Publisher's Synopsis
Thomas Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry VIII in 1533 and burnt alive twenty-three years later on the orders of Queen Mary, Henry's daughter.
At the time he was appointed, Cranmer was an ordained Roman Catholic priest, a personal acquaintance of the Pope and of the Holy Roman Emperor, a confidant of Anne Boleyn - and secretly married to a niece of a leader of the Lutheran Church in Germany.
Cranmer's marriage would have convinced Henry that Cranmer could be relied upon to do what was necessary to establish the legitimacy of his hoped-for son with Anne Boleyn.
Within three months of his appointment, Cranmer had annulled Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon, confirmed Henry's hitherto bigamous marriage to Anne Boleyn, and crowned Anne as Queen in Westminster Abbey. Some four months later he baptised the infant Princess Elizabeth (not the son that Henry and the country needed) and stood as her Godfather.
Cranmer's subsequent and longer-term task was to define a new Church in England, a Protestant Church with the King, and not the Pope, at its head, thus changing the lives of everyone in the country. In an age of merciless conflict about personal beliefs, Cranmer was protected by Henry and subsequently by Henry's Protestant son King Edward VI.
Hence Cranmer was the pivotal figure in the later years of Henry VIII's reign.
When Edward VI died, Cranmer's days were numbered.
The Church that Cranmer defined was strong enough for Queen Elizabeth I to depend on it and it has lasted for over four hundred years. Puritan separatists from the Church included the first pilgrims to America.
Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer is still recognisably in use in many countries and languages.
Shakespeare described Cranmer as 'virtuous' and 'a good man', while others clearly believed that his agonising death was well-deserved.
This fact-based historical novel portrays Cranmer's remarkable life; it reassesses some aspects of the history of that period and deals with spiritual issues that still resonate today.
