemy…, with all his false doctrine. And as for the sacrament—”
One of the dignitaries desperately shouted at him to stop, but Cranmer persisted, nearly shouting himself as he declared that his writings which affirmed the Protestant denial of transubstantiation “teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament that it shall stand at the Last Day before the judgment!” At this an outraged Cole screamed for the prisoner to be taken away, upon which Cranmer was brusquely dragged out of the church.
But the previously distraught captive had suddenly found new strength, and upon reaching the street he nearly broke loose from the guards—not that he might escape his ghastly fate, but rather that he might more quickly make amends for his prior display of weakness. An obviously relieved Cranmer now rushed almost eagerly to face the looming flames, and despite his enfeebled physical state others in the procession seemed to have some difficulty keeping up with him.
When they at last reached the stake where he was to be burned, the Spanish friars again confronted Cranmer and demanded he recant. But Cranmer simply sank to his knees upon the muddy ground, where he wept quietly and prayed with an uplifted face, asking God’s gracious mercy both for himself and his enemies. When at last he arose, he firmly clasped the trembling hands of some old friends who stood nearby, and with a calm countenance and words of encouragement bade them each farewell. He then pulled off his ragged outer garment, and stood quietly with folded hands before his executioner.
Dressed only in a long undershirt that touched his bare feet, and graced by his long white beard which cascaded down the length of his chest, a shivering Cranmer was roughly bound to the wooden stake with an iron chain placed around his waist. A lit torch was then unceremoniously thrown onto the enormous pile of pitch-soaked wood which lay at his feet, and the eager flames quickly leapt upward.
True to his word, Cranmer penitently stretched out his right hand and placed it in the rising flame, calling out several times in a clear voice: “This hand hath offended! This hand hath offended!” Only once did he involuntarily withdraw his parched arm, in an instinctive but gruesome attempt to wipe the sweat and soot from his badly scorched face. He then promptly returned his hand to the now raging fire, and resolutely held it there until all the flesh had literally burned away.
Cranmer stood upright for as long as he could, ringed as he was by the terrible inferno, earnestly offering up his final petition to God: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!.. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!..." His voice was stilled only when his legs at last collapsed beneath him, whereupon the rest of his body was quickly consumed in the fire.
As the flames slowly began to recede, the rain continued to fall - but noticeably softer now, many witnesses said, as if heaven were gently cleansing the earthly remains of its newest, faithful entrant…
Queen Mary’s reign lasted only six years. During that period, about 250 English Protestants from all social classes and backgrounds met similar fates for maintaining their faith. Due in no small measure to the cruel policies of “Bloody Mary”, public opinion shifted solidly in favor of moving the Church of England away from Roman Catholicism. Shortly after Mary’s death, her half-sister Elizabeth I ascended the throne, whereupon she permanently restored the state church to Protestantism. She also allowed the reinstatement of Cranmer’s stately liturgy (The Book of Common Prayer) and largely Reformed confession of faith (The Forty-One Articles [later pared down to thirty nine]) to official church use, in slightly amended form.
The Martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer
In July of 1553, as the sixteen year-old Protestant king of England approached his premature death from the ravages of tuberculosis, his close friend and spiritual mentor Archbishop Thomas Cranmer became fatally entangled in royal politics. Though he resisted for a time, Cranmer was eventually convinced by the dying Edward (VI) and his Lord Protector, the Duke of Northumberland, to support their choice of Lady Jane Grey (Edward’s seventeen year old Protestant cousin) as the new sovereign. This ill-conceived arrangement, however, clearly struck at England’s laws of succession, as well as the stated will of Edward’s deceased father, King Henry VIII.
Upon Edward’s death, a reluctant Lady Jane was indeed proclaimed queen, but her ascension was quickly and successfully challenged by Edward’s half-sister Mary. After reigning for only nine tumultuous days, a bewildered Jane (who was merely a pawn in the scheme) was arrested, deposed, and later beheaded for treason. The devoutly Catholic Mary made a grand and triumphant entry into London as the new head of both England’s civil government and state church.
With Mary’s coming to power, the fledgling English Reformation quickly began to unravel. Cranmer’s embittered personal enemy, Stephen Gardiner, was made chancellor (essentially the prime minister and leading advisor to the monarch), and the Pope’s dutiful disciple Cardinal Reginald Pole took Cranmer’s place as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary’s government unconditionally restored the dominion of Roman Catholicism throughout the realm, and began a relentless campaign to punish or drive-out the most committed Protestants. An intimidated and anxious Parliament nervously repealed the church-reform acts that had been enacted under Henry VIII and Edward VI, and reinstated previous laws for punishing heresy.
