Cranmer and the Reformation in England #249382

The telling of this story involves certain difficulties. An attitude of enthusiasm would be pleasant; but for the most part the subject forbids enthusiasm. To play the advocate for a party is easy; but with Henry and Cromwell, Cranmer and Gardiner, Northumberland and Mary Tudor to depict, it is in no wise easy to nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice. It appears all but impossible to write of those times without yielding either to the Roman, the Anglican, or the Puritan bias. Till a comparatively recent period there was no hearing for any but the last school; of late years those Anglicans who reject the name of Protestant have held the field, save for some acute, if not always convincing, expositions of the Romanist point of view. It is hardly possible to make a single statement as to the beliefs, motives, intentions, or character of any one of our dramatis persona; which will not be quite honestly and quite flatly contra dicted by the adherents of one or other of the three schools: so that the discovery of truth becomes a highly complicated process. To this must be added a special perplexity — party terminology. Convenience brought about the practice of using the term Catholic as equivalent to Romanist.