Diaramid MacCulloch, Ph.D.: "Thomas Cranmer," Ch. 3--Campaign to end a m...

1.     Cranmer, Wiltshire and others headed to Rome in 1530. Cranmer returned in Oct 1530. They meet in Bologna for Charles V’s coronation by Pope Clement VII. However, on 7 Mar 1530, the Pope raised the stakes by citing Henry to Rome and prohibiting remarriage. On 17 April 1530, Cranmer’s salary was tripled, reflecting an elevated status. By 22 Aug 1530, still at Rome, Ghinucci (on Henry’s dole to watch over English matters in Rome and also as a vacant Bishop of Worcester) confers on

Bredon the parish church of St. Gile’s, Bredon, Worcester, a wealthy parish and Cranmer first, albeit, vacant cure. Cranmer also makes other important contacts. The gathering of university opinions continues with a “good deal of cash changing hands” (51). Stokesley and Crome, other agents on the Continent in the same business, get to fighting. Cranmer gets on well with all—“kept on good terms with all of his difficult colleagues” (53). Again, Dr. Cranmer crosses the Channel at Calais with Stokesley by mid-Oct 1530. In Jan 1531, Stokesley convenes a team to debate issues: six “royal partisans” and “six opponents” headed by Bishop John Fisher. By this time, Henry is stepping up his campaign to clip Roman wings and authority. Others are beginning “to see more clearly the wider religious issues which lay behind it” [the marriage issue] (53). Did Dr. Cranmer ever visit parish church at Bredon? He was doing theological trouble-shooter’s work in 1531, reviewing Reginold Pole’s book, a “carpet-bombing” of the royal case. Cranmer is grabbing up studies from canon law on jurisdictional claims of the Papacy to England. Dr. Cranmer may have been doing “opposition research” (our words) and may have been called to “vet opposition literature” (54). Henry likes what’s being produced and he draws inspiration and confidence from it. The Collectanea Satis Copiosa was an academic study and collection of such studies for the government’s use. Sorry, Mr. Pope, but Henry is the sole and total sovereign of England. Some words from the Collectanea end up in the preamble to the 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals. Cranmer’s big idea (and Henry’s and others): “We’ll settle these matters in England, thank you, Clement VII. We like ya’ but don’t need ya.’”