Meanwhile, Cranmer was charged with treason and imprisoned. In reality his trial was merely to be a sham, as the queen and her advisers had clearly predetermined to destroy him for his long-standing Protestantism. In March, 1554, Cranmer was moved to Oxford to stand trial along with his close friends and fellow reformers Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer,. Following his colleagues quick convictions in court, Cranmer was made to watch as they were burned at the stake - and Ridley’s death had been especially slow and tortuous.
After a lengthy imprisonment that involved both psychological and physical abuse, a haggard Cranmer himself was finally put on trial. At the beginning he put up a gallant defense of his Protestant beliefs. However, as events progressed the effects of Cranmer’s ongoing torture began to take their toll, and he began to display bouts of discouragement. To the amazement of many of his friends, Cranmer was even increasingly bested in the oral arguments with his Catholic interrogators.
The foregone verdict was officially reached in February, 1556. Then, in a ceremony carefully designed to humiliate, Cranmer was publicly divested of his priestly office. First, he was made to wear crude canvas garments which had been tailored to mimic the rich vestments that he had worn as archbishop. Next, his pallium, the symbolic mark of his archbishopric, was coarsely stripped from his back. A chalice like the ones used in the celebration of the Eucharist was mockingly placed into his hands, and then dramatically pulled away. Most humiliating of all, a copy of the New Testament that he so cherished proclaiming was thrust into his trembling hands - and then emphatically taken from him. Finally, a barber shaved his head completely bare, in contrast to his being anointed a priest some forty years earlier.
Yet Mary’s government wanted more still. The public punishment of this arch heretic, it was reasoned, could prove most useful in reestablishing state Catholicism, especially if the crowds were to hear him personally renounce his Protestant errors. As such a number of new means were employed to yet further break Cranmer down. A cadre of church agents incessantly worked to create doubt in his mind concerning his well-documented beliefs. A number of Spanish friars who were trained in the methods of the Inquisition were even called in to apply psychological pressure, and constantly hounded the wearied man. This mental and physical torment increasingly took its toll. So did Cranmer’s personal fear and dread of a painful, fiery death, as he himself would later confess.
Cranmer’s mind was also in confusion as how to reconcile his longstanding belief in royal absolutism, which required obedience to his queen even if a Catholic, and maintaining his personal, heart-felt Protestant beliefs. A broken and depressed Cranmer at last convinced himself that he was indeed required to submit even to a Catholic sovereign, which was really all that the first four coerced statements that he wrote addressed. In a fifth, however, he utterly capitulated: “I, Thomas Cranmer, anathematize every heresy of Luther and Zwingli … I confess and believe in one, holy, catholic visible church … I recognize as its supreme head upon earth the Bishop of Rome … Pope and vicar of Christ, to whom all the faithful are bound subject… ” He went on to clearly affirm the validity of the seven sacraments and even transubstantiation, one of the Catholic doctrines most despised by Protestants. He concluded, “I beg and pray God to deign of His goodness to forgive me the faults I have committed against Him and His church…” Cranmer’s degradation was finally complete.
Still, Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole insisted that Cranmer’s ultimate punishment must be a very public and horrible death, in repayment for having led the state church into Protestantism. Yes, it was determined, even though Cranmer had recanted he would still be burned at the stake - but only after he was made to give a very public profession of his newly re-found Catholic faith…
_______________________
…The bleak, foreboding dawn of March 21, 1556, broke with a dark, lowering sky and a cold driving rain. But during the long night a sleepless Cranmer had seemingly experienced a clearing of the dark haze in which his mind and soul had so long been entombed. At 9:00 a.m., a noticeably more alert Cranmer was escorted from his cell. As he left the dreary chamber for the last time, he dutifully handed over 14 signed copies of his recantation to the warden. But hidden inside his cloak was another document, which he secretly determined would guide his final speech.
The frigid rain meant the formalities that were to precede the burning had to be moved indoors to St. Mary’s Church. The long processional chanted some psalms as it slowly wound its way through the soggy streets to the church, where Cranmer was led to a small stage that was hastily constructed in the middle of the sanctuary. There, clothed in a stained cap and ragged, thread-bare clothes, he was required to stand and listen as Henry Cole, provost of Eaton College at Oxford, preached.
Cole spoke solemnly of Cranmer’s grave crimes against the Church. He also deigned to ask for God’s mercy, yet incessantly stressed the need for Cranmer’s death in recompense for the deaths of various Catholic officials under Henry VIII many years earlier. (This, even though it was often a brave and daring Cranmer who had personally tried to intercede on behalf of the ill-tempered king’s doomed victims.) At times tears were seen trickling down Cranmer’s sunken cheeks as Cole droned on for nearly half an hour. The provost at last looked down at Cranmer and gravely concluded, “I pray you, Master Cranmer, that you will now perform that what you promised long ago, namely, that you would openly express the true and undoubted profession of your faith.”
