Ridley, the most learned of the three, was born in 1500 and was consequently fifty-four years old at the time of the disputation. He had adopted the principles of the German reformers in 1536, and renounced his belief in transubstantiation in the year of Henry’s death, after which he laboured strenuously to defend and spread the new doctrines. Cranmer acknowledged him his superior in controversy, and during the disputation it was said of the three bishops: “Latimer leaneth to Cranmer, Cranmer leaneth to Ridley and Ridley to the singularity of his own wit”. Nevertheless in arguing, he always referred to Cranmer’s book.
Latimer joined to the Puritan sympathies of Hooper the weakness of character which signalised Cranmer. He had been so deeply imbued with the spirit of the German divines as to lose Henry’s favour, but as he ardently advocated the King’s first divorce, Anne Boleyn procured him a bishopric. He was however regarded with some suspicion, and was twice convented before Convocation, and required to subscribe to certain articles presented to him for his acceptance. He refused, was pronounced contumacious and excommunicated, until he retracted, and sued for forgiveness. He was ultimately pardoned, but relapsed into Protestantism, and was only saved from prosecution by a timely utterance in favour of the divorce, when he was made Bishop of Worcester. In 1536 he was called on to examine some Anabaptists for heresy, and saw no reason why they should not suffer the rigour of the law for their opinions. Later, he thus defended their execution: “This is a deceivable argument,” said Latimer “he went to his death boldly: ergo he standeth in a just quarrel. The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw them not myself) went to their death even intrepid, as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Well, let them go. There was in the old doctor’s time another kind of poisoned heretics that were called Donatists, and these heretics went to their execution as though they should have gone to some jolly recreation or banquet, to some belly-cheer or to a play.”[550]
But in spite of these words, Latimer was soon afterwards as busy as any Anabaptist in destroying images, and during the reaction of Henry’s orthodoxy, in the matter of the Six Articles, was in some danger. Cromwell forced him to resign his see,[551] and he was kept in a sort of honourable confinement by the Bishop of Chichester. On his release, he was forbidden to preach, to go to either university or to return to his diocese. He found himself in the Tower, in 1546, for his openly professed disbelief in Purgatory, but was liberated on Edward’s accession, and licensed as a preacher. Latimer threw in his lot boldly with Somerset’s Protectorate, and when Admiral Seymour was executed, and the people murmured, he justified his death from the pulpit, and told them that the Admiral had gone to everlasting damnation. The passages in his sermon in which this sentiment was expressed were afterwards eliminated as too scandalous for Latimer’s credit as a divine. His eloquence was so overwhelming, that its effect was generally to excite the people on whatever subject he preached, and an entry in the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, records the fact that the sum of one shilling and sixpence was paid some time in 1549, “for mending of divers pews that were broken when Dr. Latimer did preach”.[552] When in 1550, a fresh commission was appointed to eradicate heresy, and to enforce the new Book of Common Prayer, Latimer was one of the thirty-two commissioners. On Mary’s accession, the Council, for some reason unknown, declared his behaviour seditious, and sent him a close prisoner to the Tower, denying him the liberty accorded to Cranmer and Ridley. The latter, however, contrived to communicate with him, and the two together wrote a defence of their opinions, through the intermediary of Latimer’s servant, who was allowed to attend him. After the Oxford disputation in October 1555, Cardinal Pole wrote to Philip, telling him that he had received letters from the King’s confessor, Friar Soto, who had been sent to persuade the prisoners to recant, and that Soto had given him an account of what he had done “with those two heretics, Ridley and Latimer after their condemnation”. One of them would not even speak to him, and although the other spoke, “it profited nothing, it being easily intelligible than no one can save those whom God has rejected, and thus according to report, the sentence was executed, the people looking on not unwillingly, as it was known that nothing had been neglected with regard to their salvation”.[553]
