Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [135]
IN MARCH 1554, Cranmer, together with Hugh Latimer, the former bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley, the former bishop of London, were moved from the Tower of London to Oxford and placed in the Bocardo, the town prison. Several weeks later, a disputation on the Eucharist was held at St. Mary’s Church during which each of the Protestant leaders made their case to an audience of nearly a thousand Catholics. It was never intended to be a fair hearing; the prisoners were to be delivered to the commissioners “so that their erroneous opinions being by the word of God justly and truly convinced, the residue of our subjects, may be thereby the better established in the true Catholic faith.”2 After four days of debate, the Protestants were told they had been defeated. They were declared heretics, excommunicated, and returned to their prison cells. For the next seventeen months, Cranmer remained almost completely isolated in the Bocardo.
On September 12, 1555, Cranmer’s trial for heresy began at St. Mary’s Church. He faced fifteen charges: six dealing with his matrimonial affairs, six others with his repudiation of papal authority, and three with heretical doctrines. He refused to recant and to acknowledge papal supremacy and the Real Presence. The trial ended, the case had to be referred to Rome, and Cranmer was sent back to the Bocardo. Three weeks later, Ridley and Latimer faced their trial. Both refused to recant; both were condemned to death. On October 16, they were taken to a stake sunk into a ditch outside the northern wall of the city near Balliol College. Cranmer was brought out of his cell to watch. For three hours Dr. Richard Smith, an Oxford theologian, preached as Ridley and Latimer waited for their deaths. Finally they were fastened to the stake and the faggots were lit. “Be of good comfort mister Ridley, and play the man,” Latimer called out, “we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as (I trust) shall never be put out.”3 Latimer was quickly engulfed by the flames.
Ridley’s death was much slower. The faggots had been stacked so thickly that the fire could not burn through them. His legs burned, but the flames did not rise above his body to the gunpowder around his neck. “Let the fire come unto me, I cannot burn!” he cried.4 Faggot after faggot was thrown around Ridley’s head and further fuel added to the fire. Finally the gunpowder was ignited and he died.5
ON DECEMBER 4, Cranmer’s fate was decided in Rome. He was deprived of his archbishopric “and of all ecclesiastical dignities,” and permission was given for his execution. On January 27, the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michieli, reported that “the sentence against the late Archbishop of Canterbury will soon be executed, he remaining more obstinate than ever in his heresies.”6 A few days later, under pressure of interrogation, Cranmer admitted to every fact brought before him and signed his first submission. He stated that he would accept the supremacy of the pope because the king and queen had ordered him to do so and he would always obey his sovereigns.7 Within days he signed a second recantation conceding more:
I, Thomas Cranmer, doctor in divinity, do submit myself to the catholic church of Christ, and to the Pope, supreme head of the same church, and unto the King and Queen’s majesties, and unto all their laws and ordinances.8
Mary must have been informed of his recantation but chose to ignore it; she was determined to be rid of the man who had caused her and her mother so much suffering.
On February 14, Cranmer was publicly degraded from holy orders in the church of Christ Church College. It was a ritual humiliation conducted by his old enemy Edmund Bonner, the bishop of London. After his crimes had been read out, Cranmer was forced to put on the vestments of an archbishop and then of a priest, after which each was stripped from him. His head was shaved to remove his tonsure, and his fingers were scraped to remove the holy oil that had ordained him. Then, dressed in a townsman