His family.

history, but the best archives, and many most precious and inestimable manuscripts that have fallen into my hands.

I shall pass over, in a few words, his earlier days, because I have so much to say of him in his riper years. Aslacton, a town in the county of Nottingham, was the place of his Anno 1489. birth; and the second day of July, in the year 1489, was the day of it. He was the son of Thomas Cranmer, Esq. a gentleman of a right ancient family; whose ancestor came in with the Conqueror: and for a long series of time the stock continued in good wealth and quality; as it did in France; for there were extant of his name and family there, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. One whereof came then into England, in company with the French ambassador: to whom, for relation sake, our bishop gave a noble entertainment.

years.

Life of

Cranmer in the MSS. C.C.C.C.

2 Our youth was put to learn his grammar of a rude parishAccount of clerk in that barbarous age: under whom he learned little, his younger and endured much from the harsh and curst disposition of his schoolmaster. Though his father were minded to have his son educated in learning, yet he would not he should be ignorant of civil and gentleman-like exercises: insomuch that he used himself to shoot. And many times his father permitted him to hunt and hawk, and to ride rough horses so that when he was bishop, he feared not to ride the roughest horses that came into his stables; which he would do very comely. As otherwise at all times there was not any in his house that would become an horse better. And after his studies, when it was time for recreation, he would both hawk and hunt, the game being prepared for him. And sometimes he would shoot in the long-bow, and many times kill the deer with his cross-bow, though his sight was not perfect; for he was poreblind.

Sent to

Cambridge,

Anno 1503.

But to return to his younger days. He lost his father early; but his mother, at the age of fourteen years, anno

Cranmer

1503, sent him to study at Cambridge: where he was Life of nursled in the grossest kind of sophistry, logic, philosophy inter Foxii moral and natural: not in the text of the old philosophers, MSS. a but chiefly in the dark riddles of Duns, and other subtile questionists. And in these he lost his time, till he came

to two and twenty years of age. After that, he gave him- Anno 1511. self to the reading of Faber, Erasmus, [and] good Latin authors, four or five years together, unto the time that Anno 1516. Luther began to write. And then, considering what great controversy was in matters of religion, not only in trifles, but in the chiefest articles of our salvation, he bent himself to try out the truth herein.

And forasmuch as he perceived he could not judge indif- Sets himself to study the ferently in such weighty matters, without the knowledge scripture, of the holy scriptures; therefore, before he was infected Anno 1519. with any man's opinions or errors, he applied his whole study three years therein. After this, he gave his mind to good writers, both new and old: not rashly running over them; for he was a slow reader, but a diligent marker of whatsoever he read, seldom reading without pen in hand. And whatsoever made either for the one part or the other of things in controversy, he wrote it out, if it were short, or at least noted the author, and the place, that he might find it, and write it out at leisure which was a great help to him in debating of matters ever after.

doctor of

This kind of study he used till he was made doctor of Is made divinity: which was about the thirty-fourth year of his age, divinity, and about the year 1523.

Anno 1523.

But before this, being master of arts, and fellow of Jesus College, he married a gentleman's daughter. And then Marries. leaving the college, he read the common lecture in Buckingham College, before that called Monks College, because

a [Harl. MSS. 417. Plut. lxiv. F. fol. 90. British Museum. Original.]

3

go to Wol

monks studied there, but now Magdalen College. But in a year after his wife travailing with child, both she and the child died. And being now single again, immediately the master and fellows of his old college chose him in fellow again where he remained.

