Albert Frederick Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation,"...
Pollard wonders why the Churchmen-sons were not quartered
on the local Welbeck Abbey, given that the Abbey was the Rector of Whatton Church
and the Cranmers had relatives in connection with the Abbey. Pollard believes the
family espied Cambridge over the Abbey, a new angle (11). John got the lands. The
girls got 5 marks. Thomas Jr. and Edmund got 20 shillings. Money was left for a
new bell in Whatton. In 1528, “’Master Doctor Cranmer’ of Aslacton had, like Joseph,
corn to sell in time of scarcity” (12). Cranmer goes to Jesus College in “1503 or
1504.” with Edmund following five years later, claims Pollard. St. Rhadegunde was
dissolved due to “gross immorality” (12). As for the school, “The classical Latin
of Virgil and Cicero, Horace and Tacitus appear to have been in greater favour.
The University Library at the end of the fifteenth century seems to have
consisted of between five and six hundred volumes, and in this somewhat meagre
collection there was not a Greek nor a classical Latin author; even patristic
theology was poorly represented, and the library only possessed part of the
works of the four great Fathers of the Latin Church, Ambrose, Gregory, Jerome,
and Augustine” (12). Cranmer studies under the trivium and quadrivium. The Master
were William Chubbes, Dr. John Eccleston, and, finally, Dr. William Capon who would
hold the Mastership for thirty years. Thomas Goodrich and John Bale would be fellows
of Jesus alongside Cranmer. Fisher becomes the Confessor of Lady Margaret Beaufort
who, by turns, endows the Lady Margaret Lectureship and Lady Margaret Preacher.
In 1506, Lady Margaret and her son, Henry VII, visit Cambridge when Cranmer is seventeen
years old. Cranmer gets his B.A. in “1510 or 1511.” Erasmus hold the Lectureship
requiring daily theological lectures. Somewhere here, Cranmer turns to “Faber, Erasmus
and good Latin authors.” Cranmer marries and then lose his wife and child in childbirth,
to Joan Black (or Brown?). He loses his fellowship, becomes a reader at Buckingham
College, but returns to Jesus after her death. By 1516, Erasmus notes the changes
at Cambridge with scholasticism giving way to literature and the Bible. Erasmus’s
1516 NT is issued and Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses are on the streets in 1517. We
are told by Cranmer’s biographer, “" Then he, considering what great controversy
was in matters of religion (not only in trifles but in the chiefest articles of
our salvation), bent himself to try out the truth herein: arid, forasmuch as he
perceived that he could not judge indifferently in so weighty matters without
the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (before he were infected with any man's
opinions or errors), he applied his whole study three years to the said
Scriptures. 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; for he seldom read with- out pen in hand, and whatsoever
made either for one part or the other of things being in controversy, he wrote
it out if it were short, or at the least, noted the author and the place, that
he might find it and write it out by leisure; which was a great help to him in
debating of matters ever after. This kind of study he used till he was made Doctor
of Divinity which was about the thirty-fourth of his age."[1] This
puts the doctorate at age 34 in 1523 while other writers assert age 36 in 1526.??.
He was ordained in 1520 (20). The Cambridge Inn, or, Little Germany, or White Horse”
was meeting to discuss Luther’s ideas. Members noted are Tyndale, Coverdale, Latimer,
Bilney, Barnes, Crome and Latimer. Pollard does not include Cranmer but does note
that commissions were issued in 1525 and one by Wolsey in 1528 to check these developments.
Cranmer takes two students to Cressy’s house in summer of 1529 to avoid the plague
in Cambridge. Soon enough, he will be working for Henry and life, as he once knew
it, would change.
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