(W. P.*)
CRANIOMETRY.The application of precise methods of measurement marks a definite phase in the development of most branches of modern science, and thus craniometry, a comprehensive expression for all methods of measuring the skull (cranium), provides a striking landmark in the progress of anthropological studies. The origin of craniometry appears to be twofold. Certain artists made measurements of heads and skulls with a view to attaining greater accuracy in their representation of those parts of the human frame. Bernard de Palissy and A. Dürer may be mentioned as pioneers in such researches. Again, it is clearly shown in the literature of this subject, that anatomists were led to employ methods of measurement in their study of the human skull. The determining cause of this improvement in method is curious, for it appeared at the end of a famous anatomical controversy of the later middle ages, namely the dispute as to whether the Galenic anatomy was based on the study of the human body or upon those of apes. In the description of the dissection of a chimpanzee (in 1680) Tyson explains that the measurements he made of the skull of that animal were devised with a view to exhibiting the difference between this and the human skull.
The artists did not carry their researches very far. The anatomists on the contrary continued to make measurements, and in 1764 Daubenton published a noteworthy contribution to craniometry. Six years later, Pieter Camper, distinguished both as an artist and as an anatomist, published some lectures containing an account of his craniometrical methods, and these may be fairly claimed as having laid the foundation of all subsequent work. That work has been described above as anthropological, but as the studies thus defined are very varied in extent, it is necessary to consider the subdivisions into which they naturally fall.
In the first place (and omitting further reference to the contributions of artists), it has been explained that the measurements were first made with a view to elucidating the comparison of the skulls of men with those of other animals. This wide comparison constitutes the first subdivision of craniometric studies. And craniometric methods have rendered the results of comparison much more clear and comprehensible than was formerly the case. It is further remarkable that among the first measurements employed angular determinations occur, and indeed the name of Camper is chiefly perpetuated in anthropological literature by the “facial angle†invented by that artist-anatomist (fig. 1). It appears impossible to improve on the simple terms in which Camper describes the general results of the employment of this angle for comparative purposes, as will appear from the following brief extract from the translation of the original work: “The two extremities of the facial line are from 70 to 80 degrees from the negro to the Grecian antique: make it under 70, and you describe an ourang or an ape: lessen it still more, and you have the head of a dog. Increase the minimum, and you form a fowl, a snipe for example, the facial line of which is nearly parallel with the horizon.†(Camper’s Works, p. 42, translated by Cogan, 1821.)
In the 19th century the names of notable contributors to the literature of craniometry quickly increase in number; while it is impossible to analyse each contribution, or even record a complete list of the names of the authors, it must be added that for the purposes of far-reaching comparisons of the lower animals with mankind, craniometric methods were used by P. P. Broca in France and by T. H. Huxley (figs. 2 and 3) in England, with such genius and success as have not yet been surpassed.
The second division of craniometric studies includes those in which the skulls of the higher and lower races of mankind are compared. And in this domain, the advent of accurate numerical methods of recording observations brought about great advances. In describing the facial angle, it will be seen that the modern European, the Greek of classical antiquity and the Negro are compared. Thus it is that Camper’s name appears as that of a pioneer in this second main division of the subject. Broca and Huxley cultivated similar comparative racial fields of research, but to these names that of Anders Retzius of Stockholm must be added here. The chief claim of Retzius to distinction rests on the merits of his system of comparing various dimensions of the skull, and of a classification based on such comparisons. These indices will be further defined below. It is convenient to mention here that the first aim of all these investigators was to obtain from the skull reliable data having reference to the conformation or size of the brain once contained within it. Only in later days did the tendency to overlook this, the fundamental aim and endof craniometry, make its appearance; such nevertheless was the case, much to the detriment of craniometric science, which for a time seems to have become purely empirical.
The third subdivision of craniometric researches is one in which the field of comparison is still further narrowed. For herein the various sub-racial types such as the dark and fair Europeans are brought together for the purposes of comparison or contrast. But although the range of research is thus narrowed and restricted, the guiding principles and the methods remain unchanged. In this department of craniometry, Anders Retzius has gained the foremost place among the pioneers of research. Retzius’s name is, as already mentioned, associated not with any particular angle or angular measurement, but rather with a method of expressing as a formula two cranial dimensions which have been measured and which are to be compared. Thus for instance one skull may be so proportioned that its greatest width measures 75% of its greatest length (i.e.its width is to its length as three to four).
