Hooper, another of our chief reformers, was much less active than Ridley in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs. He was somewhat scrupulous about certain vestments and ceremonies; and he might have some scruples too on the subject of persecution: at least it is not in the present writer’s recollection that he was very forward, like the others, in harassing those who were called heretics. His character, however, seems not so indefectible as to entitle him to be held up as a mirror of evangelical soundness, or an object of universal admiration. He has been charged with being the founder of the sect called puritans, which proved so troublesome to our rulers in church and state for a whole century or more: but this is not mentioned here as a blemish in his character. The following circumstances are of a more blamable nature: 1. His obtaining and holding the bishopric of Worcester, in addition to his former bishopric of Gloucester, after having inveighed very strongly in his sermons against pluralities: 2. His consenting to wear the vestments, after having engaged the young king to write to Cranmer that they “were offensive to his conscience;” and his taking the oath of supremacy, after having made his patron, Dudley, write to the same prelate that “it was burdensome to his conscience,” when he found that he could not get promotion otherwise. [652a]
But in our English reformation, under Henry VIII, and Edward VI, the chief agent was confessedly archbishop Cranmer, whose character, as exhibited by eminent protestant writers, abounded with great and glaring blemishes. “The first remarkable circumstance we meet in the life of Cranmer is his privately marrying a woman of low condition, whilst he was fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, [652b] contrary to the engagements of his admission. He afterwards, when a priest, [and while his first wife was alive] married a second wife in Germany, by a much more flagrant violation of his vow of celibacy, and having brought her privately into England, he continued to live with her, in equal opposition to the laws of the church and of the land,” [and though he had assured the king that he had sent her home to Germany.] “Being a Lutheran in principle, as far back as the year 1529, he afterwards accepted the office of pope’s penitentiary, and when named to the archbishopric of Canterbury he was content to accept different bulls from the pontiff to take upon himself the character of his legate in England, and even to make a solemn oath of obedience to him, [652c] with an obligation of opposing all heretics and schismatics, that is to say, according to the received sense of the words, all persons of his own religious persuasion. In like manner he must have said mass, which, in his opinion, was an idolatrous worship, both at his consecration, and frequently at other times, during the fourteen years that he governed the church of England under Henry. He must also necessarily, from time to time, have ordained other priests to perform the same worship, and imposed upon them the obligation of that continency which he himself did not observe. In a word, we see his subscription still affixed to a great variety of doctrinal articles and injunctions, issued during that reign, which we know to have been in direct opposition to his real sentiments.”
“Every one knows that Cranmer owed his rise in the church to the part which he took in Henry’s divorce from queen Catherine of Arragon. Henry tired out with the opposition of Rome, and impatient to be united with his beloved Ann Boleyn, privately marries her Nov. 14, 1532, and Cranmer himself is one of the witnesses of the contract. [653a] On the 11th. of the following March this same prelate writes a letter to Henry, from “pure motives of conscience” as he declares, [653b] but from a preconcerted scheme as the fact proves, representing the necessity there was of determining the long depending cause between him and his queen, and demanding of him the necessary ecclesiastical jurisdiction to decide it. [653c] This being granted, he on the 20th of May pronounces a sentence of divorce between the royal pair, and authorises Henry to take another wife; [653d] six months after he himself had officiated as witness to his marriage with Ann Boleyn, and only four months before the latter was delivered of an infant who was afterwards queen Elizabeth. [654a] What a scandalous collusion in so important a matter of conscience and public example!”
