Henry to the day of his death was a stern enforcer of the celibacy of the clergy. It was also a difficult matter for him, holding the sentiments which he did, to swear canonical obedience to the pontiff. Under these circumstances he adopted a line of conduct which Bishop Burnett has characterised as 66 agreeing better with the maxims of canonists and casuists, than with Cranmer's sincerity and integrity :" he contented himself with a vague and private protestation to the effect that he did not intend, by his oath to the pope, "to restrain himself from any thing to which he was bound by his duty to God or the king, or from taking any part in any reformation of the English church which he might judge to be required."

The first act of the new archbishop was one in direct opposition to papal authority, namely, the pronouncing sentence of divorce between Henry and Catharine. It is impossible to acquit Cranmer of blame in this transaction, for although he was only one of several joined in the same commission on this occasion, yet there can be no doubt that his influence was original and decisive of the question. His misconduct, however, would have been greatly aggravated in this matter if it were true, as has been asserted, that he had previously assisted at Henry's private marriage with Anne, but this has never been proved, and was always stoutly denied by the archbishop. Within three short years, he was commanded by his inexorable master to declare that this last marriage "was, and always had been, null and void." A letter which he addressed to Henry on the arrest of Anne, has been appealed to by both his friends and enemies in support of their respective views of his character, a fact which of itself stamps it with the features of equivocation and mental timidity. With equal weakness-to characterise it by no harsher name-did the archbishop soon after dissolve the marriage of Henry to Anne of Cleves.

Cromwell's plan for the abolition of the monasteries and priories was warmly supported by the archbishop. But he failed in his attempt to turn a portion of the revenues which the crown derived from this new source into such channels as would have materially tended to the promotion of learning and scriptural knowledge throughout the kingdom. His design was to erect a number of cathedrals, in each of which there should be provision made for readers of divinity, Greek, and Hebrew, and for " a great number of the students to be both exercised in the daily worship of God, and trained up in study and devotion, whom the bishop might transplant out of this nursery into all parts of his diocese." He succeeded, however, in a still more important object,—the placing of the Bible in the hands of the laity of England.

The fall of Cromwell was for many reasons peculiarly distressing to the archbishop, yet he made but a feeble effort to save his life, and voted for his attainder. The famous act of the six articles was still more trying to his feelings and conscience, and he took a more decided and resolute part against it than was customary with him in political matters. The bishops took opposite sides of the question. Cranmer urged his reasons against it for three days successively, and was followed by the bishops of Ely, Sarum, Worcester, Rochester, and St Davids. York, Durham, Winchester, and Carlisle, went as vigorously the other way. The catholics maintained that Cranmer's opposition was occasioned solely by the circumstance of his being a married man; but less

partial men, on the same side, gave him full credit for the sincerity of his opinions, and for the powers of reasoning which he exhibited in their defence. Cranmer had never publicly avowed his marriage; his wife, however, lived with him in private, and had born him several children. It cost him no small effort to abandon their society, and many and urgent were the remonstrances which he addressed even to the royal ear upon this point. But Henry remained rooted in his purpose of enforcing clerical celibacy, and Cranmer was obliged to despatch his wife and children to Germany. A strong party was now formed against the archbishop, headed by Gardiner and the duke of Norfolk; some of his enemies even ventured to affront him in public; but Henry continued to entertain a sincere esteem for him, and when on deathbed would have no ecclesiastic admitted to his presence but him.

After the death of Henry, Cranmer and the two Seymours, men thoroughly imbued with the spirit of protestantism, became the chief councillors and confidants of the young king, and exerted their united influence with much success in promoting the cause of the Reformation. Cranmer's first step was to petition the new king for a license to continue in the exercise of his archiepiscopal functions, thereby setting an example to the other prelates, which was speedily imitated, of obedience to and dependence on the will of the civil power. He next established a royal visitation for the purpose of enforcing the regular reading of the book of Homilies, and of the New Testament, in Erasmus' translation, in every church after mass. He then proceeded to lop off gradually the most unmeaning of those ceremonies which were retained in the church, such as driving out the devil by holy water and consecrated candles, bearing candles on Candlemas day, and carrying palms on Palm Sunday. The use of images was not prohibited, but their worship was strictly forbidden; and the sacrament of the Supper was ordered to be administered in both kinds. He also laid the groundwork for doctrinal reformation by inviting foreign divines and professors into England, and gave them all encouragement to disseminate the doctrines of the reformed faith. Among those who accepted of this invitation were John Knox, who was appointed one of the royal chaplains, Bucer, who was appointed to lecture on divinity at Cambridge, and Peter Martyn, who was placed in the theological chair of the sister university. The publication of a catechism "for the singular profit and instruction of children and young people," was his next measure. A more important work was the book of Common Prayer, compiled chiefly from the Romish ritual, and very similar to that in use at the present hour. Amid these changes, some of the prelates adhered to the ancient form of worship with much firmness, and it is deeply to be regretted that the imprisonment and deprivation of Bonner and Gardiner, furnished them with an excuse for that severe retaliation which their return to power enabled them to make. In fact, it is not possible to acquit even Cranmer of the charge of intolerance. If compulsion might have been pled as an excuse for the part he acted in some of Henry's acts of persecution-as for example in the affair of Lambertthat plea at least could no longer be urged in palliation of his conduct under Henry's youthful and mild-hearted successor. Yet we find him employed to overcome Edward's reluctance to sign the death-warrant