This ratio (of 75%) is termed the cephalic or breadth-index, which in such an instance would be described as equal to 75. A skull providing a breadth-index of 75 will naturally possess very different proportions from another which provides a corresponding index equal to 85. And in fact this particular index in human skulls varies from about 58 to 90 in undistorted examples (fig. 4). Such is the general scheme of Retzius’s system of classification of skulls by means of indices, and one of his earliest applications of the method was to the inhabitants of Sweden. One striking result was to exhibit a most marked contrast in respect of the breadth-index of the skull, between the Lapps and their Scandinavian neighbours, and thus a craniometric difference was added to the list of characters (such as stature, hair-colour and complexion) whereby these two types were already distinguished. Since the publication of Retzius’s studies, the cephalic or breadth-index of the skull has retained a premier position among its almost innumerable successors, though it is of historical interest to note that, while Retzius had undoubtedly devised the method of comparing “breadth-indices,†he always qualified the results of its use by reference to other data. These qualifications were overlooked by the immediate successors of Retzius, much to the disadvantage of craniometry. In addition to the researches on the skull forms of Lapps and Swedes, others dealing with the comparison of Finns and Swedes (by Retzius) as well as the investigation of the form of skull in Basques and Guanches (by Broca) possess historic interest.
Thus far little or nothing has been said with regard to instruments. Camper devised a four-sided open frame with cross-wires, through which skulls were viewed and by means of which accurate drawings could be projected on to paper. The methods of Retzius as here described require the aid of callipers of various sorts, and such instruments were quickly devised and applied to the special needs of the case. Such instruments are still in use, and two forms of simple craniometer are shown in the accompanying illustrations (figs. 5 and 6). For the more accurate comparison required in the study of various European types, delicate instruments for measuring angles were invented by Anthelme in Paris (1836) and John Grattan in Belfast (1853). These instruments enabled the observer to transmit to the plane surface of a sheet of drawing paper a correct tracing of the contour of the specimen under investigation. A further modification was devised by the talented Dr Busk in the year 1861, and since that date the number and forms of these instruments have been greatly multiplied. With reference to contributors to the advance of knowledge in this particular department of craniometry, there should be added to the foregoing names those of Huxley, Sir W. H. Flower and Sir W. Turner in England, J. L. A. de Quatrefages in France, J. C. G. Lucae and H. Welcker in Germany. Moreover, the methods have also been multiplied, so that in addition to angular and linear measurements, those of the capacity or cubical contents of the cranium and those of the curvature of its surface demand reference. The masterly work of Cleland claims special mention in this connexion. And finally while two dimensions are combined in the cephalic index of Retzius, the combination of three dimensions (in a formula called a modulus) distinguishes some recent work, although the employment of the modulus isactually a return to a system devised in 1859 by Karl E. von Baer.
The fourth subdivision of craniometry is closely allied to that which has just been described, and it deals with the comparison of the prehistoric and the recent types of mankind. The methods are exactly similar to those employed in the comparison of living races; but in some particular instances where the prehistoric individual is represented only by a comparatively minute portion of the skull, some special modifications of the usual procedures have been necessitated. In this field the works of W. His and L. Rütimeyer on the prehistoric races of Switzerland, those of Ecker (South Germany), of Broca in France, of Thurnam and Davis in England, must be cited. G. Schwalbe, Kramberger, W. J. Sollas and H. Klaatsch are the most recent contributors to this department of craniometry.
Thus the complexity of craniometric studies has inevitably increased. In the hands of von Török of Budapest, as in those of M. Benedikt of Vienna at an earlier date, the number of measurements regarded as necessary for the complete “diagnosis†of a skull has reached a colossal total. Of the trend and progress of craniometry at the present day, three particular developments are noteworthy. First come the attempts made at various times to co-ordinate the systems of measurements so as to ensure uniformity among all observers; of these attempts two, viz. that of the German anthropologists at Frankfort in 1882 (figs. 7 and 8), and that of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association (1906) seem to require at least a record. In the second place, the application of the methods of statistical science in dealing with large numbers of craniometric data has been richly rewarded in Prof. Karl Pearson’s hands. Thirdly, and in connexion with such methods, there may be mentioned the extension of these systems of measurement, and of the methods of dealing with them on statistical principles, to the study of large numbers of the skulls of domestic and feral animals, such as white rats or the varieties of the horse. And lastly no account of craniometry would be complete without mention of the revolt, headed by the Italian anthropologist Sergi, against metrical methods of all kinds. It cannot, however, be alleged that the substitutes offered by the adherents of Sergi’s principles encourage others to forsake the more orthodox numerical methods.
