refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life, if it might be; and that is, all such bills and papers which I have written or signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefor; for, may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.’
The bystanders were astonished. Some in vain appealed to him to remember his recantation, and after answering their remonstrances he himself ran to the place of execution, so fast that few could keep up with him. The Spanish friars still plied him with exhortations, but to no purpose. He was chained to the stake, the wood was kindled, and when the fire began to burn near him, he put his right hand into the flame, crying out: ‘This hand hath offended.’ Very soon afterwards he was dead. His courage and patience in the torment filled with admiration the witnesses of his sufferings—even those who considered that he had died for a bad cause, of whom one, only known to us as ‘J. A.,’ has left an account of the scene in a letter to a friend.
Of Cranmer's personal appearance Foxe writes that he was ‘of stature mean, of complexion pure and somewhat sanguine, having no hair upon his head at the time of his death’ (was not this owing to the barber cutting it off?), ‘but a long beard, white and thick. He was of the age of sixty-five’ (Foxe should have said sixty-seven) ‘when he was burnt; and yet, being a man sore broken in studies, all his time never used any spectacles.’ Portraits of him exist at Cambridge and at Lambeth. It is curious that in his last hours we hear little of his wife or family. He left, we know, a son Thomas, and a daughter Margaret, who were restored in blood by act of parliament in 1563. He had an elder brother John, who inherited his father's estates, and a younger, Edmund, whom he had made archdeacon of Canterbury soon after his appointment as primate, but who had been deprived by Mary as a married clergyman.
His principal writings are:
- A book on Henry VIII's divorce, against marriage with a brother's widow.
- Preface to the Bible, 1540.
- ‘A Short Instruction into Christian Religion,’ commonly called his ‘Catechism,’ translated from the Latin of Justus Jonas, 1541.
- Preface to the Book of Common Prayer, 1549.
- ‘Answer to the Devonshire Rebels,’ and a sermon on Rebellion.
- ‘Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum’ (compiled about 1550, first edited 1571).
- ‘A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament,’ 1550.
- ‘An Answer … unto a crafty and sophistical cavillation devised by Stephen Gardiner,’ i.e. to Gardiner's reply to the preceding treatise.
- ‘A Confutation of Unwritten Verities,’ in answer to a treatise of Dr. Richard Smith maintaining that there were truths necessary to be believed which were not expressed in scripture.
He is credited also by Burnet with a speech supposed to have been delivered in the House of Lords about 1534; but an examination of the original manuscript shows that it is not a speech, but a treatise addressed to some single lord, and even the authorship might perhaps be questioned (see Calendar, Henry VIII, vol. vii. No. 691).
[Nichols's Narratives of the Reformation (Camden Soc.); Foxe's Acts and Monuments; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation; Strype's Memorials of Archbp. Cranmer (with appendix of documents); Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials iii. 392–400; Wilkins's Concilia, iii. 826–8, 857–8, 862, 868; Calendar, Henry VIII, iv., sq.; Tytler's Edward VI and Mary; works edited by Cox, Granger and Jenkyns; Grey Friars' Chronicle; Machyn's Diary; Wriothesley's Chronicle; Chronicle of Queen Jane; Archæologia, xviii. 175–7; Cranmer's Recantacyons, privately printed by Lord Houghton; Baga de Secretis in Dep.-Keeper of Public Records, IV. ii. 237–8; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses i. 145, 547; modern lives by Sargant, Le Bas, Todd, and Dean Hook (in Lives of the Archbishops).
CRANSTOUN, DAVID (fl. 1509–1526), Scotch professor in Paris, was educated at the college of Montacute, Paris, among the poor scholars under John Major. He subsequently became regent and professor of belles-lettres in the college, and by his will, made in 1512, left to it the whole of his property, which amounted to 450 livres. He became bachelor of theology in 1519, and afterwards doctor. Along with Gavin Douglas he made the ‘Tabula’ for John Major's ‘Commentarius in quartum Sententiarum,’ which was published at Paris in 1509 and again in 1516. He is said to have written ‘Orationes,’ ‘Votum ad D. Kentigernum,’ and ‘Epistolæ.’ He also edited Martin's ‘Questiones Morales,’ Paris, 1510, another ed. 1511, and wrote additions to the ‘Moralia’ of Almain, Paris, 1526, and to the ‘Parva Logicalia’ of Ramirez de Villascusa, Paris, 1520. Of these three works there are copies in the library of the British Museum, but the last is imperfect.
