Thomas Cranmer: Cowardice and Courage Season 1 | Episode 37
Some men are born heroes;
they can look fear in the face and wonder what it is.
Others are not born that way, but they end their life as heroes.
Thomas Cranmer was such a man,
born into a good family, a well-to-do family,
here in the village of Aslockton on the 2nd of July 1489.
Thomas Cranmer was educated from a young age,
and growing up, we know that he was an expert bowman,
hunter, and a great horseman.
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He enrolled at Cambridge University at the age of 14
and earned his BA in 1511.
He was then elected a fellow here at Jesus College
and earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1523.
He lost his fellowship a year later when he got married,
but a year after that,
when his wife and child died, he regained his fellowship.
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His rise to Archbishop was unconventional and not sought after.
The issue of the day
was King Henry VIII's desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
and Cranmer commented to some friends at a lunch
that he thought the king should obtain a consensus of opinion
from the leading universities around Europe
regarding whether this was permissible.
Word of these comments reached the king,
who liked them and thought highly of Cranmer.
This set in motion a series of events
that ended up with Cranmer becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury,
even though he had never been a bishop before
and was quite content being a university scholar.
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Henry subsequently divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn
whose daughter Elizabeth, later Queen of England,
was goddaughter to Cranmer.
Henry's gift to England was to break the yoke of Rome and to abolish monasticism,
but he himself was a faithful papist in his beliefs until the end.
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At the coronation of Edward VI,
Cranmer preached a sermon likening him to the biblical boy King Josiah.
Cranmer also was instrumental in translating the Book of Common Prayer
into English for the first time,
rather than using the traditional Latin.
In 1553 following Edward's death Mary Tudor ascended to the throne,
despite an attempt by Lady Jane Grey to hold the throne,
which lasted only nine days.
Mary then took Stephen Gardiner from the Tower of London
and made him Lord Chancellor.
She then threw Thomas Cranmer in prison
for his role in Henry's divorce from her mother
and for his Protestant beliefs.
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Cranmer spent two and a half years in prison,
during which time he was brought to the roof of the prison
to watch the martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer
in an attempt to make him recant,
which he eventually did, pledging his allegiance to Catholicism.
But this did not secure his freedom.
He was finally brought to trial here at St Mary's Church
where he was forced to listen to a two-hour sermon denouncing himself.
When he was brought to make a public recantation,
he stood on a wooden platform which rested against a pillar
where a wedge was cut which can still be seen today.
He stood up, denounced the Pope as Antichrist,
withdrew his former recantation, and stood by his previous teachings.
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He was taken to the place of his execution
and as he reached the flames,
he held his right hand in first,
the same that had signed the recantation, saying,
'This hand hath offended; it shall first be burned'.
He held it there for a while before collapsing into the flames.
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Mary went on to slaughter 250 more Protestants during her reign,
and when she died, Elizabeth I took the throne.
One of her first acts as regent
was to revive the Book of Prayer written by Cranmer,
which was a fitting tribute to the man who was her Godfather.
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Though Cranmer recanted in the face of pressure and persecution,
he ended his life a hero, faithful to God at the very end.
Proverbs 24:16 says that a just man falls seven times but rises again.
It's not how often you fall that matters, but that you rise at the end.