The chamber fell utterly silent, with all eyed firmly focused on Cranmer. He slowly looked up at Cole and nodded his assent, and with a hoarse voice asked those in the congregation behind him to kneel with him in prayer. Afterward, he slowly arose, removed his cap, withdrew an old wrinkled-up piece of paper from his garment, and began to read it in a quiet voice. He started by thanking the people for their prayers, and exhorted them in four points he believed to be of the highest importance: to care less for the material and physical things of this world and more for the spiritual things of the world to come; to obey as much as possible their lawful sovereigns out of the fear of God; to strive to display Christ-like love and goodness to all people; and to be especially mindful and responsive to the practical needs of the poor among them.
After a lengthy pause, he continued in a slightly shaking voice: “And now, forasmuch as I am come to the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth all my life past and all my life to come … I shall therefore declare unto you my very faith how I believe, without any color or dissimulation.”
Cranmer’s next words were those of the Nicene Creed, orthodox for both Protestants and Catholics. Those immediately following also started off much as had been expected by the court, but then suddenly took a dramatic turn: “I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that I ever said or did in my life, and that is setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which here now I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death and to save my life if it might be—and that is all such bills which I have written or signed with my own hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue."
Loud murmurs began to ripple through the stunned assembly, but Cranmer continued in a now more resonant voice, as he made a solemn pledge before his startled accusers: “And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned.” Cranmer boldly continued, loudly enough to be heard above the growing din around him: “And as for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ’s enemy…, with all his false doctrine. And as for the sacrament—”
One of the dignitaries desperately shouted at him to stop, but Cranmer persisted, nearly shouting himself as he declared that his writings which affirmed the Protestant denial of transubstantiation “teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament that it shall stand at the Last Day before the judgment!” At this an outraged Cole screamed for the prisoner to be taken away, upon which Cranmer was brusquely dragged out of the church.
But the previously distraught captive had suddenly found new strength, and upon reaching the street he nearly broke loose from the guards—not that he might escape his ghastly fate, but rather that he might more quickly make amends for his prior display of weakness. An obviously relieved Cranmer now rushed almost eagerly to face the looming flames, and despite his enfeebled physical state others in the procession seemed to have some difficulty keeping up with him.
When they at last reached the stake where he was to be burned, the Spanish friars again confronted Cranmer and demanded he recant. But Cranmer simply sank to his knees upon the muddy ground, where he wept quietly and prayed with an uplifted face, asking God’s gracious mercy both for himself and his enemies. When at last he arose, he firmly clasped the trembling hands of some old friends who stood nearby, and with a calm countenance and words of encouragement bade them each farewell. He then pulled off his ragged outer garment, and stood quietly with folded hands before his executioner.
Dressed only in a long undershirt that touched his bare feet, and graced by his long white beard which cascaded down the length of his chest, a shivering Cranmer was roughly bound to the wooden stake with an iron chain placed around his waist. A lit torch was then unceremoniously thrown onto the enormous pile of pitch-soaked wood which lay at his feet, and the eager flames quickly leapt upward.
True to his word, Cranmer penitently stretched out his right hand and placed it in the rising flame, calling out several times in a clear voice: “This hand hath offended! This hand hath offended!” Only once did he involuntarily withdraw his parched arm, in an instinctive but gruesome attempt to wipe the sweat and soot from his badly scorched face. He then promptly returned his hand to the now raging fire, and resolutely held it there until all the flesh had literally burned away.
Cranmer stood upright for as long as he could, ringed as he was by the terrible inferno, earnestly offering up his final petition to God: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!.. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!..." His voice was stilled only when his legs at last collapsed beneath him, whereupon the rest of his body was quickly consumed in the fire.
As the flames slowly began to recede, the rain continued to fall - but noticeably softer now, many witnesses said, as if heaven were gently cleansing the earthly remains of its newest, faithful entrant…
Queen Mary’s reign lasted only six years. During that period, about 250 English Protestants from all social classes and backgrounds met similar fates for maintaining their faith. Due in no small measure to the cruel policies of “Bloody Mary”, public opinion shifted solidly in favor of moving the Church of England away from Roman Catholicism. Shortly after Mary’s death, her half-sister Elizabeth I ascended the throne, whereupon she permanently restored the state church to Protestantism. She also allowed the reinstatement of Cranmer’s stately liturgy (The Book of Common Prayer) and largely Reformed confession of faith (The Forty-One Articles [later pared down to thirty nine]) to official church use, in slightly amended form.