Literature.—Tyson,The Anatomy of a Pygmie(London, 1699); Daubenton, “Sur la différence de la situation du tron occipital dans l’homme et dans les animaux,â€Comptes rendus de l’académie des sciences(Paris, 1764); Camper,Works(1770, translated by Cogan, 1821); Broca,Mémoires(1862 and following years); Huxley,Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. 1 (1867); Retzius,Ãœber die Schädelformen der Nordbewohner(Stockholm, 1842); Anthelme,Physiologie de la pensée(Paris, 1836); Grattan,Ulster Journal of Archaeology, vol. 1 (1853); Busk, “A System of Craniometry,â€Transactions of the Ethnological Society(1861); Flower, Catalogue of the Hunterian Museum,Osteology, part 1 (London, 1879); Turner, “’Challenger’ Reports,â€Zoology, vol. x. pt. 29, “Human Crania†(1884); de Quatrefages,Crania ethnica(Paris, 1873); Lucae,Architectur des menschlichen Schädels(Frankfort, 1855); Welcker,Bau und Wachsthum des menschlichen Schädels(1862); Cleland, “An Inquiry into the Variations of the Human Skull,â€Phil. Trans. Roy. Society(1870), vol. 160, pp. 117 et seq.; von Baer, “Crania selecta,†Académie impériale des sciences de S. Pétersbourg (1859); His and Rütimeyer,Crania Helvetica(Basel, 1866); Ecker,Crania Germaniae meridionalis(1865); Thurnam and Davis,Crania Britannica; von Török,Craniometrie(Stuttgart, 1890); Benedikt,Manuel technique et pratique d’anthropométrie cranio-céphalique(Paris, 1889); Pearson,Biometrika, from vol. 1 (in 1902) onwards; Sergi, “The Varieties of the Human Species,†English translation, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, 1894); Schwalbe, “Der Neanderthalschädel,â€Bonner Jahrbücher, Heft 106; alsoSonderheft der Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie; Kramberger,Der paläolithische Mensch von Krapina(Nägele, Stuttgart, 1901); Sollas, “The Cranial Characters of the Neanderthal Race,â€Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 199, Series B, p. 298, 1908; Klaatsch, “Bericht über einen anthropologischen Streifzug nach London,â€Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Heft 6, 1903, p. 875.Handbooks.—Topinard,Éléments d’anthropologie générale(Paris, 1885); Schmidt,Anthropologische Methoden(Leipzig, 1888); Duckworth,Morphology and Anthropology(Cambridge, 1904).Journals.—Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris,Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,Archiv für Anthropologie,Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie.
Literature.—Tyson,The Anatomy of a Pygmie(London, 1699); Daubenton, “Sur la différence de la situation du tron occipital dans l’homme et dans les animaux,â€Comptes rendus de l’académie des sciences(Paris, 1764); Camper,Works(1770, translated by Cogan, 1821); Broca,Mémoires(1862 and following years); Huxley,Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. 1 (1867); Retzius,Ãœber die Schädelformen der Nordbewohner(Stockholm, 1842); Anthelme,Physiologie de la pensée(Paris, 1836); Grattan,Ulster Journal of Archaeology, vol. 1 (1853); Busk, “A System of Craniometry,â€Transactions of the Ethnological Society(1861); Flower, Catalogue of the Hunterian Museum,Osteology, part 1 (London, 1879); Turner, “’Challenger’ Reports,â€Zoology, vol. x. pt. 29, “Human Crania†(1884); de Quatrefages,Crania ethnica(Paris, 1873); Lucae,Architectur des menschlichen Schädels(Frankfort, 1855); Welcker,Bau und Wachsthum des menschlichen Schädels(1862); Cleland, “An Inquiry into the Variations of the Human Skull,â€Phil. Trans. Roy. Society(1870), vol. 160, pp. 117 et seq.; von Baer, “Crania selecta,†Académie impériale des sciences de S. Pétersbourg (1859); His and Rütimeyer,Crania Helvetica(Basel, 1866); Ecker,Crania Germaniae meridionalis(1865); Thurnam and Davis,Crania Britannica; von Török,Craniometrie(Stuttgart, 1890); Benedikt,Manuel technique et pratique d’anthropométrie cranio-céphalique(Paris, 1889); Pearson,Biometrika, from vol. 1 (in 1902) onwards; Sergi, “The Varieties of the Human Species,†English translation, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, 1894); Schwalbe, “Der Neanderthalschädel,â€Bonner Jahrbücher, Heft 106; alsoSonderheft der Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie; Kramberger,Der paläolithische Mensch von Krapina(Nägele, Stuttgart, 1901); Sollas, “The Cranial Characters of the Neanderthal Race,â€Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 199, Series B, p. 298, 1908; Klaatsch, “Bericht über einen anthropologischen Streifzug nach London,â€Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Heft 6, 1903, p. 875.