During his residence here, divers of the ripest and solidest sort of scholars were sought out of this university of Refuses to Cambridge, to be transplanted into Cardinal Wolsey's new sey's col- college in Oxon, to be fellows there. Our Cranmer was lege, Oxon. nominated for one by Dr. Capon, to whom that matter was, as it seems, intrusted by the Cardinal. And though the salary was much more considerable there, and the way to preferment more ready, by the favour of the Cardinal, to such as were his own scholars; yet he refused to go, choosing rather to abide among his old fellow-collegians, and more closely to follow his studies and contemplations here though he were not without danger for his incompliance with this invitation, giving them that were concerned great offence hereat. But of those that went from Cambridge at this time, who were all men picked out for their parts and learning, these were the chief: Clark; Friar, afterwards doctor of physic; Sumner; Harman, afterwards fellow of Eaton; Betts, afterwards chaplain to queen Annb; Cox, afterwards schoolmaster to king Edward; Frith, afterwards a martyr; Baily; Godman; Drum, afterwards one of the six preachers at Canterbury; Lawney, afterwards chaplain to the duke of Norfolk. All these were cast into prison for suspicion of heresy; and divers through the hardship thereof died. So that well it was for Cranmer that he went not.

He is made one of the

Soon after, he took his degree of doctor of divinity, and university became the reader of the divinity-lecture in his own college.

examiners.

b [i. e. Anne Boleyn.]

And out of the value the university had of his learning, he was appointed one of the examiners of such as commenced bachelors and doctors in divinity: according to whose approbations, the university allowed them to proceed. In which place he did much good; for he used to examine these candidates out of the scriptures; and by no means would let them pass, if he found they were unskilful in it, and unacquainted with the history of the Bible. So were the friars especially, whose study lay only in school authors: whom therefore he sometimes turned back as insufficient, advising them to study the scriptures for some years longer, before they came for their degrees; it being a shame for a professor in divinity to be unskilled in the book wherein the knowledge of God and the grounds of divinity lay. Whereby he made himself from the beginning hated by the friars: yet some of the more ingenuous sort of them afterward rendered him great and public thanks for refusing them; whereby, being put upon the study of God's word, they attained to more sound knowledge in religion. One of these was Dr. Barat, a white friar, who lived afterwards in Norwich.

great cause

Not long after this, king Henry being persuaded that The king's the marriage between him and queen Katharine, daughter årst proto king Ferdinand of Spain, was unlawful and naught, by the univerposed to Dr. Longland, bishop of Lincoln, his confessor, and other sities. of his clergy; he sent to six of the best learned men of Cambridge, and as many of Oxford, to debate this question, Whether it were lawful for one brother to marry his brother's wife, being known of his brother? Of the which Cambridge doctors, Cranmer was appointed for one; such was his fame then in that university for learning. But because he was not then at Cambridge, another was chosen in his stead. These learned men agreed fully, with one consent, that it was lawful, with the pope's dispen- 4

The occasion of his rise.

sation, so to do. But if Cranmer had been there, he would have been of another mind, as we shall see in the sequel.

This great matrimonial cause gave the first step to Dr. Cranmer's preferment: for when Fox and Gardiner, the one the king's almoner, and the other his secretary, lighting by chance in Dr. Cranmer's company, at one Mr. Cressie's house, situate in Waltham-Abbey parish in Essex, had on design fallen upon discourse of that matter, purposely to learn his judgment therein, knowing him an eminent noted reader of divinity in Cambridge; he gave His opinion his own sense of the cause in words to this effect: "I of the king's have nothing at all studied," said he, "for the verity of

cause. Life

in the MSS.

of Cranmer, this cause; nor am beaten therein, as you have been. C.C.C.C. Howbeit, I do think that you go not the next way to work, to bring the matter unto a perfect conclusion and

The king

sends for him.

end, especially for the satisfaction of the troubled conscience of the king's highness. For in observing the common process and frustratory delays of these your courts, the matter will linger long enough; and peradventure in the end come to small effect. And this is most certain," said he, "there is but one truth in it; which no men ought, or better can discuss than the divines whose sentence may be soon known and brought so to pass with little industry and charges, that the king's conscience may thereby be quieted and pacified. Which we all ought to consider and regard in this question or doubt; and then his highness, in conscience quieted, may determine himself that which shall seem good before God. And let these tumultuary processes give place unto a certain truth."

His opinion, thus unwillingly drawn from him, was so much liked of by them to whom he spake it, that they thought it worth their acquainting the king with