Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer was the architect of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. He was the Archbishop who guided England through the early Reformation, and Henry VIII through the minefields of divorce. Diarmaid MacCulloch traces Cranmer from his East-Midland roots to early Tudor Cambridge, into the household of the family of Anne Boleyn, and through the political labyrinth of the Henrican court. By then a major English statesman, living the life of a mediaeval prince-bishop, Cranmer navigated the church through the king's vacillations and finalized two successive English Prayer Books. MacCulloch reconstructs the crises which Cranmer negotiated, from his compromising association with three of Henry's divorces, the plot by religious conservatives to oust him, his role in the attempt to establish Lady Jane Grey as Queen, to the vengeance of the Catholic Mary Tudor. In gaol after Mary's accession, Cranmer nearly succumbed to recant his life's achievements, but was able to turn the very day of his death at the stake into a dramatic demonstration of his Protestant faith. From this account, Cranmer emerges as a sharply-focussed figure, more conservative early in his career than admirers have allowed, more evangelical than Anglicanism would later find comfortable. His legacy is his contribution to the shape and structure of English speech and, through his Prayer Book, to the moulding of an international language and the theology it expressed.

ISBN 0300066880   DEWEY edition DC20 ISBN13 9780300066883 (What's this?)   Pages 704 Publisher Yale University Press   Volumes 001 Imprint Yale University Press   Weight (grammes) 1500 Format Hardback   Published in New Haven Publication date 02 May 1996   Height (mm) 234 Non-book description xii, 692 p. :   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress DA317.8.C8   Spine width (mm) 59 DEWEY 283.092   Academic level General, Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		List of illustrations
		List of abbreviations
		Acknowledgements
		Introduction		1
1		Simple esquire: 1489-1503		7
2		Cambridge years: 1503-29		16
3		Campaign to end a marriage: 1527-33		41
4		The reign of Queen Anne: 1533-6		79
5		From Anne Boleyn to Thomas Cromwell: 1535-7		136
6		A 'Reformed' Church? 1535-9		173
7		Salvaging the cause: 1539-42		237
8		A problem of survival: 1542-6		297
9		Welcoming King Josiah: 1546-9		351
10		1549: Commotion in Church and commonwealth		410
11		Building a Protestant Church: 1550-52		454
12		Paradise betrayed: 1552-3		517
13		Condemned: 1553-6		554
14		Aftermath and retrospect		606
		Appendix I: Was Stephen Nevinson Cranmer's anonymous biographer?		633
		Appendix II: The date of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn		637
		Appendix III: University connections among close relatives, servants and households of Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner		639
		Bibliography		644
		Index		671

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