Handbooks.—Topinard,Éléments d’anthropologie générale(Paris, 1885); Schmidt,Anthropologische Methoden(Leipzig, 1888); Duckworth,Morphology and Anthropology(Cambridge, 1904).
Journals.—Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris,Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,Archiv für Anthropologie,Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie.
(W. L. H. D.)
CRANK,a word of somewhat obscure etymology, probably connected with a root meaning “crooked,†and appearing in the Ger.krank, ill, a figurative use of the original word; among other words in English containing the same original meaning are “cringe†and “crinkle.†In mechanics, a crank is a device by which reciprocating motion is converted into circular motion or vice versa, consisting of acrank-arm, one end of which is fastened rigidly at right angles to the rotating shaft or axis, while the other end bears acrank-pin, projecting from it at right angles and parallel to the shaft. When the reciprocating part of a machine, as the piston and piston-rod of a steam engine, is linked to this crank by acrank-rodorconnecting rod, one end of which works on the crank-pin and the other on a pin in the end of the reciprocating part, the to-and-fro motion of the latter imparts a circular motion to the shaft and vice versa. The crank, instead of being made up as described above, may be formed by bending the shaft to the required shape, as sometimes in the handle of a winch. Abell-crank, so called because of its use in bell-hanging to change the direction of motion of the wires from horizontal to vertical or vice versa, consists of two arms rigidly connected at an angle, say of 90°, to each other and pivoted on a pin placed at the point of junction.
Crank is also the name given to a labour machine used in prisons as a means of punishment (seeTread-mill). Other uses of the word, connected with the primary meaning, are for a crooked path, a crevice or chink; and a freakish turn of thought or speech, as in Milton’s phrase “quips and cranks.†It is also used as a slang expression, American in origin, for a harmlesslunatic, or a faddist, whose enthusiasm for some one idea or hobby becomes a monomania. “Crank†or “crank-sided†is a nautical term used of a ship which by reason of her build or from want of balance is liable to overturn. This strictly nautical sense is often confused with “crank†or “cranky,†that is, rickety or shaky, probably derived direct from the Germankrank, weak or ill.
CRANMER, THOMAS(1489-1556), archbishop of Canterbury, born at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire on the 2nd of July 1489, was the second son of Thomas Cranmer and of his wife Anne Hatfield. He received his early education, according to Morice his secretary, from “a marvellous severe and cruel schoolmaster,†whose discipline must have been severe indeed to deserve this special mention in an age when no schoolmaster bore the rod in vain. The same authority tells us that he was initiated by his father in those field sports, such as hunting and hawking, which formed one of his recreations in after life. To early training he also owed the skilful horsemanship for which he was conspicuous. At the age of fourteen he was sent by his mother, who had in 1501 become a widow, to Cambridge. Little is known with certainty of his university career beyond the facts that he became a fellow of Jesus College in 1510 or 1511, that he had soon after to vacate his fellowship, owing to his marriage to “Black Joan,†a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, and that he was reinstated in it on the death of his wife, which occurred in childbirth before the lapse of the year of grace allowed by the statutes. During the brief period of his married life he held the appointment of lecturer at Buckingham Hall, now Magdalene College. The fact of his marrying would seem to show that he did not at the time intend to enter the church; possibly the death of his wife caused him to qualify for holy orders. He was ordained in 1523, and soon after he took his doctor’s degree in divinity. According to Strype, he was invited about this time to become a fellow of the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford; but Dean Hook shows that there is some reason to doubt this. If the offer was made, it was declined, and Cranmer continued at Cambridge filling the offices of lecturer in divinity at his own college and of public examiner in divinity to the university. It is interesting, in view of his later efforts to spread the knowledge of the Bible among the people, to know that in the capacity of examiner he insisted on a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures, and rejected several candidates who were deficient in this qualification.
