"Theodore Maynard has written a brilliant biography of this man who did more than any other single person to determine the course of the Church of England. Depicting Cranmer's life, from early days as a Cambridge student, to his chance meeting with Henry VIII and his long career as Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Maynard clears up much of the misinformation centring around him. Thomas Cranmer, he makes abundantly clear, was an artist, not a man of action. Seized and divested of his position by Queen Mary, he made seven recantations, but always with the reservation that he owed allegiance to the monarch of England first, the Pope second. In 1556 he was burned at the stake, and Catholicism received a major blow." -- Book jacket.