Handbooks.—Topinard, Éléments d’anthropologie générale (Paris, 1885); Schmidt, Anthropologische Methoden (Leipzig, 1888); Duckworth, Morphology and Anthropology (Cambridge, 1904).
Journals.—Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Archiv für Anthropologie, Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie.
(W. L. H. D.)
CRANK, a word of somewhat obscure etymology, probably connected with a root meaning “crooked,” and appearing in the Ger. krank, ill, a figurative use of the original word; among other words in English containing the same original meaning are “cringe” and “crinkle.” In mechanics, a crank is a device by which reciprocating motion is converted into circular motion or vice versa, consisting of a crank-arm, one end of which is fastened rigidly at right angles to the rotating shaft or axis, while the other end bears a crank-pin, projecting from it at right angles and parallel to the shaft. When the reciprocating part of a machine, as the piston and piston-rod of a steam engine, is linked to this crank by a crank-rod or connecting rod, one end of which works on the crank-pin and the other on a pin in the end of the reciprocating part, the to-and-fro motion of the latter imparts a circular motion to the shaft and vice versa. The crank, instead of being made up as described above, may be formed by bending the shaft to the required shape, as sometimes in the handle of a winch. A bell-crank, so called because of its use in bell-hanging to change the direction of motion of the wires from horizontal to vertical or vice versa, consists of two arms rigidly connected at an angle, say of 90°, to each other and pivoted on a pin placed at the point of junction.
Crank is also the name given to a labour machine used in prisons as a means of punishment (see [Tread-mill]). Other uses of the word, connected with the primary meaning, are for a crooked path, a crevice or chink; and a freakish turn of thought or speech, as in Milton’s phrase “quips and cranks.” It is also used as a slang expression, American in origin, for a harmless lunatic, or a faddist, whose enthusiasm for some one idea or hobby becomes a monomania. “Crank” or “crank-sided” is a nautical term used of a ship which by reason of her build or from want of balance is liable to overturn. This strictly nautical sense is often confused with “crank” or “cranky,” that is, rickety or shaky, probably derived direct from the German krank, weak or ill.
CRANMER, THOMAS (1489-1556), archbishop of Canterbury, born at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire on the 2nd of July 1489, was the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Anne Hatfield. He received his early education, according to Morice his secretary, from “a marvellous severe and cruel schoolmaster,” whose discipline must have been severe indeed to deserve this special mention in an age when no schoolmaster bore the rod in vain. The same authority tells us that he was initiated by his father in those field sports, such as hunting and hawking, which formed one of his recreations in after life. To early training he also owed the skilful horsemanship for which he was conspicuous. At the age of fourteen he was sent by his mother, who had in 1501 become a widow, to Cambridge. Little is known with certainty of his university career beyond the facts that he became a fellow of Jesus College in 1510 or 1511, that he had soon after to vacate his fellowship, owing to his marriage to “Black Joan,” a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, and that he was reinstated in it on the death of his wife, which occurred in childbirth before the lapse of the year of grace allowed by the statutes. During the brief period of his married life he held the appointment of lecturer at Buckingham Hall, now Magdalene College. The fact of his marrying would seem to show that he did not at the time intend to enter the church; possibly the death of his wife caused him to qualify for holy orders. He was ordained in 1523, and soon after he took his doctor’s degree in divinity. According to Strype, he was invited about this time to become a fellow of the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford; but Dean Hook shows that there is some reason to doubt this. If the offer was made, it was declined, and Cranmer continued at Cambridge filling the offices of lecturer in divinity at his own college and of public examiner in divinity to the university. It is interesting, in view of his later efforts to spread the knowledge of the Bible among the people, to know that in the capacity of examiner he insisted on a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, and rejected several candidates who were deficient in this qualification.
It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father’s house at Waltham in Essex. The king (Henry VIII.) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, secretary of state, afterwards bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the lord high almoner, afterwards bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy’s house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the king’s meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother’s widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the king, who, when Cranmer’s opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: “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.”
At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the king to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn’s father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the king appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that “the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated,” and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed “Grand Penitentiary of England,” but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.