The interview proved satisfactory, and Henry charged Cranmer to draw up a statement of his view of the King’s marriage. In order to be able to confer often with him, he lodged him in the household of the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn’s father, at Durham Place. A royal chaplaincy was conferred on him, besides the emoluments of the Archdeaconry of Taunton. He visited Rome with Lord Wiltshire, and the Pope, unsuspicious of what was being plotted, made him Grand Penitentiary for England. He then went to Germany, on private business of his own, and there married Osiander’s[561] niece. At this juncture Warham died, and Henry, who saw that Cranmer was “an admirable tool, so timid that he could ever be terrorised into submission, so tender with himself that the King’s policy admirably fitted in with his sensuality,” advanced him over the heads of better men, and made him Primate of all England. Probably the dignity was unsolicited, possibly undesired, and perhaps it was even thrust upon him with unwillingness on his part. If he had aspired to it, he would scarcely, as things then were, have married a second time, nor would he have delayed his return to England, after the death of Archbishop Warham. Ambition had no inordinate share in his character. But he had signified to the King, that sentence as to the validity of his marriage should be given, not by the Pope, but by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and it was to this opinion that his sudden promotion was due.[562] The bulls from Rome were to be obtained at the cost of any duplicity, and they were in Henry’s hands before the Pope had any inkling of what was intended.
The appointment was unpopular in England. Cranmer was still comparatively unknown, and had as yet done nothing to justify the extraordinary rise in his fortunes. Public opinion had designated Gardiner as Warham’s successor, and under normal conditions, he would probably have been chosen. But lately, he had shown himself less pliable than suited Henry’s convenience, and the King knew that he could count absolutely on Cranmer, who was accordingly consecrated on the 30th March, which that year fell on Passion Sunday. Immediately before the ceremony, the new Archbishop called four witnesses, and in their presence declared before a notary, that he did not intend to bind himself, by the oath of obedience to the Pope which he was about to take, to do anything that should appear to him contrary to the law of God, the King’s prerogative or the statutes of the realm. When he knelt to take this oath, he repeated his protest, and immediately afterwards swore obedience to the Pope in the usual form. Just before receiving the pallium, he made his third protest, and again took the oath of obedience.[563]
Immediately after pledging himself to obey the Pope, he took the following oath to the King for his temporalities: “I Thomas Cranmer renounce and utterly forsake all such claims, words, sentences and grants which I have of the Pope’s Holiness in his Bulls of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, that in any manner, wise, is or may be hurtful or prejudicial to your Highness, your heirs, successors, estate or dignity royal, knowledging myself to take and hold the said Archbishopric immediately and only of your Highness and of none other,” etc.[564]
Cranmer had been made Archbishop, solely that he might advance “the King’s matter” which had little chance of being settled at Rome according to the royal pleasure. Therefore on the 3rd May, he rendered his first service to Henry by pronouncing a sentence, declaring that his marriage with Katharine of Arragon was invalid. On the 28th, he further declared Henry’s union with Anne Boleyn good and valid,[565] and to stop men’s tongues, prohibited all preaching throughout his diocese till further notice, a measure that was significant of public opinion.
In May 1536, the man whom Anne had virtually made Archbishop, and who had made her Queen, at Henry’s command, declared and decreed that “the marriage between our sovereign lord the King and the lady Anne had always been without effect”. In January 1540, he married Anne of Cleves to the King, and six months later, pronounced her sentence of divorce. In 1541, he favoured Henry with yet another decree nisi, to relieve him of his fifth wife, Katharine Howard. He examined Friar Forest on his refusal to acknowledge the King as supreme Head, and handed him over to his executioners. But the visit of the German Lutherans, to negotiate the terms of union between the Church of England and the reformed Churches of the Continent, marked a crisis in his life, and the seeds of Protestantism were sown which were to bear abundant fruit in the next reign.[566] Nevertheless, he still maintained the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemned John Lambert and Anne Askew to the flames for maintaining the contrary, while later on, he sentenced Joan Bocher to death for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He also handed over several Anabaptists to the secular arm, to be burned at Smithfield.
On Henry’s promulgation of the Six Articles of Religion, one of which forbade the marriage of priests, Cranmer was obliged to dismiss his wife. For some time past, it had cost him no little trouble and inconvenience to conceal her presence at Lambeth, where she lived in more than oriental seclusion. When he travelled, he was obliged to carry her from place to place in a chest, with holes contrived to allow of her breathing. On one lamentable occasion the chest was placed the wrong side uppermost, which so incommoded her that she was forced to betray her presence by screaming.[567]
Cranmer was never popular with his clergy. “Of all sorts of men,” he complained, “I am daily informed that priests report the worst of me.” Conspiracies were even set on foot against him, but he was too useful to Henry to fear a fall, and was the one man in the realm to whom the King was ever faithful. To all complaints against the Archbishop Henry turned a deaf ear. “I would you should well understand,” said he, “that I account my lord of Canterbury as faithful a man towards me as ever was prelate in this realm, and one to whom I am many ways beholden.” The praise was certainly not exaggerated. Even in matters of purely theological moment, Cranmer was never at variance with his master, for he held no opinion or doctrine that was not at Henry’s service. Incredible as it seems, Cranmer once said to him: “This is mine opinion and sentence at this present, which nevertheless I do not temerariously define, but refer the judgment thereof wholly unto your Majesty”.[568] Speaking in Cranmer’s defence, the Archbishop’s secretary Morice unconsciously deprived him of every vestige of fidelity to principle. “Men ought to consider,” he pleaded, “with whom he had to do, specially with such a prince as would not be bridled, nor be against-said in any of his requests.”[569]
In deference to the wishes of the Council, he made several alterations in the oath administered to the King at Edward’s coronation, but he said the prescribed Mass of the Holy Ghost, and also sang a Requiem for the repose of Henry’s soul. Nevertheless, the whole tendency of the new Government was in sympathy with his private feelings, and it was not long before he made up his mind to swim with the tide. He headed a commission which deprived Bonner and Gardiner, and held a visitation of his diocese, to ascertain whether the destruction of images had been fully carried out. A bill having been passed in Parliament, “to take away all positive laws made against the marriage of priests,” Cranmer sent for his wife, invested in Abbey lands the money granted to him by Henry and confirmed by Edward’s Council, invited Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer and other Calvinists to settle in England, and did all he could to promote union between the Church of England, and the reformed Churches of the Continent. He renounced the Mass, advocated the overthrow of the altars and declared transubstantiation to be heresy. The Book of Common Prayer which he had compiled and put forth in 1551, under the auspices of the Government, having been criticised by the foreign Protestants, he set about its revision, aided by the Bishop of Ely. The so-called Black Rubric, which forbade the practice of kneeling at the Communion, was introduced a little later. Towards the close of 1552, the forty-two articles, afterwards reduced to thirty-nine, were published by the King’s command.