Note 563 — Chapter XIII

This oath, which is to be found in the original Latin, in Cranmer’s own Register, at Lambeth Palace, Strype claimed to have copied verbatim therefrom, and he refers his readers to a document in the appendix to his Memorials of Cranmer. On turning however to this reference, we find only a shortened and garbled version of that which Cranmer wrote with his own hand. Strype evidently confused the two oaths, the one which Cranmer took before his consecration, and that which he pronounced on receiving the pallium, with the result that neither is correctly given, Strype omitting a whole essential paragraph. When the Memorials were re-edited, in 1848, by the Ecclesiastical History Society, which declared that they had been verified as far as possible, and more correct references added, wherever it appeared needful, the learned Dr. S. R. Maitland, Librarian at Lambeth Palace, pointed out that no collation had been made between the oath, as it stands in the first edition of Strype’s work, and the original document. Canon Dixon, in treating of this matter, could not have been aware of Strype’s blunder, or have seen Cranmer’s Register, for he says; “When he took the oath or oaths of obedience to the Pope, he made many omissions, and then with an easier conscience proceeded to the oath to the King for his temporalities” (History of the Church of England, vol. i., p. 158). The form which Cranmer in his Register admits that he took on receiving the pallium is, with one or two slight verbal exceptions, the very same as that which Burnet prints (book ii., ann. 1532) as “the old oath of canonical obedience to the Pope”. For the text of Cranmer’s oath see Appendix E to this volume.