Martyr and saint: Thomas Cranmer was the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: This week’s announcement of the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury will have revived interest in Croydon’s connections with the role, with six of Dame Sarah Mullally’s predecessors being buried at the Minster.
Here, DAVID MORGAN tells the significant story of one predecessor, a ‘small earthquake’ in Croydon and the library in the Archbishop’s palace
A question from a visitor to Croydon Minster during the recent Open House weekend set me a new task.
“Did Thomas Cranmer ever visit Croydon?”
There are six Archbishops buried at Croydon Minster, from a time, especially during the Tudor period, when they took residence at the Archbishop’s Palace nearby.
I answered that I believed that Archbishop Cranmer often came to Croydon to stay in the Palace and that he also came to what was then the Parish Church. But off the top of my head, I couldn’t remember any exact detail. Some research was necessary.
Book of Common Prayer: as Archbishop, Cranmer helped frame the Church of England’s services
Thomas Cranmer was consecrated as Archbishop on March 30, 1533, a vital appointment by King Henry VIII as he broke with Rome, allowing him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn.
Almost 600 years ago, had there been an interview for the job, perhaps the first question would have been, “Do you support the king’s divorce?” rather than, “Tell us about your faith in God.”
Cranmer must have had exceptional diplomatic skills at such a time of turmoil to remain in post for more than 20 years, much of that time with a king known for bouts of temper and mood swings.
With Henry and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, determined to split from the Pope and the Catholic church, Cranmer’s role as Archbishop changed overnight. He was at the whim of a monarch who desperately sought a male heir and whose adoption of the title “Defender of the Faith” (which had been conferred upon him by the Pope) placed Cranmer at the centre of the creation of the Church of England.
One visit to Croydon by Cranmer was a direct consequence of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. The royal couple were married in a secret ceremony which took place at the end of January 1533. The priest who officiated at that service was very probably Rowland Lee, a chaplain of the king who was to be rewarded by being given the bishopric of Lichfield.
Cranmer performed the service at Croydon Parish Church on April 19, 1534. Two other priests were made bishops that day: as well as Lee, Thomas Goodrich was consecrated as Bishop of Ely and John Salcot as Bishop of Bangor. All three new bishops had roles in Cranmer’s research team, as he sought philosophical and theological justifications for the king’s divorce. Goodrich was an evangelical friend of Cranmer’s, with Salcot known to be a more conservative priest.
Their rewards for being part of the Cranmer team were acknowledged at Croydon, a quiet enough place, away from the royal court and parliament.
Top team: Goodrich was one of CRanmer’s backroom staff who was rewarded by being made a bishop in a service at Croydon
In September 1541, Cranmer made another significant appointment at Croydon. John Wakeman was consecrated Bishop of Gloucester. Wakeman had been the final Abbot of Tewkesbury before it was surrendered to the crown in 1539 as part of the Reformation.
When abbeys and monasteries were put under pressure to close by Thomas Cromwell, the Chancellor received the gift of a horse and £5 to buy a saddle from Wakeman, as well information about a disaffected priest.
John Wiche, as he called himself then, was granted an annuity of 400 marks. When he became the first Bishop of Gloucester in the newly formed see two years later, this annuity was cancelled. Perhaps becoming Bishop of Gloucester was his reward for cooperation and support for the new regime?
Cranmer’s visits to his Croydon palace were frequent, as can be seen from the record of his travels. One of his visits in the summer of 1539, though, had a most unwelcome local problem for him to sort.
On Cranmer’s desk in July of that year came papers about the scandal which surrounded one of the chantry priests at Croydon Parish Church.
Nicholas Somer had been appointed chantry priest for the St Nicholas Chapel inside the church, being paid to sing the mass and say prayers for the souls of the deceased. At that time there would have been two chantry priests in Croydon, one to serve the St Nicholas Chapel, the other to serve the Lady Chapel. Both appointments were separate from the job of the parish vicar.
Somer was appointed on March 1 1536 and was said “to possess the tenement next to Scarbrook”. In the August of that year, Somer began a relationship with Juliana Baylie, the teenaged daughter of a neighbour. The affair carried on for two years, until at Whitsun 1538 it was brought to Cranmer’s attention. After the Archbishop had been informed about what had gone on, the girl broke off the affair. Three months later, the relationship resumed.
In July 1539, matters came to a head. There was a noisy argument and the couple were arrested by the Croydon watch and brought before Cranmer the following day.
Pension: on the dissolution of the St Nicholas Chapel in 1547, Nicholas Somer was awarded a grant worth less than £3,000 a year in present-day values
Somer declared his innocence by saying that he was the one who had broken off the relationship. In evidence, he said that the row happened because Juliana had come to his house at 11 o’clock at night, but he had refused to let her in.
Baylie told Cranmer that she had been kept by Somer for about three years. She told him that she had been with him on the previous night but when she heard a noise at her mother’s door, she fled. She ran to another house and that is where the watch found her.
Cranmer sent this information in a letter to Cromwell, seeking advice, saying that he was at a loss as to how to proceed. There was, as yet, no committee to examine such behaviour by someone in holy orders.
