Thomas Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry VIII in 1533 and burnt alive twenty-three years later on the orders of Queen Mary, Henry's daughter.At the time he was appointed, Cranmer was an ordained Roman Catholic priest, a per... Read more

Thomas Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry VIII in 1533 and burnt alive twenty-three years later on the orders of Queen Mary, Henry's daughter.At the time he was appointed, Cranmer was an ordained Roman Catholic priest, a personal acquaintance of the Pope and of the Holy Roman Emperor, a confidant of Anne Boleyn - and secretly married to a niece of a leader of the Lutheran Church in Germany.Whether Henry or his First Minister Thomas Cromwell knew at the time about this marriage remains a matter of conjecture.Within three months of his appointment, Cranmer had annulled Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon, confirmed Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn, and crowned Anne as Queen in Westminster Abbey. Some four months later he baptised the infant Princess Elizabeth and stood as her Godfather.From these simple facts, Cranmer can be seen as a pivotal figure in the later years of Henry VIII's reign.In an age of merciless conflict about personal beliefs, Archbishop Cranmer substantially defined a new Church in England, a Protestant Church with the King, not the Pope, at its Head. This affected the lives of everyone in the country. The Church was strong enough for Queen Elizabeth I to depend on it at the very start of her reign and it has lasted for over four hundred years. Puritan separatists from the Church included the first pilgrims to America.Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer is still recognisably in use in many countries and languages.Shakespeare described Cranmer as 'virtuous' and 'a good man'; others clearly believed that his agonising death was well-deserved.This fact-based historical novel portrays Cranmer's remarkable life; it reassesses some aspects of the history of that period and deals with spiritual issues that still resonate today. Less