Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer was born in 1489 at Aslockton in Nottinghamshire and studied and taught at Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1529 he suggested that Henry VIII's case for annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon be put to the universities, and he entered royal service. Made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, he declared the marriage void and crowned Anne Boleyn. Under Henry he promoted the English Bible and composed the English Litany (1544). Under the boy king Edward VI he led a more Protestant reformation, writing much of the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and its revision in 1552, and drafting the Forty-Two Articles. When the Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553 he was tried for treason and heresy. In prison he signed several recantations, but at his execution at Oxford on 21 March 1556 he withdrew them and, according to Foxe's account, held into the fire first the hand that had signed them. His prayer book language shaped English worship for centuries. Anglicans still pray many of his collects every Sunday.

Thomas Cranmer is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Archbishop of Canterbury who worked toward union between the German Protestants and the Church of England. Source: Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)