The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct more contemptible.  He complied, it is said, against his better judgment, because he could not resist the entreaties of Edward.  A holy prelate of sixty, one would think, might be better employed by the bedside of a dying child, than in committing crimes at the request of the young disciple.  If Cranmer had shown half as much firmness when Edward requested him to commit treason as he had before shown when Edward requested him not to commit murder, he might have saved the country from one of the greatest misfortunes that it ever underwent.  He became, from whatever motive, the accomplice of the worthless Dudley.  The virtuous scruples of another young and amiable mind were to be overcome.  As Edward had been forced into persecution, Jane was to be seduced into treason.  No transaction in our annals is more unjustifiable than this.  If a hereditary title were to be respected, Mary possessed it.  If a parliamentary title were preferable, Mary possessed that also.  If the interest of the Protestant religion required a departure from the ordinary rule of succession, that interest would have been best served by raising Elizabeth to the throne.  If the foreign relations of the kingdom were considered, still stronger reasons might be found for preferring Elizabeth to Jane.  There was great doubt whether Jane or the Queen of Scotland had the better claim; and that doubt would, in all probability, have produced a war both with Scotland and with France, if the project of Northumberland had not been blasted in its infancy.  That Elizabeth had a better claim than the Queen of Scotland was indisputable.  To the part which Cranmer, and unfortunately some better men than Cranmer, took in this most reprehensible scheme, much of the severity with which the Protestants were afterwards treated must in fairness be ascribed.

The plot failed; Popery triumphed; and Cranmer recanted.  Most people look on his recantation as a single blemish on an honourable life, the frailty of an unguarded moment.  But, in fact, his recantation was in strict accordance with the system on which he had constantly acted.  It was part of a regular habit.  It was not the first recantation that he had made; and, in all probability, if it had answered its purpose, it would not have been the last.  We do not blame him for not choosing to be burned alive.  It is no very severe reproach to any person that he does not possess heroic fortitude.  But surely a man who liked the fire so little should have had some sympathy for others.  A persecutor who inflicts nothing which he is not ready to endure deserves some respect.  But when a man who loves his doctrines more than the lives of his neighbours, loves his own little finger better than his doctrines, a very simple argument a fortiori will enable us to estimate the amount of his benevolence.