Celibacy and the clergy had been a very divisive issue in the 1530s. With the ending of Catholic rules, priests were able to marry and end their celibacy vows.
Cranmer himself was in an awkward position when he became Archbishop. When he was a student at Cambridge, he fell in love with a local girl Joan, the daughter of an inn-keeper, who he married shortly after he gained his degree in 1515. As he decided to marry, he had to forfeit his fellowship at Jesus College.
Long service: Cranmer was Archbishop of Canterbury for 22 years, until he was stripped of office under Queen Mary
Joan died in childbirth. Their child did not survive, either. Cranmer was reinstated at the college soon after and he went on to take holy orders in 1523.
In 1532, when he was in Europe on a diplomatic role, Cranmer met and married Margaret, the niece of the German Lutheran, Andreas Osiender. This was against the holy orders he had taken in England. After his marriage, therefore, Cranmer was shocked to discover he had been nominated to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury to succeed Warham. He had to keep his marriage a secret. No wonder his journey back to England was a slow one.
Cranmer visited his Croydon palace enough over the subsequent years to create a great library there. In May 1551, there was a minor earthquake in Croydon. A visitor to the palace spoke about the chaos caused when the books were flung from their shelves.
That same summer an epidemic of sweating sickness – a deadly, flu-like illness – hit Croydon. CRanmer’s visitor, Mrs Laski, the wife of a distinguished Polish theologian, and his own doctor, John Herd, fell dangerously ill, but survived.
It was from the Archbishop’s Palace in Croydon that Cranmer was summoned in 1547 to the dying King Henry, who specifically desired Cranmer to be at his bedside to give him the last rites. Cranmer was delayed in getting to the Palace of Whitehall by the icy conditions that January. The king had lost the power of speech and could only squeeze Cranmer’s hand to show he recognised and trusted his long-serving Archbishop.
Probably Cranmer’s greatest achievement while he was in office was his Book of Common Prayer, which was published in 1549, when Henry’s only son, Edward VI, the son of Jane Seymour, another of the king’s six wives, was on the throne. Cranmer’s prayer book established services in English, replacing the Latin mass and provided a unified liturgy for parish churches. Part of the process of compiling the Book of Common Prayer might have happened in his library at Croydon.
Edward was crowned king when aged just nine years old. He was scholarly and a devoted protestant, having been brought up at court in the years following the split from the Catholic church. In 1553, Edward, aged 15, died after an illness.
Following the rites as laid out in his own prayer book, in August 1553 Cranmer presided over the funeral service at Westminster Abbey, as the boy king was buried alongside his father.
Those assembled, including the Archbishop, were well aware that the Reformation of the church in England which they had begun 20 years earlier was now facing a crisis over the succession.
Succession crisis: Cranmer was burned at the stake in 1556, one of several Anglican cerics executed during the reign of Queen Mary
On his death bed, Edward had opposed the succession of his half-sister, Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, his father’s first wife, mainly because she had remained a Catholic and her succession would jeopardise the Reformation. Mary taking the throne of England was very bad news, too, for Anglican clerics like Cranmer.
On his death bed, Edward drew up a document which passed over the claims of his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and nominated instead a cousin, 16-year-old Lady Jane Grey.
What followed was nothing short of a coup d’état, led by Grey’s father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland. It ended badly for Lady Jane and Northumberland, who were both beheaded at the Tower of London.
Lady Jane Grey’s reign as Queen of England lasted nine days, as the Privy Council sided with Mary.
Cranmer and other Anglican bishops were removed from office. Cranmer issued a declaration: “All the doctrine and religion by our said sovereign lord king Edward VI is more pure and according to God’s word than any that hath been used in England these thousand years.”
Cranmer was summoned before parliament’s Star Chamber on September 14 and was sent straight to the Tower to join fellow ex-bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.
On November 13, 1553, Cranmer and four others were brought to trial for high treason, found guilty, stripped of his see as Archbishop of Canterbury and also the right to make a will, and condemned to death. He was also charged with heresy.
After the execution of Lady Jane Grey, in March 1554, the Privy Council ordered Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer to be transferred to Bocardo Prison in Oxford to await a second trial for heresy. Cranmer remained isolated in Bocardo Prison for 17 months before the heresy trial started on September 12, 1555. The trial was held under Papal jurisdiction, the verdict to come from Rome.
During his trials, Cranmer’s first wife was referred to as “Black Joan of the Dolphin”.
Under interrogation, Cranmer admitted to every fact that was placed before him, but denied treachery, disobedience or heresy.
Cranmer was burned at the stake in Oxford in March 1556.
As for Nicholas Somer and Juliana, nothing was recorded as to how their affairs were settled. Somer didn’t lose his job as Croydon’s chantry priest though. He was still in post in the St Nicholas Chantry when it was dissolved. He was the 16th priest to have served that chapel, the chantry existing from 1450 through to 1547, and received an annual pension of £6 13s 4d for life.
When I am asked about Archbishop Cranmer again, I will have my answer ready.
David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Croydon Commander with friends in high Admiralty places
- How Croydon’s second rink skated past Edwardian Nimbyism
- Church Street pub where Penny performer sang of the great fire
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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