Oxford and Its Story

by Cecil Headlam

Then Latimer crying aloud, “O Father of Heaven, receive my soul,” bathed his hands in the flame that blazed up about him, and stroked his face. The powder exploded, and he “soon died with very little pain or none.” Ridley was less fortunate, for the fire being lit beneath and the faggots heaped above, the flames burnt his legs slowly away, and did not ignite the gunpowder round his neck. Amid cries to heaven of “Lord, Lord, receive my soul,” and “Lord have mercy upon me,” he screamed in his agony to the bystanders to let the fire come unto him. His brother-in-law with awkward kindness threw on more wood, which only kept down the flame. It was not till the lower part of his body had been burned away that he fell over, “and when the flame touched the gunpowder he was seen to stir no more.”

The lot of Cranmer was still more pathetic, and made a yet deeper impression upon the popular mind. He, like the others, had been examined in S. Mary’s (7th September 1555). He had appeared, clad in a fair black gown with his hood on his shoulders, such as Doctors of Divinity used to wear, and in his hand was a white staff. The aged Archbishop confronted there the Pope’s Legate, who sat on a raised dais ten feet high, with cloth of state, very richly and sumptuously adorned, at the east end of the church. Summoned to answer to a charge of blasphemy, incontinency and heresy, he refused as firmly as the others to recognise the authority of the Bishop of Rome within this kingdom.

“I protest,” he said, “I am no traitor. I have made an oath to the King and I must obey the King by God’s law. By the Scripture the King is chief and no foreign person in his own realm above him. The Pope is contrary to the Crown. I cannot obey both, for no man can serve two masters at once. You attribute the keys to the Pope and the sword to the King. I say the King hath both.”

Before further proceedings were taken against the Archbishop, it was necessary to obtain sanction of the Pope. It was not till the middle of the following February that the Papal breve arrived and a new commission came down to Oxford. Sitting before the high altar in the choir of Christ Church, Thirlby and Bonnor announced that Cranmer had been tried at Rome, where, according to the preamble of the Papal sentence, he had been allowed every opportunity to answer for himself. “O Lord!” commented Cranmer, “what lies be these!” They were directed, the commissioners continued, to degrade him, excommunicate him and deliver him up to the secular power. The form of degradation was begun when Cranmer appealed to the next Free General Council. The appeal was refused; the degradation was continued. Cranmer was stripped of his vestments, his hair was shorn, the sacred unction scraped from his finger-tips, and he was then dressed in a poor yeoman-beadle’s gown, full bare and nearly worn, and handed over to the secular power.

“Now are you lord no longer!” cried Bonnor when the ceremony was finished. “All this needed not,” the Archbishop replied; “I myself had done with this gear long ago.”

Cranmer had been three years in prison; he was an old man, and his nerve may well have been upset by the prolonged delay and fear of death and the recent degradation which he had undergone. There is no authentic account of what happened to him during the next few hours. But Protestant tradition relates that he was taken from the Cathedral to the Deanery of Christ Church, where he was entertained at his ease and exposed to the arguments and exhortations of Soto, the Spanish friar. He was warned at the same time that the Queen’s mind was so set, that she would either have Cranmer a Catholic or else no Cranmer at all. He was taken back to his cell that night, and there his constancy at last gave way. He signed a series of recantations. But the Queen refused to relent; she had humiliated her enemy, and now he must die. She fixed the 25th of March for the day of his execution. But first he was called upon to make a public confession of his recantation. It was a foul and rainy day when he was brought out of Bocardo to S. Mary’s Church. Peers, knights, doctors, students, priests, men-at-arms and citizens thronged the narrow aisles, and through their midst passed the mayor and next the aldermen in their place and degree; after them came Cranmer between two Spanish friars, who, on entering the church, chanted the Nunc Dimittis. A stage was set over against the pulpit—the ledge cut for it may still be seen in the pillar to the left of the Vice-Chancellor’s chair—and here Cranmer was made to stand in his bare and ragged gown, and old square cap, whilst Dr Cole, the Warden of New College, preached his funeral sermon, and justified the sentence that had been passed, by which, even though he had recanted, he was condemned to die.

Cole gave this reason and that, and added that there were others which had moved the Queen and Council “which were not meet and convenient for every one to understand.” He congratulated the Archbishop on his conversion, and promised him that a dirge should be sung for him in every church in Oxford. Finally, he called upon the whole congregation to kneel where they were and to pray for him. When the prayer was finished the preacher called upon the Archbishop to make the public confession of his faith. “Brethren,” cried he, “lest any man should doubt of this man’s earnest conversion and repentance, you shall hear him speak before you.” But the spirit of revenge had overreached itself. Cranmer’s enemies had hoped to humiliate him to the uttermost; instead, they gave him the opportunity of redeeming his fame and adding his name to the roll of martyrs.

“The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention, like deep harmony....
More are men’s ends marked than their lives before.”

To the astonishment of friends and foes alike, Cranmer stood up before the congregation, and chanted the palinode of his forsworn opinions; he recanted his recantation. Face to face with that cruel