“In less than three years however [his sacred majesty] grows weary of the consort whom he had moved heaven and earth to gain, [654b] and becomes enamoured of a new beauty. Nevertheless appearances must be saved; and therefore Cranmer presents himself as the ready instrument in smoothing the way to the gratification of [his sovereign’s] passions. After a feint effort to save Ann, to whose family he had such infinite obligations, in a cold adulatory letter to the king, which he wrote on the occasion, [655a] he lent all his aid to ruin and oppress her, permitting, if not persuading, her, (standing as she then did upon the verge of eternity) to confess what he knew to be false; [655b] and pronouncing a sentence of divorce, which contained that she had never been validly married to Henry, at the very time when she was lying under sentence of death for violating his bed by adultery!” [655c]
In the transactions relating to Ann of Cleves, Henry’s fourth queen, Cranmer’s conduct appears scarcely less dishonourable than in those relating to Ann Boleyn. Nor does it seem that the death of Henry produced in him any real or material amendment: so that there can be no validity in the excuse usually made for his former misconduct by ascribing it chiefly to that monarch’s despotic will. He appeared just as obsequious to the will of the protector Seymour as he had been before to that of Henry. “To gratify this he consented to set aside in a great measure the last will of his old master, of which he was the first-named executor. [655d] Having raised this ecclesiastical no less than civil idol to undue power, he was ready to pay homage to him with all the essential authority of the church, taking out a new commission for his archbishopric, under the pretext that his former power had expired with the deceased king, and professing to be a prelate no longer than the child Edward, or rather Seymour himself, should acknowledge him to be so.” [656a]
“Cranmer concurred no less in other [misdoings] and disorders of this infant reign, than he did in those stated above. He gratified Somerset by subscribing to the death warrant of his brother. He was afterwards as forward as any of the other courtiers in paying his homage to the rising power of Dudley, when he found the interest of the latter growing stronger than that of Seymour: and he carried his ingratitude to his deceased benefactor Henry, and his infidelity in the discharge of that prince’s last will, to such a length as to concur in excluding his two daughters from their lawful inheritance and right to the crown, in order to place it on the head of Dudley’s daughter-in-law, the lady Jane. If Elizabeth [therefore] had succeeded to the throne immediately after Edward, she would no more have spared Cranmer and Ridley than Mary did.” [656b]
“In conclusion, if Cranmer was burnt to death for heresy, instead of being beheaded for rebellion, [his advocates ought to] reflect, how many persons he himself, whilst he had power in his hands, had condemned to this punishment, on the selfsame accusation.” For it is undeniable that be was instrumental in the execution of many persons for religions opinions, and that some of them held the very tenets for which he himself afterwards suffered. “Though this part of his conduct has keen kept out of sight as much as possible, yet we have certain proofs of his having been one of the chief instruments, under Henry, in bringing to the stake John Lambert, Ann Askew, John Frith, and William Allen, [657a] for denying the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, besides a great number of anabaptists, &c. for their respective opinions.”
“In the reign of Edward VI, besides other most severe persecutions which he carried on against Gospellers, Anabaptists, and other sectaries, amongst whom two at least were Sacramentarians, he was the active promoter and immediate cause of the burning of Joan Knell, [657b] and George Paris or Van Parr, [657c] for certain singular opinions. Amongst those who escaped with their lives, a great part of them were forced to recant, through the fear of torments, and to carry lighted tapers and faggots, in testimony of their having merited burning. [658a] As to the fate of Joan Knell, or Butcher, commonly called Joan of Kent, (and whose innocent blood was evidently shed by the procurement of Cranmer,) Dr. Milner thinks that when it is considered with all its attendant circumstances, a more cruel and wanton act of persecution (he might have said murder,) is not to be found upon record. [658b] “The doctrine for which she suffered (he adds) was of an abstract nature, not calculated to gain proselytes or to occasion any public disturbances. She was barely accused of maintaining, that “Christ passed through the blessed Virgin’s body as water through a conduit, without participating of that body through which he passed.” [659a] For no other cause than persisting in this opinion, she was convented in the church of St. Paul, before archbishop Cranmer and his assistants, convicted and delivered over to the secular arm. We have the sentence that he pronounced on the occasion, which is rigorous beyond the usual terms; and we have a certificate of it, addressed to the king, in which instead of petitioning for mercy, in the usual style of such instruments, the convict heretic is expressly recommended “to receive due punishment.” Nor is this all, for the royal youth being unwilling to sign the warrant for her execution, Cranmer employs all his theological arguments to induce him to comply; amongst other things telling him that “princes, being God’s deputies, ought to punish impieties against God.” In the end Edward sets his hand to the warrant, but with tears in his eyes, telling Cranmer, that “if he did wrong, he (the said Cranmer) should answer for it to God.” At length, by a change in circumstances, the archbishop himself being condemned as a heretic to suffer that cruel death, to which he had condemned so many others on the same account, “he was far from imitating the firmness of the greater part of them.” [659b]
His recantation of his former or protestant principles, at Mary’s accession, is well known. The prevailing notion is, that it was the effect of “a momentary weakness,” or the act and deed of “an unguarded hour:” but that appears very far from being correct or true. On the contrary, “he is proved to have deliberately subscribed six different forms of recantation, at so many different periods, [660a] each one of which was more ample and express than the preceding one; and he remained during the whole five or six last weeks of his life, and until the very hour of his death, either a sincere catholic or an egregious hypocrite. At length finding that, notwithstanding so many retractations, he was upon the point of being executed, he revoked them all, and shewed a resolution at his death which he had exhibited in no one occurrence of his life.” [660b]