Posted Dec 14, 2013, 11:59 AM
|
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Wiltshire, England
Posts: 1,938
|
|
XXXXI – Thomas Cranmer
There is a website called 'Overheard on the Underground' that records entertaining snatches of conversations overheard on London transport. One says:
"I've never been to Dagenham. I don't suppose I ever will. I don't feel ashamed about it."
Dagenham, unloved and unvisited on the eastern edge of London, was a village until the London County Council turned it into the largest council estate in Britain in the 1920s. The budget for this new town was not big, and the houses that were built in their thousands were small, poorly insulated and lacking much in the way of individuality or charm.
Half-hearted attempts to counter this drab uniformity usually invoked England's rural past - sometimes by hinting at an Arts and Crafts influence in the outlines of the buildings, sometimes by adding a bit of half-timbering to a pub, and sometimes by choosing a street name that recalled the pre-industrial history of Britain.
And this is why we find ourselves in Cranmer Gardens, Dagenham.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, burned at the stake in 1556 for heresy, had much in common with Reginald Pole, his Catholic adversary and successor as Archbishop.
During Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Cranmer supported the King and Pole opposed him. Nonetheless, the two churchmen were able to respect each others' arguments. After reading one of Pole's essays on the divorce, Cranmer conceded:
'master Raynolde Poole hath written a book... with such wit... and of such eloquence, that if it were set forth and known to the common people, I suppose it were not possible to persuade them to the contrary'
Cranmer followed Henry in his split with the Catholic Church, but, like Pole, he could stand up to the King on a point of principle. When Henry tried to amend the tenth commandment by adding 'without due recompense' to 'thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife', Cranmer refused.
Pole, for his part, was prepared to risk his life to defend the Catholic Church, but he also put forward views that came very close to Lutheranism, which made one Pope condemn his 'accursed school and apostate household.'
Even when Cranmer was imprisoned for heresy under Mary I, the two men still tried to find common ground. Cranmer asked for a meeting with Pole as soon as the Cardinal returned to England - Pole declined but did correspond with Cranmer. Right up to the point when Cranmer was burned for heresy, Pole tried to convince him to repent. When it seemed that Cranmer was willing to change his mind, Pole promised that, even though Cranmer would still be executed, 'Masses would be said in all the churches of Oxford for the repose of his soul.'
In the end, though, the politics of the age tore these two mild-mannered scholars apart. As he was about to be burned at the stake, Cranmer embarked on the recantation that he had agreed with Pole, but he ended his speech with an unscripted and unambiguous act of defiance, saying:
"And now I come to the great thing which so much troubleth my conscience... the setting abroad of a writing contrary to the truth, which now here I renounce and refuse.... And forasmuch as my hand hath offended, writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished; for when I come to the fire it shall first be burned.
"And as for the pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy, and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine."
What awaited Cranmer was a fate far worse than a trip to Dagenham, but he faced it cheerfully, keeping his promise to burn his right hand first.
Last edited by Bedhead; Oct 27, 2015 at 10:56 PM.
|