Thomas Cranmer: In a Nutshell by Beth von Staats

Author:Beth von Staats
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: MadeGlobal Publishing
Published: 2015-04-20T23:00:00+00:00

Figure 9 - Vintage Engraving of Lady Jane Grey

Intrigue & Treason

King Edward VI’s death on 6 July 1553 came more swiftly than most anticipated. This created two major complications that would come back to haunt both John Dudley and Thomas Cranmer. First, King Edward VI’s “My devise of the succession” had not yet passed through Parliament. Far more ominous, the Lady Mary Tudor, with advance warning of her brother’s impending doom, was able to flee. Without securing the person of the Lady Mary, Dudley and Cranmer, who for the previous two years were at odds with one another, needed to immediately ally and work together. They did just that. The first order of business was to crown a queen. The original heir to the throne Lady Frances Grey by prearrangement renounced her claim. Thus, the first intended reigning Queen of England would be Lady Jane Dudley (née Grey), who had married the Duke of Northumberland’s son Guildford just six weeks previously. The proclamation of Jane Dudley as Queen of England went smoothly, spreading throughout the realm. As was customary, she was initially housed at the Tower of London. This stated, within two days of the king’s death, the Lady Mary Tudor was safe in East Anglia.

A wave of popular support for the Lady Mary enabled her to safely venture on to Framlingham Castle in Suffolk. Wisely avoiding any debate of the religion question, the Lady Mary pressed her claim to the throne as the rightful heir as King Henry VIII’s eldest daughter. The strategy worked, and support for her ground-swelled. John Dudley’s hastily formed London forces, partially armed with men, armour, weapons and horses provided by Thomas Cranmer, intended to cut the Lady Mary off from the Midlands. Unnerved by the resistance he was encountering, Dudley retreated to Cambridge, proclaiming for Mary Tudor as Queen of England himself on 20 July.50 Thus, it is interesting to point out that John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, capitulated long before the Archbishop of Canterbury.

While Dudley led his expeditionary forces, Thomas Cranmer composed a letter on 11 July in which he formally rejected the Lady Mary’s claim to the throne. In a document reminiscent of Cranmer’s chance meeting with Edward Foxe and Stephen Gardiner years earlier, he wrote that the divorce of Henry VIII and Catalina de Aragón “was necessary to be had both by the everlasting laws of God, and also by the ecclesiastical laws, and by the most part of the noble and learned universities of Christendom...”51. Then, Cranmer’s name again led a list of Privy Councillors ordering sheriffs throughout the kingdom to pull together forces to retrieve the “bastard Mary”, because she was “plotting to bring papists, Spaniards and other strangers into the realm at the great peril and danger of the utter subversion of God’s holy word.”52 While the Lady Mary pointedly focused on her succession rights, Cranmer attempted desperately to bring religion back into the discussion.

One week into the reign of Queen Jane, news of revolts throughout the realm

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