The Unquenchable Flame: Discovering the Heart of the Reformation

by Michael Reeves

Five months later Thomas Cranmer was burned on the same spot. The old archbishop and architect of so much of the English Reformation, now nearly seventy, had, under extreme duress, renounced his Protestantism. It was a triumph for Mary’s reign. Despite his recantation, however, he was such an embodiment of the Reformation that it was decided he should be burned in any case. It was a decision that would more than undo Mary’s victory, for when the day came, Cranmer refused to read out his recantation. Instead he stated boldly that he was indeed a Protestant, though a cowardly one for forsaking his principles. In consequence, he announced, ‘for as much as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished there-for’. He was true to his word: as the fires were lit, he held out the hand that had signed his recantation so that it might burn first. Having briefly denied his Protestantism, Cranmer thus burned with movingly defiant bravery, and so died the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury.