book 1, chapter 18 How the King Named Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, of His Sinful Life, and of How He Deceived the Pope1
As the king’s crimes and misdeeds had become so hateful, our Lord elected to punish him by allowing him free rein to carry on, without hesitation or fear of anything. God took to himself that excellent man, William Warham, the arch- bishop of Canterbury, who had aided the queen’s cause with such fervor.2 At the request of Thomas Boleyn and his beloved Anne, the king gave the arch- bishopric to Thomas Cranmer, who had been Thomas’s chaplain, and later the king’s agent in Rome.3 This was the reason he was given the post, and because the king judged that his lifestyle and habits were such as could be useful in his ambitions, if the pope gave sentence in favor of the queen. Thomas Cranmer was a heretic, as will be seen later, for which he was burned in the time of Queen Mary; he was also an immoral man, of such lustfulness that while in Germany, he had seduced a maiden from the house where he was staying and carried her off to England.4 When he was archbishop, she was publicly carried through the streets in a litter wherever he went, and he kept her as his mistress until Henry’s death and the reign of his son, King Edward, when he married her in the sight of the entire world.5 This was the man the king chose as his minis- ter and named as archbishop and primate of his kingdom, to further his own
1 Sander, De origine ac progressu, 82–84. 2 On 22 August, just before standing trial for praemunire, Warham died of natural causes in Hackington, Kent. Scarisbrick, “Warham, William,” in odnb, 57:414. 3 Cranmer had joined Thomas Boleyn’s household by the autumn of 1529, subsequently be- coming one of Henry’s leading diplomats. He was appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 with the Boleyns’ backing. See MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, Chapters 3 and 4. 4 While on a diplomatic mission to Nuremberg in the summer of 1532, Cranmer stayed in the house of the reformed theologian Andreas Osiander (1498–1552). There he met Margarete (d. 1570s), the niece of Osiander’s wife; the two married soon after, but the nuptials were kept secret until the accession of Edward vi. Ibid., 71–72, 250. 5 This picaresque story originates in the polemical screed Bishop Cranmer’s Recantacyons (c.1556), probably the work of Harpsfield: “Like a peddler, he carried his goods in secret, so that at each junction, there was a box near at hand with the baggage.” Nicholas Harpsfield, Bishop Cranmer’s Recantacyons, ed. Richard Monckton Milnes and James Gairdner, Philo- biblon Society Miscellanies 15 (London, 1877–84), 8.
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Ribadeneyra may have (deliberately?) misunderstood his Latin source here: he translates Sander’s “cista” as “litera,” which generally refers to a litter, rather than a box. Sander’s impli- cation is one of secrecy, Ribadeneyra’s one of brazenness. Sander, De origine ac progressu, 84. Cf. Harpsfield, Treatise, 275. 6 Cranmer received papal confirmation of his appointment as archbishop on February 21, 1533. Scarisbrick, Henry viii, 310. 7 Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13. 8 Cranmer was consecrated as archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster on March 30, 1533. Before the consecration oath, Cranmer insisted on making a prior protestation in Latin, which he did in the presence of a notary and three witnesses. This included the stipulation that “I Thomas, bishop-elect of the archbishopric of Canterbury, allege, say and protest, openly, publicly, and expressly with these writings, that […] it is not nor will it be my will or intention by such oath or oaths, no matter how the words placed in these oaths seem to sound, to bind myself on account of the same to say, do or attempt anything afterwards which will be or seem to be contrary to the law of God or against our most illustrious king of England, the commonwealth of his kingdom of England, or the laws and prerogatives of the