Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/585

Rh G R A N M E II 551 fact deserves mention, as there are other indications that the archbishop was a firm believer in the doctrine of the &quot; divine right.&quot; During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the protector and of the young king being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. The first prayer-book of Edward VI. was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in January 1549 ; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop presided over the commissions that compiled them, and much of the work was done by himself personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI. published in 1553 were based upon a German source, but they owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer. The last great under taking in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but com pleted before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrange ment. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI. dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the title Reformatio Legum Jfcdesiasticarum. That it was never authorized is matter for satisfaction in view of the fact that it laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms. That Cranmer in this matter practised what he preached, his conduct in the cases of Frith, Hewat, and others sufficiently testifies. If, how ever, he was a persecutor both in theory and practice, it must be remembered that no one of any party in his day had grasped the principle of religious toleration. Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions which may be said to have sealed his doom. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII. by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward s &quot; device &quot; of the crown to Lady Jane Grey. On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible ; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the &quot; twelfth day queen,&quot; when the others who had with him signed Edward s device deserted her. On the accession of Mary he was summoned to the council, reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to con fine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen s pleasure was known. With a firmness unusual to his character he refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the Continent, Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more thau nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the queen, On the 14th September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declara tion he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored. In March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in tlieBocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th October 1555 ; it was fated that Cranmer was to reach the same end by a longer and less honourable path. It is impossible to give all the details of the intricate process against him, which at first involved the double charge of treason and heresy. Against the former of these he emphatically protested, and it was 011 the latter alone that he was ultimately condemned. The pontifical authority having been restored in England hid case was tried by a Papal commission. At his first appearance before the court he protested against tho jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, both by a formal declaration and by the significant action of putting on his hat and standing upright before the Pope s commissioner, the bishop of Gloucester, after having bowed respectfully to the representative of the queen. On the expiration of eighty days from the issue of a summons to Rome, which of course it was not in his power to obey even had he been willing, he was excommunicated by a Papal consistory, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power. But before the secular power did its last and worst, Cranmer was to inflict upon himself a degrada tion deeper far than any that could be inflicted on him from without. The story of his recantations is so notorious as to be known to many who know almost nothing else of his life. Under the pressure of delusive promises by various agents, whose conduct cannot be too strongly condemned, he was induced to sign no less than six of these, each ampler and more abject in its terms than that which had gone before. The last was dated the 18th March. On the 20th Dr Cole, the provost of Eton, visited Cranmer in his prison with the view of ascertaining whether he remained steadfast in his new purpose, and he received what seemed a satisfactory answer. Next day, Saturday, the 21st March, he was taken to St Mary s Church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life ; that he renounced and refused all his recanta tions as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart ; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. If, as Hook is inclined to think, he made this statement in the belief that his life would be spared if he persisted in his recantation, he seems all but entitled to tho crown of martyrdom ; if, as Macaulay maintains, he mado it after learning that he was to die in any case, and that a lie would therefore serve him as little as the truth, then, as Macaulay says, he was no more a martyr than Dr Dodcl. The question is important, but there are no materials for settling it definitely. Immediately after his unexpected declaration he was led to the stake at the same place where Ridley and Latimer had suffered a few months before. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames, and several times during the burning he was heard to exclaim with a loud voice, &quot; This hand hath offended this unworthy hand.&quot; The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of liis recantations was a repentance that needed not to bo repented of. It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. He was often pitiably, sometimes criminally, weak, and never so much both as in his last days. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was &quot;too fearful about what might