Thomas Cranmer 1489-1556

Thomas CRANMER 1489-1556

Biographical Note

Born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire, son of Thomas Cranmer, a member of a minor gentry family. BA Jesus College, Cambridge 1511, MA 1515, DD 1526; he was ordained by 1520, when he was licensed to preach by the University. He undertook some diplomatic work on Spain in the mid-1520s and came to prominence a few years later as a proponent of Henry VIII's annulment from Katherine of Aragon, with ideas as to how to achieve it. He received various ecclesiastical preferments while also being sent to Rome to argue the King's cause; in 1533 he was made Archbishop of Canterbury and he was thereafter at the centre of the political and spiritual upheavals of the following decades, through the establishment of the King as head of the Church, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the creation of a protestant Church. His position was often not an easy one but his sympathies always remained with reformist ideas. During the reign of Edward VI he supported efforts to confirm those policies, and he was the driving force behind the compilation and issue of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549.