Cranmer Readings: 10/15/2022

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cranmer. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Cranmer unfortunately was tied up in business at Hampton Court in Fall 1542 and early 1543. As such, his attentions were focused on things at hand. As such, he was away from Kent and Canterbury as the militant traditionalists were squaring off with the evangelical staff. The militants were gaining confidence that Cranmer could be taken down. 1542-1546 becomes a period of survival and backroom tactics (296), famously known as the 1543 Prebendaries’ Plot. Ridley, Jaspar. Thomas Cranmer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. In 1547 after Henry’s death, Cranmer gets the 12 Homilies going, 3 of which are believed to be Cranmer’s—Salvation, True and Lively Faith, and Good Works. Cranmer errantly pulls Gardiner into the orbit, probably hoping to conciliate the proud Prelate. Cranmer and Gardiner get into a tussle. Gardiner, rightly, faults Cranmer for submitting to the King’s Book of 1543. Cranmer seeks absolution claiming he disagreed with Henry privately, but submitted publicly. Gardiner rightly plays the honesty card in moments of high irony (269). Never mind Wily's duplicitous involvements in the bloody and murderous plot of the Prebendaries. Thick with the black smoke of irony to take lessons in honesty from Wily, but his point about Cranmer is well-taken. At least Latimer resigned over the Six Articles of 1539 while Cranmer went limp.