Diarmaid MacCulloch, Ph.D.: Thomas Cranmer"--Ch. 4: Queen Anne, 93ff.

10 May-17 Jun 1533. BUCKLE-UP. Dunstable, 10 May—trial opened. 12 -17 May—Cranmer read to himself quietly the legal-theological decisions about copulation between Arthur and Catherine. Other witnesses were entered on the nullity-matter: university opinions, favorable opinion by the Convocations of Canterbury and York as well as Cambridge. 23 May—Dr. Cranmer issues the predictable decision. Cranmer returns to Lambeth and predictably declared the marriage to Anne—a fait accompli—was valid. Now, pressing forward within a few days—the coronation of the now-showing, 6-months pregnant, Anne. The festivities begin on 29 May and she was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Whitsunday, 1 Jul 1533, crowned by Dr. Cranmer, anointing and crowning here, and giving her the scepter and ivory rod. William Benson, Westminster’s Abbey, was the celebrant of High Mass. Heny watched covertly from some hidden box aloft somewhere. Afterwards, the festivities moved over to Westminster Palace/Hall for the food with Bishops and aristocrats seated variously, Anne and Dr. Cranmer being featured at the head table. Henry, again, is watching from some hidden box. Boleyn gives birth to Elizabeth 1 on 7 Sept, is baptized by Stokesley, with Cranmer as a godfather immediately confirming her. Prof. MacCulloch queries Cranmer’s theological path by this time: (1) marriage to Margarete, (2) time in Nurnberg with Osiander, (3) continued appreciation of Erasmus including supporting his on-going pension and requiring Erasmus’s book for the Cathedral library of Canterbury, (4) and his likely opposition to Erasmus and siding with Luther on justification by faith alone. “Everything else by this time speaks of his conscious breach with the past” (99). We are told of Master Capon sorrowful years at Jesus College till 1546—in tension with the Reformation—and his death in 1550 with a will with no bequeathments to Jesus College over which he had presided for 30 years. By Jun 1533 , speaking of theology, we read of Dr. Cranmer’s trial of John Frith for his Oeocolampadian views of the Eucharist. Dr. Cranmer says in a private letter of date 17 Jun 1533: “…whose opinion was so notably erroneous, that we could no dispatch him…His said opinion is of such a nature, that he though it not necessary to be believed as an article of faith, that there is a very corporal presence of Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar, and holdeth of this point most after the opinion of Oecolampadius. And surely I myself sent for him three or four time to persuade him to leave that his imagination; but for all that we do there, he would not apply to any counsel” (101). Prof. MacCulloch says well, “Martin Luther would have said no less” (101). Dr. Cranmer will go to the stake for the same view on 21 Mar 1556.