Thomas Cranmer was born at Aslacton,Nottinghamshire,in the flat midlands of England.Education at cambrige,he became one of the most distinguised theologians of his time,but he knew great sorrow when his wife,Joan,died in childbirth. When king Henry VIII sought to divorce his wife Cartherine in order to marry Anne Boleyn, Crammer defended the kings right to do so. Having shown himself the kind of man Henry approved,Crammer was in 1533 appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.He supported the king in other ways too,for he belived strongly that the church in any country should be governed by its own ruler and not a distant Rome,a point of view that helped on the Reformation of England.In 1540 the Archbishop promoted the Great bible (known as Cranmer's Bible).
Before Edward VI died in 1553,Cranmer promised him that he would support the Protestant Lady Jane Grey as the new ruler.But with the triumph of Henry VIII's daughter Mary,a Roman Catholic,Cranmer was condemed to death for treason and would have been executed speedily but for a technicality,he would be deprived and sentenced only by ecclesiastical authority.In Mary's eyes Cranmer's real offence was in the divorce of King Henry from Catherine,her mother. His enemies had planned something even more demoralizing for Cranmer,he was publicaly paraded.he who was two or three years earlier had been the highest church manin the land was now mocked.His head was shaved. Dressed now in a threadbare gown,the first Reformed Archbishop of Canterbury was then as a layman handed over to the secular authoritieswho could lawfully excute him.
Before that happened,five months were to elapes,during which time it looked as if the spirit had gone out of Cranmer.
Crammer solemly warned all against doting on this false world.He took back all he as written against Reformed doctorine.This had been done,he admitted,though fear of death,but the hands that has written those things will be burned first.
His enemises were furious.This was not what they had expected.They seized him in mid-utterance and dragged him from the church.Through the streets of Oxford they went until the reached the stake. As the flames leaped up,he held his right hand steadily out so that it might be consumed first.He made little sound except to cry out at one point.