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green and long before it would burn. While he was engaged in prayer a stool was placed before him, on which a box was set, with the queen's pardon within it—if he would recant. When he beheld it he cried out "If you love my soul, away with it! If you love my soul, away with it!" After the fire was lighted he was kept in the utmost tortures for three quarters of an hour, his lower extremities being burnt away slowly before there was fire enough to affect the vitals. At length he expired, crying out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" His martyrdom took place on the 9th of February, 1555, in the sixtieth year of his age. He was the author of numerous controversial tracts, sermons, homilies, law lectures, confessions, letters, &c. Several of his smaller pieces are preserved in Fox's Acts, &c.'

Archbishop Cranmer.

BORN A. D. 1489.-DIED A. D. 1556.

THOMAS CRANMER, the first protestant archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the fathers of the English Reformation, was born of an ancient and respectable family of Nottinghamshire, at Aslacton in that county, on the 2d of July, 1489. He received the rudiments of education at the grammar school of his native village, under a rude and harsh master, "of whom he learned little and endured much." At the age of fourteen he was entered of Jesus college, Cambridge, where he continued sixteen years. The first half of this period he mispent upon the scholastic logic of Duns and other celebrated questionists; the next four years he turned to more profitable account in the study of Faber, Erasmus, and other good Latin authors; and latterly he gave his undivided attention to the study of the scriptures. It does not appear, however, that he was originally intended for the church, for he is said to have excelled in the more profane accomplishments of a gentleman of that age, such as hunting and hawking, and he married before he took orders. His wife died in child-birth within a year after her marriage,—a circumstance which enabled him to resume the fellowship which he had forfeited by entering into wedlock. From this period he appears to have directed his views towards the church. In 1523, he took the degree of doctor in divinity, and soon after became reader of the divinity lectures in his own college, and one of the examiners of candidates for holy orders. In the latter capacity he made an accurate knowledge of the scriptures indispensable to all candidates. The enforcement of this measure was not without difficulty. School divinity had hitherto been the sole study of those intended for the clerical profession, and the monastic orders in particular were zealously opposed to any innovations upon the established practice in this respect; but the firmness and affability of the new examiner prevailed, and he soon won the universal esteem of all whom his new office brought him in contact with.

In 1529, the sweating sickness' having broken out in Cambridge, Cranmer retired to the abode of a friend at Waltham abbey in Essex,

Middleton.-Neal.-Burnett's Reformation.-Wood's Athen. Oxon.

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