of Joan of Kent; and within a few days thereafter consigning Von Parris, a Dutchman, to the flames for Arianism.

The archbishop's admirers have also found it a difficult task to apologise for the support which he gave to Dudley in his ill-judged attempt to change the succession at the death of Edward. "I never liked it," he indeed says in his letter to Mary, "nor any thing grieved me as much as your grace's brother did, and if by any means it had been to have hindered the making of that will, I should have done it." But it is impossible to accept of his excuse that he only yielded ultimately to Edward's personal entreaties. The head of the English prelacy should have had sufficient firmness and a sufficient sense of what was his duty to his king and his country, to have resisted the entreaties of a boy-king that he would commit an action in itself unjust, illegal, and impolitic.

King Edward was buried on the 8th of August, 1553, on which occasion Cranmer officiated according to the protestant ritual. He was next day ordered to confine himself to his palace of Lambeth. Here he was joined by his friend Peter Martyn, who had fled from Oxford. Intelligence having been brought him that mass had been performed in Canterbury cathedral, and with his alleged consent and approbation, the zeal of his honest and uncompromising friend, Martyn, incited him to make a public denial of the imputation. This, at least, was a decided and bold step, and accelerated, if it did not occasion, the archbishop's committal to the Tower. It was soon after resolved to proceed to extremities with Cranmer, and the other leaders of the Reformation. "The Tower being full of prisoners," says Middleton, Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Ridley, Latimer, and Bradford, were all put into one chamber; for which they blessed God, and for the opportunity of conversing together, reading, and comparing the Scriptures, confirming themselves in the true faith, and mutually exhorting each other to constancy in professing it, and patience in suffering for it. In April, 1544, the archbishop, with Bishop Ridley, and Bishop Latimer, was removed from the Tower to Windsor, and from thence to Oxford, to dispute with some select persons of both universities. At the first appearance of the archbishop in the public schools, three articles were given him to subscribe, in which the corporal presence, by transubstantiation, was asserted, and the mass affirmed to be a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the living and dead. These, he declared freely, he considered gross untruths, and promised to give an answer concerning them in writing. Accordingly, he drew it up, and when he was brought again to the schools to dispute, he delivered the writing to Dr Weston the prolocutor. At eight in the morning the disputation began, and held till two in the afternoon; all which time the archbishop constantly maintained the truth with great learning and courage, against a multitude of clamorous and insolent opponents. And three days after, he was again brought forth to oppose Dr Harpsfield, who was to respond for his degree in divinity; and here he acquitted himself so well, clearly showing the gross absurdities and inextricable difficulties of the doctrine of transubstantiation, that Weston himself could not but dismiss him with commendation." Cranmer, with all his superior light, had remained a firm and sincere believer in transubstantiation, till so

late as the year 1547. Ridley caught the important truth first, and was the means of carrying conviction to the mind of the archbishop.

On the 20th of April, Cranmer was brought before the queen's commissioners, and asked whether he would subscribe to the ancient worship. He met the proposition with a decided refusal, and was instantly condemned as an obstinate heretic. We shall state the subsequent proceedings in the words of Middleton:—“In 1556, a new commission was given to Bishop Bonner and Bishop Thirlby, for the degradation of the archbishop. When they went to Oxford, the archbishop was brought before them, and after they had read their commission from the pope, Bonner, in a scurrilous oration, insulted over him after a most unchristian manner; for which he was after rebuked by Bishop Thirlby, who had been Cranmer's particular friend, and shed many tears upon the occasion. When Bonner had finished his invective against him, they proceeded to degrade him; and that they might make him as ridiculous as they could, the episcopal habit which 'they put on him was made of canvass and old clouts. Then the archbishop, pulling out of his sleeve a written appeal, delivered it to them, saying, that he was not sorry to be cut off, even with all this pageantry, from any relation to the church of Rome,-that the pope had no authority over him, and that he appealed to the next general council. When they had degraded him, they put on him an old threadbare beadle's gown, and a townsman's cap, and in that garb delivered him over to the secular power."

