Hello everyone, welcome to the History of England, episode 268.

This Hand Offender. Now last time we heard that the prospect of a Spanish marriage and

possibly the increasing suspicion that Mary's nose had looked rather long when she issued her

proclamation about religious toleration would lead to a spot of bother on behalf of the

few nobleman, poet's son Thomas White in particular. This held out for you the prospect of a thrilling

episode of principled rebellion and daring do of the commons of England marching to protect that

liberties cry harry and all that sort of thing. Well I'm not going to give you that. I am instead

going to offer you a story of a very human hero. There are no heroes in the world either, but that

does not mean there are not people we can admire for their bravery and achievements, notwithstanding

their very obvious humanity and faults. Such a person then is Thomas Kranmer. In order to do this now,

I need to mess with the chronology a bit, I'll mention, but skate over various political and

religious events to which I'll then need to come back in order to cover them more effectively.

I would like to formally apologise, but you know it's a story that deserves to be told.

It's also worth mentioning that the vast majority of my information in this episode comes from

the definitive and eponymous biography of Thomas Kranmer by Professor Dermod McCulloch.

This book is an academic history book, it is very much in the mode of his more recent biography

of Thomas Kranmer, if you read that, which I'm confident will also become the definitive

biography. And like that book, McCulloch's Thomas Kranmer is liberally sprinkled with wit,

humour and anecdotes and stories. I heartily recommend it to you. Just don't expect a light

read as all I'm saying. And finally, on this Thursday, the 21st of March, a significant date,

I will release an interview with said Professor McCulloch looking back across the whole life of our

Thomas Kranmer. One of the points that McCulloch makes in his biography is that for the first time

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