Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/186

 King in England, intent upon obedience no less than taxation, and always at hand to enforce his authority. Hence, perhaps, his enmity to Cromwell first and to Cranmer afterwards, his obstructive tactics under Edward VI., and his active retrogression under Mary.

There is probably no single character in history of which it is more difficult to arrive at a tolerably accurate and fair estimate than that of Archbishop Cranmer. Not only was his a 'strangely mingled' and highly complex nature, but it was cast upon the most perplexed and stormy period of all modern history; therein to occupy a post of the very greatest difficulty and danger. But, over and above all this, Cranmer was the most prominent leader of a party, at a time when party spirit ran its very highest, when every leader and every follower fell, and could not but fall, into errors, and when every error was seized upon by a hundred malignant enemies, and painted for all posterity in the blackest colours. He has suffered, too, almost as much from the exaggerated encomiums of excited partisans, as from the slanders of unscrupulous opponents. In a word, his reputation has been the chosen battle-ground of the most embittered party warfare that the world has ever seen, and a task eminently difficult in itself has been rendered almost impossible by the struggles of the combatants.

If we lay aside the merely rhetorical slanders of malignant opponents, we shall, I think, arrive at the conclusion that the main charges brought against Cranmer's character resolve themselves into three, viz. (1) that he was insincere in his oath to the Pope when first made Archbishop of Canterbury—that he never meant to observe it, and was guilty of deliberate perjury; (2) that he perpetually yielded to the wishes