Thus far Cranmer had nobly sustained the fiery trial of persecution, but his fortitude at last gave way, and in a fit of despondency he expressed a wish to have a conference with the legate. Again the firmness of the martyr returned, and, besides expressing regret for the weakness which he had exhibited, he wrote a long letter to the queen in defence of the Protestant doctrines. Gardiner, who knew the man he had to deal with, informed him that he must prepare for speedy execution, but, at the same time, hinted that it was not yet too late to excite the queen's clemency by a distinct and formal recantation of his most obnoxious heresies. The temptation succeeded, and six separate instruments of the most abject recantation were severally signed by him, in the vain hope of obtaining mercy. Burnet says, for six weeks he openly condemned the "errors of Luther and Zuinglius, acknowledged the pope's supremacy, the seven sacraments, the corporal presence in the eucharist, purgatory, prayer for departed souls, the invocation of saints, to which was added his being sorry for his former errors; and concluded, exhorting all that had been deceived by his example or doctrines to return to the unity of the church; and protesting that he had signed his recantation willingly, only for the discharge of his conscience." But his doom was sealed. The queen was fully resolved that, catholic or protestant, he should burn; and the 21st of March was the day fixed for his execution. To the last moment he clung to the hope of pardon; nor was it until he was actually led forth to execution, that hope finally forsook him. A Dr Cole was appointed to preach a sermon in the church of St Mary on the occasion, and the archbishop was placed opposite to him on a low platform. When Cole had finished his harangue, the purport of which was to proclaim the return of the arch-heretic to the bosom of the mother-church, but also to show

that it was expedient Cranmer should suffer, notwithstanding his recantation, the archbishop was called upon to declare his faith; whereupon, to the astonishment of all, he solemnly retracted all his recantations, and ended by denouncing the pope as Christ's enemy and antichrist. "Upon which," says Middleton, "they pulled him off the stage with the utmost fury, and hurried him to the place of his martyrdom, over against Baliol college: where he put off his clothes with haste, and, standing in his shirt and without his shoes, was fastened with a chain to the stake. Some pressing him to agree to his former recantation, he answered, showing his hand, This is the hand that wrote, and therefore it shall first suffer punishment.' Fire being applied to

him, he stretched out his right hand into the flame, and held it there unmoved, except that once he wiped his face with it, till it was consumed, crying with a loud voice, 'This hand hath offended!' and often repeating, 'This unworthy right hand!' At last, the fire getting up, he soon expired, never stirring or crying out all the while, only keeping his eyes fixed to heaven, and repeating more than once, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' he died in the sixty-seventh year of his age."

The character of Cranmer has been the subject of keen controversy. Mr Hallam says, "if we weigh the character of this prelate in an equal balance, he will appear far, indeed, removed from the turpitude imputed to him by his enemies, yet not entitled to any extraordinary veneration." Others have not hesitated to enrol him in the very highest rank of English patriots and Christian martyrs. The truth, as usual in such cases, may perhaps lie between these extremes. Cranmer was a conscientious, but feeble, character; he saw and loved the truth, but wanted firmness to pursue it amidst the difficulties which the complexion of the times threw in his way. His cruel death has alone preserved his memory from reproach. Had Mary spared his life, he would never, it is most probable, have retracted the steps by which he forsook the profession of the reformed faith, until the re-ascendency of protestant principles, under her successor, had rendered it impossible for any one, situated as he was, to resume his profession of attachment to the reformed doctrines, without incurring universal suspicion and the contempt of posterity. His life has been written with much elegance by Gilpin, and voluminously by the Rev. J. H. Todd.

Bishop Gardiner.

BORN A. D. 1483.—died a. d. 1555.

STEPHEN GARDINER was the natural son of Lionel Woodville, bishop of Salisbury, brother to the Lady Elizabeth Woodville, who, while the widow of Sir John Grey, captivated the affections of Edward IV. and became his queen. Gardiner was born in 1483, at St Edmund's Bury, Suffolk. He received his education at Trinity hall, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself by his progress in the study of the canon and civil law, the classics, and theology. In 1520, he succeeded to the headship of the society to which he belonged, but soon after left the university and attached himself to the Howard family. When a favourable opportunity offered of ingratiating himself