Most, I believe, would argue that Thomas Becket is the most famous archbishop of Canterbury.  More than any other figure, he put Canterbury itself on the map in England.  Fame came from his brutal death at the hands of knights of King Henry II.

In his late thirties, early forties, Becket, not even a Roman Catholic priest, served Henry II as the chancellor of England.  When the opportunity came to insert a new Archbishop at Canterbury, Henry was happy to choose Becket.  Henry II brought many important features to English civil rights and a just legal system.  He had no jurisdiction over the misbehavior of Roman Catholic leaders.  He expected Becket to help him with that.

Becket instead defended the power of Roman Catholicism against state intervention, even in criminal cases.   Years Becket antagonized the King.  Then Henry said aloud in his knight’s presence, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”  Whatever their original intentions, four of the knights killed Becket on December 29, 1170.

Monks took blood of Becket poured out in the Cathedral, mixed it with water, and used it for the anointing of the sick.  Apparently men witnessed miracles.  In stain glass at Canterbury is a portrayal of a death bed where the man drank the concoction and vomited out the cause.  He walked away well.

The Pope venerated Becket as saint and martyr.  Thousands took a pilgrimage to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Becket.  Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about these pilgrims in Canterbury Tales.  King Henry did penance of hundreds of blows with a rod.  A memorial still decorates the place where Becket died in Canterbury Cathedral.  A candle remains perpetually lit where Becket’s shrine once sat.

Almost no one cares about the death of another Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.  He held that office during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and shortly Mary I.  Cranmer opposed the power of the Roman Catholic Church.  He led the English Reformation.  He wrote the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, the official liturgy for the Church of England.  If you try to find the place in Oxford where Queen Mary, Roman Catholic “Bloody Mary,” executed him, it will not be easy.

Shortly before his execution, Cranmer said:

And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death and to save my life if it might be; and that is all such bills which I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation: wherein I have written many things untrue. And foreasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished, for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and anti-Christ, with all his false doctrine. And as for the Sacrament. . . .

As he died in the flames, burnt at the stake, he cried:  “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”  Whatever Cranmer may have believed, he attempted to distinguish himself from Roman Catholicism at least and wrote the following in the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.

I don’t write this to advocate for the Church of England, just to provide a distinction between the way England treats these two Archbishops, even though the former was Roman Catholic.