Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/583

Rh C R A N M E 11 549 the divorce. His mission was fruitless, but he did not at once return to England. At Nuremberg he had become acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change ; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer s opinions. But Osiander s house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and early in 1532 they were married. In the case of a strong character like Luther, marriage implied an express practical rejection of the authority of Rome to impose celibacy upon priests ; no such inference can safely be made in the case of Cranmer, whose character was weak and whose action was generally determined by the influences of the moment. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer s statement that he never expected or desired the primacy ; and it seems probable enough that, if he had fore seen how soon tha primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose. Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532 Archbishop Warhain died, and the king almost im mediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who was still in German} 7, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer s conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. How long he ventured to wait is uncertain, but when he arrived in England he found the arrangements matured for his consecration, his * nolo episcopari &quot; being unavailing against the king s command. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony has occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to tha Pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the I ope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the king. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey s. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible caths. In the last as in the first step of Cranmer s promotion Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce had now become very urgent, and in tha new archbishop hs had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with which Cranmer did the work intrusted to uim mast have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine s marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the king were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity. The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the king, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally deter mining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the king, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear she was declared contumacious, and on the 23d May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the king free to marry whom he pleased. In the whole proceeding, which had as much of the form as it had little of the spirit of justice, the archbishop s subserviency was pitiful, and it is difficult to acquit him of the graver charge of knowingly pronouncing an unrighteous sentence. The coronation of the new queen, Anne Boleyn, at which Cranmer officiated, took place on the 1st Juii2, little mt)re than a week after the sentence which deprived her predecessor of her rights. During that interval it is asserted by some authorities that the king and Anne were publicly married by the archbishop. This, however, seems unlikely. A private marriage had taken place in the previous November, or more probably in January. Hook conjectures that the later ceremony was not a repetition of the marriage, but merely an official and public recognition of it. The splendid pageantry of the coronation made the marriage popular for a few days with the citizsns of London, but a deeper current of feeling in the opposite direction soon set in. The deliberate judgment of the country was undoubtedly one of indignant disapproval, and it speedily found utterance through the pulpit the chief organ of public opinion in the days when there was no press. So outspoken were the preachers in their denuncia tion of the king s conduct that it was deemed necessary to silence them by an arbitrary exercise of authority. Cranmer s very first act of episcopal jurisdiction was to prohibit all preaching within his own diocese, and to arrange for its restriction by the other bishops of his province. His conduct in this can, of course, only be fairly judged by the standard of his own time, but the forcible suppression of all preaching was a curiously incon sistent measure to be adopted, even from motives of political urgency, by the &quot;first Protestant archbishop of Canter bury.&quot; Cranmer was little at court during the three years of Anne Boleyn s ascendency there. The period was eventful, and he found abundant occupation in his ecclesiastical and parliamentary duties. He was an active promoter of the measures which led to the final breach with Home. Theso included the appointment of bishops by the king alone without bulls or licences from the Pope, the prohibition of the payment of Peter s pence or other contributions to Rome, and the renunciation by the archbishop of the title of legate. The independence of the Church of England was finally asserted by the two Houses of Convocation in the declaration that &quot; the bishop of Rome has no greater jurisdiction given him in this realm of England than any other foreign bishop,&quot; and this statement may be held to embody the general result of Cranmer s eccle.siastical policy as shown in the details just mentioned. It is to be noted to his credit that he pled for More and Fisher even after he had failed to persuade them to admit the royal supremacy. Cranmer s share in the divorce of Anne Boleyn in 1536 is perhaps less obscure than most things connected with that very mysterious transaction. When the king had made up his mind, the archbishop was summoned from