Albert Frederick Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer," Preface, iii

Preface—7 pages. The usefulness of the Preface are varied notes on biographies. He says Dr. Cranmer is “the most mysterious figure in the English Reformation” (13). Perhaps. Fortunately, Prof. Pollard calls for the effort to “get into the times,” as it were, rather than impose an alien construct on the period. That is, get the facts strictly and fully. Then, and only then, the opinions can be put behind a thick, high firewall. Facts and the factual pattern. Then, the opinions. Prof. Pollard complains of the “Whiggish historians” of Hallam and Macaulay. Dr. Cranmer, though “weak” (14), is the “storm-tossed plaything of forces which even Henry could not completely control” (14). Prof. Pollard points to:

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII

Acts of Privy Council (1542-1599)

Hall’s Chronicles—Henry VIII

J.G. Nichols’s Literary Remains of Edward VI (1857, 2 vols.)

Camden Society’s Wrioethesley’s Chronicle, Greyfriars’ Chronicle, Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Machyn’s Diary, and Narratives of the Reformation

Parker Society’s fifty-four volumes (Cambridge, 1841-1855), including 2 volumes of Cranmer’s own works.

Jenkyn’s The Remains of Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1833, 4 volumes)

Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (ed. Townsend, 8 volumes, 1843-1849), “the greatest quarry…biased, but he prints a vast mass of documents with which he did not apparently tamper” (17).

Strype’s 25 volumes, especially Ecclesiastical Memorials for the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary 1.

Prof. Pollard mentions Fuller’s 6-volume History and the Arminian antagonist, Peter Heylin’s 1661 Eccclesia Restaurata, the latter, in our opinion, a specious and constipated work. The latter can’t write clearly in our estimation.

Bishop Burnet’s 3 volume History of the Reformation whose “arrangement is atrocious, but the documents are valuable” (17).

Canon Dixon’s 6-volume History of the Reformation, “an ambitious” work which more of a “criticism rather than a history of the Reformation” (18)

Stephen’s and Hunt’s History of the Church of England.

Lingard’s History and Froude’s History “that are too well known to need further description” (18)

H.J Todd’s 2-volume Life of Cranmer which is “readable but is too apologetic” and “add little to Styrpe” (18)

Le Bas 2-volume Life as “practically nothing to Todd.”

Dean Hook’s Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury is Tractarianized

S. R. Maitland is anti-Reformers

Canon Mason’s Life is an “interesting sketch” (19)

R. E. Chester Waters’s Chesters of Chicheley, 1877, a scientific genealogy of Cranmer’s family history, incorporated in Prof. Pollard’s work