More and Fisher may have died for what seems to be a small point, but it was, at any rate, a point about which they had no doubt. They clearly thought that they would violate their consciences by taking the oath required of them; Cranmer, on the other hand, in the cases the particulars of which we know, did not think that he was doing wrong in pronouncing the divorce, and we may, therefore, fairly give him credit for similar conduct in that of Anne Boleyn, which we do not know.
In the matter of the divorces, then, we may say that, in regard to those of Katherine of Arragon and Anne of Cleves, Cranmer clearly did that which was his duty as a judge, holding the beliefs that he actually held, and that which every just judge would have found himself compelled to do. In the remaining case, we have to admit that we have too little information to justify us in either condemning or acquitting him. The charge of having assisted in the condemnation of Frith and Lambert, which comes also under this heading, resolves itself really into a statement that Cranmer had not completely assimilated a doctrine which, if it existed at all in his time, did so only as a theory, and which, even now, is but very imperfectly followed—viz., the doctrine of toleration. A Puritan divine at the epoch of the Rebellion, almost a century later, speaks of a toleration as 'the grand design of the devil!'
On this head, also, there is much to be put down to Cranmer's credit. He, and he alone, ventured on three several occasions to intercede, though mostly in vain, for some of the victims of Henry's ferocious tyranny—viz., for Anne Boleyn, for Cromwell, and, as we have just seen, according to Burnet, for the Princess Mary herself; and again, in the matter of the Act of Six Articles, he steadily, and from beginning to end, opposed Henry's will.