It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father’s house at Waltham in Essex. The king (Henry VIII.) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, secretary of state, afterwards bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the lord high almoner, afterwards bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy’s house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the king’s meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother’s widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the king, who, when Cranmer’s opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: “I will speak to him. Let him be sent for out of hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the ear.â€
At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the king to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn’s father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the king appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that “the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated,†and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed “Grand Penitentiary of England,†but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.
Cranmer returned in September 1530, but in January 1531 he received a second commission from the king appointing him “Conciliarius Regius et ad Caesarem Orator.†In the summer of 1531 he accordingly proceeded to Germany as sole ambassador to the emperor. He was also to sound the Lutheran princes with a view to an alliance, and to obtain the removal of some restrictions on English trade. At Nuremberg he became acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer’s opinions. But Osiander’s house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and in 1532 they were married. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer’s statement that he never expected or desired the primacy; and it seems probable enough that, if he had foreseen how soon the primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose.
Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532 Archbishop Warham died, and the king almost immediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who had accompanied the emperor in his campaign against the Turks, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer’s conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony had occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to the pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the pope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the king. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey’s. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.
In the last as in the first step of Cranmer’s promotion Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce—or rather, of the legitimation of Anne Boleyn’s expected issue—had now become very urgent, and in the new archbishop he had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with whichCranmer did the work intrusted to him must have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine’s marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the king were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity. The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the king, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally determining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the king, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear, she was declared contumacious, and on the 23rd of May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the king free to marry whom he pleased. The Act of Appeals had already prohibited any appeal from the archbishop’s court. Five days later he pronounced the marriage between Henry and Anne—which had been secretly celebrated about the 25th of January 1533—to be valid. On the 1st of June he crowned Anne as queen, and on the 10th of September stood godfather to her child, the future Queen Elizabeth.
The breach with Rome and the subjection of the church in England to the royal supremacy had been practically achieved before Cranmer’s appointment as archbishop: and he had little to do with the other constitutional changes of Henry’s reign. But his position as chief minister of Henry’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction forced him into unpleasant prominence in connexion with the king’s matrimonial experiences. In 1536 he was required to revise his own sentence in favour of the validity of Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn; and on the 17th of May the marriage was declared invalid. The ground on which this sentence is pronounced is fairly clear. Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry VIII.’s mistress; this by canon law was a bar to his marriage with Anne—a bar which had been removed by papal dispensation in 1527, but now the papal power to dispense in such cases had been repudiated, and the original objection revived. The sentence was grotesquely legal and unjust. With Anne’s condemnation by the House of Lords Cranmer had nothing to do. He interceded for her in vain with the king, as he had done in the cases of Fisher, More and the monks of Christchurch. His share in the divorce of Anne of Cleves was less prominent than that of Gardiner, though he did preside over the Convocation in which nearly all the dignitaries of the church signified their approval of that measure. To his next and last interposition in the matrimonial affairs of the king no discredit attaches itself. When he was made cognizant of the charges against Catherine Howard, his duty to communicate them to the king was obvious, though painful.
Meanwhile Cranmer was actively carrying out the policy which has associated his name more closely, perhaps, than that of any other ecclesiastic with the Reformation in England. Its most important feature on the theological as distinct from the political side was the endeavour to promote the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, by encouraging translation and procuring an order in 1538 that a copy of the Bible in English should be set up in every church in a convenient place for reading. Only second in importance to this was the re-adjustment of the creed and liturgy of the church, which formed Cranmer’s principal work during the latter half of his life. The progress of the archbishop’s opinion towards that middle Protestantism, if it may be so called, which he did so much to impress on the formularies of the Church of England, was gradual, as a brief enumeration of the successive steps in that progress will show. In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries. This proved impracticable, but the frequent conferences Cranmer had with the theologians composing the embassy had doubtless a great influence in modifying his views. Both in parliament and in Convocation he opposed the Six Articles of 1539, but he stood almost alone. During the period between 1540 and 1543 the archbishop was engaged at the head of a commission in the revision of the “Bishop’s Book†(1537) orInstitutions of a Christian Man, and the preparation of theNecessary Erudition(1543) known as the “King’s Book,†which was a modification of the former work in the direction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In June 1545 was issued his Litany, which was substantially the same as that now in use, and shows his mastery of a rhythmical English style.