Giovanni Michiel also informed his Government that the execution of the sentences “against the heretics, the late Bishop of London, Ridley, and Latimer, Bishop of Worcester had been decided on, there being no hope or visible sign of their choosing to recant”.[554] Gardiner had nothing to do with the conviction of the two bishops, beyond the fact that, as Chancellor, he was at the head of the civil power which passed sentence upon them. He is known to have been personally averse from the persecution, and, as we have already seen, he substantially helped some of the suspects to leave the country before proceedings could be taken against them. None the less, however, Foxe goes out of his way to attribute to him the most horrible and inhuman desire for, and satisfaction at, their death. The apparent object of the martyrologist was to draw his favourite inference in regard to the temporal judgment of God on miscreants. He says, admitting that he obtained his information at third hand: “The same day, when Bishop Ridley and master Latimer suffered at Oxford (being about the 19th day of October) there came into the house of Stephen Gardiner the old duke of Norfolk, with the foresaid Master Munday his secretary above named reporter hereof. The old aged duke, there waiting and tarrying for his dinner, the bishop being not yet disposed to dine, deferred the time to three or four o’clock at afternoon. At length, about four of the clock cometh his servant, posting in all possible speed from Oxford, bringing intelligence to the bishop, what he had heard and seen: of whom the said bishop, diligently inquiring the truth of the matter, and hearing by his man, that fire most certainly was set unto them, cometh out rejoicing to the duke. ‘Now,’ saith he, ‘let us go to dinner’. Whereupon they being set down, meat immediately was brought, and the bishop began merrily to eat. But what followed? The bloody tyrant had not eaten a few bits, but the sudden stroke of God’s terrible hand fell upon him in such sort as immediately he was taken from the table, and so brought to his bed, where he continued the space of fifteen days in such intolerable anguish and torments ... whereby his body being miserably inflamed within (who had inflamed so many good martyrs before) was brought to a wretched end.”[555]
The first thing to be observed in this story is the notable fact, that “the old duke of Norfolk” could not by any possibility have dined with Gardiner on the 19th October 1555, having been in his grave since August 1553. As for “the sudden stroke of God’s terrible hand,” by which the Bishop was brought to a wretched end, he had been suffering for some time from dropsy,[556] and died of it, not in his own house, but at Whitehall, to which place he had been removed, after making an heroic effort to appear at the opening of Parliament on the 21st October. It was an act of devotion to the Queen and the country; the long speech which he then delivered on the state of the royal finances, resulting in a subsidy which removed the most pressing difficulties of the Crown. But his strength was exhausted by the strain; he was too weak to be taken home, and was therefore accommodated in Whitehall Palace, till his death on the 12th November. He desired during his last hours, that the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ might be read to him, and when the reader came to the contrition of St. Peter, Gardiner exclaimed: “Negavi cum Petro, exivi cum Petro, sed nondum flevi cum Petro,” alluding to his fall in Henry’s reign.[557]
Cranmer’s execution was delayed for more than five months after the execution of Ridley and Latimer, in the hope of his recanting. In the same letter, in which he communicated to Philip the fact of the burning of the two bishops, Cardinal Pole said:—
“The late Archbishop of Canterbury whose sentence of condemnation is now expected from Rome, does not show himself so obstinate, and desires a conference with me. If he can be brought to repent, the Church will derive no little profit from the salvation of a single soul; but they are awaiting what may be expected, from the next letters of Father Soto, and will certify it to your Majesty.”
From his prison in Bocardo, Cranmer had seen his two companions led to the stake, and the sight had awakened that natural timidity which underlay and prompted his least praiseworthy actions. It has been said of him that in his youth, he was cowed and crushed by a tyrannical master, and so deprived of all manliness of character.[558] He had a legal rather than a broad or elevated mind, and this was of service to him in keeping clear of the pitfalls, into which so many of his friends fell, at least temporarily. It had also enabled him to avail himself of the tide, which taken at the flood led on to fame and fortune. He went to Cambridge at the age of fourteen, but although he remained there for many years, his name does not once appear among the learned or distinguished men of the University. Erasmus, who knew every one with any claim to notice, lived in the same street with him, but makes no mention of him in his letters.
Cranmer took his degree of B.A. at the age of twenty-two, and proceeded M.A. three years later. The fact of his marriage, by which he forfeited the fellowship of his college (Jesus), implies that he had then no intention of taking orders; and he probably meant to adopt the law as a profession.[559] His first wife was the daughter of an innkeeper, known by the name of Black Joan. To support himself and her, he accepted a readership at Buckingham Hall, afterwards Magdalene College, and lived with his wife at the Dolphin, her father’s inn. But Black Joan died in childbirth, and Cranmer was then reinstated in his fellowship. He proceeded D.D., and was ordained in 1523, at the age of thirty-four. Either Gardiner, or Fox, Bishop of Hereford, first brought him to the King’s notice, by quoting a shrewd remark which Cranmer had made, on the subject of Henry’s “private matter”.
“Who is this Dr. Cranmer?” asked the King. “Where is he? Is he still at Waltham? I will speak to him; let him be sent for out of hand. This man I trow has got the right sow by the ear.”[560]