2

but forbore not to record her as Black Joan of the Dolphin, not without the benefit of an alias however, but with no account of her "condition," nor with a syllable relating to her by any of the witnesses who deposed as to the fact of the marriage. He writes only that she lived at an inn. Foxe and archdeacon Mason will presently tell us why she lived there. It has been reserved for a modern writer to affirm, from this local habitation and a name, "that, doubtless, she was a servant;" softening the affirmation, at the same time, by rendering it the handmaid to a philosophical sketch (as it were) of the husband

66 4

* meekly retiring to live with her at the inn, there perhaps enjoying, such is the delusion and uncertainty of human prospects, that peace and tranquillity which was ever denied to his future grandeur !" But this repose is destroyed by another air-drawn picture of him at the inn, where, his enemies said, " he was the hostler." In truth, immediately after his marriage, he betook himself to what became a man of his attainments-the office of instructing others. He retired not from the University, nor did the

1 Lambeth MS. ut supr.

2 "Seu alio forsan nomine, vel cognomine, vocatam." Lamb. MS. ut supr.

3

Lodge, Historical Portraits, 1829. Chalmers, in his Biograph. Dict. 1813, allows her to have been a gentleman's daughter.

University disown him, as if he had made an unworthy connexion. The connexion brought him no fortune indeed, but he maintained the respect that had hitherto been shewn him, and increased the reputation he had already gained. "It chanced him," says the biographer, who was his contemporary, "to marry a gentleman's daughter; by means whereof he lost his fellowship, and became the reader in Buckingham College; and, for that he would with more diligence apply that his office of reading, placed his said wife at an inn called the Dolphin, the wife of the house being of affinity to her. By reason whereof, and for his open resort unto his wife at that inn, he was much marked of some popish merchants; whereupon rose the slanderous noise and report against him, after he was preferred to the archbishopric of Canterbury, raised up by the malicious disdain of certain malignant adversaries to Christ and his truth, bruiting abroad everywhere, that he was but a hostler, and there

! Foxe. 65

2

As Magdalen College was then called. The lecturer in any faculty was then, as in former days, called the reader. See Wood's Annals Univ. Ox. Fuller and Burnet consider Cranmer's present office as "the divinity-lecture;" Strype, as "the common lecture," from the MS. Life of Cranm. C. C. Coll. Camb.

3

"He placed his wife at the Dolphin, the mistress of the house being her cousin." Archdeacon Mason, Of the Consecration of Bishops, &c. 1613, p. 73.

fore without all good learning." Fuller, in his pleasant manner, thus comments upon the slander: "Indeed with his learned lectures (at Buckingham College) Cranmer rubbed the galled backs, and curried the lazy hides, of many an idle and ignorant friar." The spirit of free inquiry had been now awakened, and Cranmer, we may suppose, encouraged it...

3

66 4

In about a year after his marriage, his wife died. Such was his character, and such the regard of his former College for him, that he was imme diately restored to the fellowship he had forfeited. This has been a singularly honourable proceeding. For the statutes or customs of the Colleges in Cambridge and Oxford, reject, as fellows, both the widower and the husband; maritos vel maritatos; but the barbarous word maritatos,” Fuller shrewdly observes," was not, or was not taken notice of, in Jesus College statutes. Cranmer herein is a precedent by himself, if that may be a precedent which hath none to follow it." His studies were now pursued with new ardour, and with great judgment. He rarely read without a pen in his hand. The abundant references

Hist. of Camb. Church Hist. 1655, p. 102.

2 MS. Life of Cranm. C. C. Coll. Camb.

J

5

An attempt, within our own times, is said to have been

made, but without success, thus to reinstate an eminent mem

ber of the University, whose case was that of Cranmer.

Hist. of Camb. Church Hist. 102.

* Melchior Adam, Vit. Cranm. inter Vit. Theolog.

he was thus accustomed to make readily served him, in the days of controversy, for excellent defence, or easily led him on to absolute conquest.

The even tenor of his academical life now appears to have been undisturbed, till the agents of Wolsey, in 1524, were employed to collect, from both Universities, the most distinguished men of learning for the cardinal's new foundation at Oxford. To Cranmer the offer of promotion in it was accordingly made. Nor was it disregarded. But, while he was on the way to accept it, he was persuaded by some of his friends to decline and the refusal is believed to have given great offence.

it ;

3

Proceeding to the degree of doctor in divinity, he was appointed to the lectureship in that faculty, newly founded in his own College. About the same time (1526) he was chosen by the University one of the public examiners in theology; and his discharge of the office contri

"

1 Peter Martyr, mentioning the great number of books that he had seen thus noted by Cranmer, in regard to his controversy with Gardiner, adds, that the archbishop had done the same thing as to all other doctrines then in question. There are manuscript collections of the archbishop, now in the Lambeth Library, exhibiting the like kind of literary accumulations. MSS. No. 1107, 1108.

"1526. Prælector theologicus in Collegio nostro (fortassè primus) ex fundatione Dris, Batemanson." Jes. Coll. Camb. MS.

buted to forward the Reformation. Before he

2

"

was thus distinguished, he had been also one of the select preachers employed by the University. He had now long studied the Scriptures. He had obtained the name of a Scripturist, which was given to those in the University who, by the Book of God, were led to think for themselves, and who were not without the suspicion of inclining to Luther. His examination of those, who wished to proceed in divinity, was therefore not in the sentences of the schoolmen, as was the custom of former days, but in the sacred pages. To none, who were not well acquainted with these, would he allow the degree required; and by many, in after-days, he was ingenuously thanked for his conscientious determination, which bade them "aspire unto better knowledge" than the sophistry they had hitherto studied. Persuaded as he must have been by Erasmus, he would now perhaps be also convinced by Luther, that the corruptions of the Romish Church were great and many; and from both might be collecting materials, as his manner of reading was, that were 'afterwards subservient to a systematic reformation in his own country.

A

But these and other studies at Cambridge were soon to be interrupted. An epidemic distemper appeared. To Cranmer was entrusted, at this

MS. Jes. Coll. Camb. Concionator academicus emissus." 2 Strype.

3 Foxe.