The course taken by Cranmer in promoting the Reformation exposed him to the bitter hostility of the reactionary party or “men of the old learning,†of whom Gardiner and Bonner were leaders, and on various occasions—notably in 1543 and 1545—conspiracies were formed in the council or elsewhere to effect his overthrow. The king, however, remained true to him, and all the conspiracies signally failed. It illustrates a favourable trait in the archbishop’s character that he forgave all the conspirators. He was, as his secretary Morice testifies, “a man that delighted not in revenging.â€
Cranmer was present with Henry VIII. when he died (1547). By the will of the king he was nominated one of a council of regency composed of sixteen persons, but he acquiesced in the arrangement by which Somerset became lord protector. He officiated at the coronation of the boy king Edward VI., and is supposed to have instituted a sinister change in the order of the ceremony, by which the right of the monarch to reign was made to appear to depend upon inheritance alone, without the concurrent consent of the people. But Edward’s title had been expressly sanctioned by act of parliament, so that there was no more room for election in his case than in that of George I., and the real motive of the changes was to shorten the weary ceremony for the frail child.
During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the Protector and of the young king being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. In 1547 appeared theHomiliesprepared under his direction. Four of them are attributed to the archbishop himself—those on Salvation, Faith, Good Works and the Reading of Scripture. His translation of the German Catechism of Justus Jonas, known as Cranmer’s Catechism, appeared in the following year. Important, as showing his views on a cardinal doctrine, was theDefence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, which he published in 1550. It was immediately answered from the side of the “old learning†by Gardiner. The first prayer-book of Edward VI. was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in March 1549; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop did much of the work of compilation personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI. published in 1553 owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer. The last great undertaking in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but completed before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrangement. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI. dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the titleReformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames. But he naturally loathed persecution, and was as tolerant as any in that age.
Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII. by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward’s “device†of the crown to Lady Jane Grey.On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the nine days’ queen when the others who had with him signed Edward’s device deserted her. On the accession of Mary he was summoned to the council—most of whom had signed the same device—reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen’s pleasure was known. He refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the continent. Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more than nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the queen, who could not forgive his share in her mother’s divorce and her own disgrace. On the 14th of September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declaration he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored. In November, with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two other Dudleys, Cranmer was condemned for treason. Renard thought he would be executed, but so true a Romanist as Mary could scarcely have an ecclesiastic put to death in consequence of a sentence by a secular court, and Cranmer was reserved for treatment as a heretic by the highest of clerical tribunals, which could not act until parliament had restored the papal jurisdiction. Accordingly in March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in the Bocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th of October 1555. Cranmer had been tried by a papal commission, over which Bishop Brooks of Gloucester presided, in September 1555. Brooks had no power to give sentence, but reported to Rome, where Cranmer was summoned, but not permitted, to attend. On the 25th of November he was pronounced contumacious by the pope and excommunicated, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th of February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power. About the same time Cranmer subscribed the first two of his “recantations.†His difficulty consisted in the fact that, like all Anglicans of the 16th century, he recognized no right of private judgment, but believed that the state, as represented by monarchy, parliament and Convocation, had an absolute right to determine the national faith and to impose it on every Englishman. All these authorities had now legally established Roman Catholicism as the national faith, and Cranmer had no logical ground on which to resist. His early “recantations†are merely recognitions of his lifelong conviction of this right of the state. But his dilemma on this point led him into further doubts, and he was eventually induced to revile his whole career and the Reformation. This is what the government wanted. Northumberland’s recantation had done much to discredit the Reformation, Cranmer’s, it was hoped, would complete the work. Hence the enormous effect of Cranmer’s recovery at the final scene. On the 21st of March he was taken to St Mary’s church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life; that he renounced and refused all his recantations as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames. The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.
It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was “too fearful about what might happen to him.†This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer’s character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom. As a theologian it is difficult to class him. As early as 1538 he had repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation; by 1550 he had rejected also the Real Presence (Pref. to hisAnswer to Dr Richard Smith). But here he used the term “real†somewhat unguardedly, for in hisDefencehe asserts a real presence, but defines it as exclusively a spiritual presence; and he repudiates the idea that the bread and wine were “bare tokens.†His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divinehereditaryright of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes. He set practically no limits to the ecclesiastical authority of kings; they were as fully the representatives of the church as the state, and Cranmer hardly distinguished between the two. Church and state to him were one.
