Explain the role played by Thomas Cranmer in achieving the Royal Divorce

by erinruth99gmailcom (student)

Paper 11 June 2012

Thomas Cranmer, along with Foxe and Gardiner, were tasked with trying to solve King Henry VIII’s Great Matter. First they decided to appeal to the great universities of Europe in 1530, but it became apparent that there was nothing that could be done within canon law.

Therefore Cranmer, along with the Archbishop of Hereford, turned to a collection of documents known as the Collectania satis copiosa. This was a collection of ancient English manuscripts and Anglo-Saxon Chronicals which referred to the king as head of state and church. They set forward a legal and historical basis from which Cranmer used to argue that Henry had the authority to achieve a divorce without the consent of the Pope. Furthermore, it was said that Henry had a positive duty to regain the control over church and state that was written of in the Collectania. Henry’s own notes on the document prove that he was aware of its existence and that he was intelligent enough to know what it implied.

It became apparent that the only way to get a divorce would be through statute law through king in parliament. Men such as Cranmer and Cromwell were more important than ever in 1530-32 because Henry saw them as his greatest chance of getting a divorce. The historian Ian Dawson believes that Henry chose them over the conservatives because the conservatives could only offer a stalemate with no solution. Cranmer was an evangelical, both pro-protestant and anti-papal. He had an agenda of his own that he wanted to achieve, and he believed that securing a divorce would mark the beginning of ...

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When the Archbishop of Canterbury, Warham, died in August of 1532 he was replaced by Cranmer in February 1533. He swore a secret oath where he promised his oath to the king was more important to him than any other oath. This was suprising given that Cranmer had been married, was a member of the Cambridge White Horse Group, was part of the Boleyn ‘faction’ and was a keen supporter of the king’s divorce. Gardiner was also in line for the Archbishopric but Cranmer was appointed because Henry need a compliant cleric that could quickly achieve his divorce. Anne’s pregnancy in 1532 probably influenced the decision.

Once the Act of Restraint of Appeals was passed in 1533 it stated that legal appeals could no longer be made to Rome and instead they would be brought before Convocation, which was led by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer met with Convocation at St Peter’s Priory in Dunstable which was not far from where Catherine was staying in Ampthill. Cranmer issued a declaration on 23rd May 1533 which stated that the Argonese marriage was nul and void, and that the secret marriage to Anne four months earlier was valid. Catherine did not appear. Catherine had launched an appeal to the Pope back in 1529, before the Act of Restraint of Appeals, so therefore Cranmer’s declaration was in direct defiance of the Pope. The Act of Succession in 1534 confirmed this decision and had the backing of the European universities.

Cranmer had been successful in obtaining the divorce, but he was greatly helped by the political acumen of Thomas Cromwell.