CHAPTER VII.

The archbishop's family at the time of his martyrdom—Seizure of part of his possessions by queen Mary-The restoration in blood of his children, by Act of parliament, in the reign of Elizabeth-Petition of his son Thomas to that sovereign.

DURING his imprisonment, and at his closing scene, we find not, in the biographies of the archbishop, any mention of wife, or child, or other relative, attending or contributing to console and support him. Fear perhaps, if not the injunction of authority, restrained their interference. Or probably the committal of their great kinsman to the Tower had been to them the warning, not unheeded, for voluntary exile or careful concealment. His younger brother, Edmund, the archdeacon of Canterbury, had been deprived indeed of all his preferments by the Marian order against the married clergy. But his elder brother,

1 See before, p. 447.

1

John, was still possessed of the patrimonial manors at Aslacton and Whatton; to whose son, Thomas, the archbishop had assigned the rectories also of those places, which, in the first year of Edward, he had purchased of that sovereign, and which had belonged to the dissolved monastery of Welbeck. To this nephew they had been probably assigned under a condition that the archbishop's wife, if she survived him, should enjoy the revenues, and that after her death the rectories and manors should be the united property of the head of the Cranmer family. Possessed of both this nephew died, and to his heir they descended; but, before the sixteenth century closed, the property changed hands, being purchased by an ancestor of the duke of Portland, in whose family it remained till about half a century since, when the demesnes were sold in three allotments to others.

That this rectorial property, and not an abbey in Nottinghamshire, was the subsistence for the archbishop's widow, I have little doubt, as I can find no mention of the grant of any religious house either to her or to Cranmer, distinct from annexa

'Strype and others have imagined an abbey in Nottinghamshire to have been settled upon her by Henry; and some have pronounced it to have been Welbeck; misled by the circumstance perhaps of the rectories having belonged to that religious house.

1

tion to the see of Canterbury, except the monastery of Kirkstall in the county of York, to which the nunnery of Arthington also belonged. These had been granted and confirmed to the archbishop both by Henry and Edward; and, in the book of royal sales by the latter, a reference to other property in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Kent, conveyed with them, is also made; among which we may conclude the rectories of Aslacton and Whatton to have been named. The settlement of these minor possessions was now undisturbed. The immediate heir of Cranmer was not concerned in them. But the rich demesnes of Kirkstall Mary seized as her right upon the archbishop's attainture as a traitor, although she had pardoned the treason! His son appears to have long suffered by the loss, as his petition to Elizabeth will presently shew. Meantime let us revert to the archbishop's widow. Strype says, that she was living toward the latter end of archbishop Parker's time; Ames, upon what authority I know not, says that she married Edward Whitchurch, the celebrated printer in the reign of Edward, who had been a merchant, who had been well known to the arch

1

Strype mentions them as granted only by Edward, and further mistakes the bestowal as if for especial services. The grant of it was by Henry in the 34th year of his reign, confirmed in the 1st and 4th of Edward's, in exchange for archiepiscopal possessions. See also Tanner under Kirkstall and Arthington.

bishop, and who smarted also under the severities

of Mary.

Four sisters of Cranmer, 'married to persons of distinction, I may add, lived to hear of his martyrdom.

2

His son Thomas, and his daughter Margaret, his only surviving children, were restored in blood by an Act of Parliament, Feb. 27, 1562-3. Some years afterwards this son awakened Elizabeth's remembrance of his father, and detailed to her his own losses, in the following petition.

3 To the Queen's most excellent Majesty. "In most humble and loyal wise sheweth unto your Majesty your poor and hapless subject, Thomas Cranmer, son unto Thomas Cranmer, late archbishop of Canterbury, That whereas your said subject's father having purchased of your Highness's father and brother of famous memory the Monastery of Kirkstall, and the Nunnery of Arthington, and divers woods to them belonging, to him and his heirs in fee simple; and, intending to leave the same to your poor subject and supplicant, made two several feoffments thereof, the one of the Manor of Kirkstall and the demesnes, the other of the Nunnery of Arthington and the woods, both of them to the use of himself for

2

3

'See the genealogical table prefixed to this Life.

Strype, and Sir Simons D'Ewes, Journ. of the House of Lords. Original MS. Lansdowne MSS. No. 107. art. 72.

life and after his decease to his executors for the term of twenty years, the remainder to Thomas Cranmer his son, your Highness's said supplicant, and his heirs of his body lawfully begotten, the remainder in fee to the said archbishop and his heirs for ever: So it is, most dread sovereign, that the said archbishop being attainted of high treason in the first year of queen Mary, she entered upon the aforesaid Monastery of Kirkstall and the Nunnery of Arthington and the woods, and demised or let them in lease to one Gawin and others for the term of 21 years, reserving the yearly rent of 57%. which your Majesty received until the 14th year of your Highness's reign, being of the yearly value of 2007. whereby your Majesty's poor suppliant was indemnified to the value of 4000l. to the great impoverishing of your Majesty's subject, although by the laws of the realm the said lands were your Highness's poor subject's, immediately after the decease of the said archbishop his father, as it is upon the most chargeable suit of your subject adjudged by your Highness's Court of Common Pleas.

"And likewise, may it please your most excellent Majesty, your poor suppliant and subject aforesaid, by reason of the concealment of the said deed of Arthington and the woods, was constrained to buy the said Arthington Nunnery of your Highness, and paid to your Highness for the same 1087. besides much money spent in the com