Authorities.—Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.vols. iv.-xx.:Acts of the Privy Council, 1542-1556;Cal. of State Papers, Dom. and Foreign; Foxe’sActs and Monuments; Strype’sMemorials of Cranmer(1694);Anecdotes and Character of Archbishop Cranmer, by Ralph Morice, and two contemporary biographies (Camden Society’s publications);Remains of Thomas Cranmer, by Jenkyns (1833);Lives of Cranmer, by Gilpin (1784), Todd (1831), Le Bas, in Hook’sLives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vols. vi. and vii. (1868), by Canon Mason (1897), A. D. Innes (1900) and A. F. Pollard (1904); Froude’sHistory; R. W. Dixon’sHistory; J. Gairdner’sHistory of the Church, 1485-1558; Bishop Cranmer’sRecantacyons, ed. Gairdner (1885). R. E. Chester Waters’sChesters of Chicheley(1877) contains a vast amount of genealogical information about Cranmer which has only been used by one of his biographers.
Authorities.—Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.vols. iv.-xx.:Acts of the Privy Council, 1542-1556;Cal. of State Papers, Dom. and Foreign; Foxe’sActs and Monuments; Strype’sMemorials of Cranmer(1694);Anecdotes and Character of Archbishop Cranmer, by Ralph Morice, and two contemporary biographies (Camden Society’s publications);Remains of Thomas Cranmer, by Jenkyns (1833);Lives of Cranmer, by Gilpin (1784), Todd (1831), Le Bas, in Hook’sLives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vols. vi. and vii. (1868), by Canon Mason (1897), A. D. Innes (1900) and A. F. Pollard (1904); Froude’sHistory; R. W. Dixon’sHistory; J. Gairdner’sHistory of the Church, 1485-1558; Bishop Cranmer’sRecantacyons, ed. Gairdner (1885). R. E. Chester Waters’sChesters of Chicheley(1877) contains a vast amount of genealogical information about Cranmer which has only been used by one of his biographers.
(A. F. P.)
CRANNOG(Celt.crann, a tree), the term applied in Scotland and Ireland to the stockaded islands so numerous in ancient times in the lochs of both countries. The existence of these lake-dwellings in Scotland was first made known by John Mackinlay, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in a letter sent to George Chalmers, the author ofCaledonia, in 1813, describing two crannogs, or fortified islands in Bute. The crannog of Lagore, the first discovered in Ireland, was examined and described by Sir William Wilde in 1840. But it was not until after the discovery of the pile-villages of the Swiss lakes, in 1853, had drawn public attention to the subject of lake-dwellings, that the crannogs of Scotland and Ireland were systematically investigated.
The results of these investigations show that they have little in common with the Swiss lake-dwellings, except that they are placed in lakes. Few examples are known in England, although over a hundred and fifty have been examined in Ireland, and more than half that number in Scotland. As a rule they have been constructed on islets or shallows in the lochs, which have been adapted for occupation, and fortified by single or double lines of stockaded defences drawn round the margin. To enlarge the area, or raise the surface-level where that was necessary, layers of logs, brushwood, heather and ferns were piled on the shallow, and consolidated with gravel and stones. Over all there was laid a layer of earth, a floor of logs or a pavement of flagstones. In rare instances the body of the work is entirely of stones, the stockaded defence and the huts within its enclosure being the only parts constructed of timber. Occasionally a bridge of logs, or a causeway of stones, formed a communication with the shore, but often the only means of getting to and from the island was by canoes hollowed out of a single tree. Remains of huts of logs, or of wattled work, are often found within the enclosure. Three crannogs in Dowalton Loch, Wigtownshire, examined by Lord Lovaine in 1863, were found to be constructed of layers of fern and birch and hazel branches, mixed with boulders and penetrated by oak piles, while above all there was a surface layer of stones and soil. The remains of the stockade round the margin were of vertical piles mortised into horizontal bars, and secured by pegs in the mortised holes. The crannog ofLochlee, near Tarbolton, Ayrshire, explored by Dr R. Munro in 1878, was 100 ft. in diameter, and had a double row of piles, bound by horizontal stretchers with square mortise-holes, enclosing an area 60 ft. in diameter. In the centre was a space 40 ft. square, bounded by the remains of a wooden wall and paved inside with split logs. A partition divided it into two equal parts, one of which had a doorway opening to the south, and close by it an extensive refuse-heap. In the middle of the other part was a stone-paved hearth, with remains of three former hearths underneath. The substructure was built up from the bottom of the loch, partly of brushwood but chiefly of logs and trunks of trees with the branches lopped off, placed in layers, each disposed transversely or obliquely across the one below it. A crannog in Loch-an-Dhugael, Balinakill, Argyllshire, described by the same explorer in 1893, revealed a substructure similar to that at Lochlee, with a double row of piles enclosing an area 45 to 50 ft. in diameter, within which was a circular construction 32 ft. in diameter, which had been supported by a large central post and about twenty uprights ranged round the circumference.
From their common feature of a substructure of brushwood and logs built up from the bottom, the crannogs have been classed as fascine-dwellings, to distinguish them from the typical pile-dwellings of the earlier periods in Switzerland, whose platforms are supported by piles driven into the bed of the lake. The crannog of Cloonfinlough in Connaught had a triple stockade of oak piles, connected by horizontal stretchers and enclosing an area 130 ft. in diameter, laid with trunks of oak trees. In the crannog of Lagore, county Meath, there were about 150 cartloads of bones, chiefly of oxen, deer, sheep and swine, the refuse of the food of the occupants. In the crannog of Lisnacroghera, county Antrim, iron swords, with sheaths of thin bronze ornamented with scrolls characteristic of the Late Celtic style, iron daggers, an iron spear-head 16½ in. in length, and pieces of what are called large caldrons of iron, were found. Among the few remains of lacustrine settlements in England and Wales, some are suggestive of the typical crannog structure. The most important of these is the Glastonbury lake village, excavated by Mr A. Bulleid and Mr St George Gray. It consists of more than sixty separate dwellings, grouped within a triangular palisaded defence, formed in the midst of a marsh now partially reclaimed. The dwellings were circular, from 18 to 35 ft. in diameter, the substructure formed of logs and brushwood mingled with stones and clay, and outlined by piles driven into the bottom of the shallow lake. The walls of the houses seem to have been made of wattle-work, supported by posts sometimes not more than a single foot apart. The floors are of clay, with a hearth of stones in the centre, often showing several renewals over the original. The relics recovered show unmistakably that the occupation must be dated within the Iron Age, but probably pre-Roman, as no evidence of contact with Roman civilization has been discovered. The stage of civilization indicated is nevertheless not a low one. Besides the implements and weapons of iron there are fibulae and brooches of bronze, weaving combs and spindle-whorls, a bronze mirror and tweezers, wheel-made pottery as well as hand-made, ornamented with Late Celtic patterns, a bowl of thin bronze decorated with bosses, the nave of a wooden wheel with holes for twelve spokes, and a dug-out canoe. Another site in Holderness, Yorkshire, examined by Mr Boynton in 1881, yielded evidence of fascine construction, with suggestions of occupation in the latter part of the Bronze Age. Similar indications are adduced by Professor Boyd Dawkins from the site on Barton Mere. On the other hand, the implements and weapons found in the Scottish and Irish crannogs are usually of iron, or, if objects of bronze and stone are found, they are commonly such as were in use in the Iron Age. Crannogs are frequently referred to in the Irish annals. Under the year 848 theAnnals of the Four Mastersrecord the burning of the island of Lough Gabhor (the crannog of Lagore), and the same stronghold is noticed as again destroyed by the Danes in 933. Under the year 1246 it is recorded that Turlough O’Connor made his escape from the crannog of Lough Leisi, and drowned his keepers. Many other entries occur in the succeeding centuries. In the register of the privy council of Scotland, April 14, 1608, it is ordered that “the haill houssis of defence, strongholds, andcrannokisin the Yllis (the western isles) pertaining to Angus M’Conneill of Dunnyvaig and Hector M’Cloyne of Dowart sal be delyverit to His Majestie.†Judging from the historical evidence of their late continuance, and from the character of the relics found in them, the crannogs may be included among the latest prehistoric strongholds, reaching their greatest development in early historic times, and surviving through the middle ages. In Ireland, Sir William Wilde has assigned their range approximately to the period between the 9th and 16th centuries; while Dr Munro holds that the vast majority of them, both in Ireland and in Scotland, were not only inhabited, but constructed during the Iron Age, and that their period of greatest development was as far posterior to Roman civilization as that of the SwissPfahlbautenwas anterior to it. (SeeLake Dwellings.)