Chapter XII: Front Matter (12)

It was a somewhat curious concurrence of circumstances that transferred Cranmer, almost at one step, from the quiet seclusion of the university to the din and bustle of the court. In August 1529 the plague known as the sweating sickness, which prevailed throughout the country, was specially severe at Cambridge, and all who had it in their power forsook the town for the country. Cranmer went with two of his pupils named Cressy, related to him through their mother, to their father's house at Waltham in Essex. The king (Henry VIII.) happened at the time to be visiting in the immediate neighbourhood, and two of his chief counsellors, Gardiner, secretary of state, afterwards bishop of Winchester, and Edward Fox, the lord high almoner, afterwards bishop of Hereford, were lodged at Cressy's house. Meeting with Cranmer, they were naturally led to discuss the king's meditated divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer suggested that if the canonists and the universities should decide that marriage with a deceased brother's widow was illegal, and if it were proved that Catherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. The necessity of an appeal to Rome was thus dispensed with, and this point was at once seen by the king, who, when Cranmer's opinion was reported to him, is said to have ordered him to be summoned in these terms: "I will speak to him. Let him be sent for out of hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the ear."

At their first interview Cranmer was commanded by the king to lay aside all other pursuits and to devote himself to the question of the divorce. He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils. His material interests certainly did not suffer by compliance. He was commended to the hospitality of Anne Boleyn's father, the earl of Wiltshire, in whose house at Durham Place he resided for some time; the king appointed him archdeacon of Taunton and one of his chaplains; and he also held a parochial benefice, the name of which is unknown. When the treatise was finished Cranmer was called upon to defend its argument before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which he visited, accompanied by Fox and Gardiner. Immediately afterwards he was sent to plead the cause before a more powerful if not a higher tribunal. An embassy, with the earl of Wiltshire at its head, was despatched to Rome in 1530, that "the matter of the divorce should be disputed and ventilated," and Cranmer was an important member of it. He was received by the Pope with marked courtesy, and was appointed "Grand Penitentiary of England," but his argument, if he ever had the opportunity of stating it, did not lead to any practical decision of the question.

Cranmer returned in September 1530, but in January 1531 he received a second commission from the king appointing him "Conciliarius Regius et ad Caesarem Orator." In the summer of 1531 he accordingly proceeded to Germany as sole ambassador to the emperor. He was also to sound the Lutheran princes with a view to an alliance, and to obtain the removal of some restrictions on English trade. At Nuremberg he became acquainted with Osiander, whose somewhat isolated theological position he probably found to be in many points analogous to his own. Both were convinced that the old order must change; neither saw clearly what the new order should be to which it was to give place. They had frequent interviews, which had doubtless an important influence on Cranmer's opinions. But Osiander's house had another attraction of a different kind from theological sympathy. His niece Margaret won the heart of Cranmer, and in 1532 they were married. Hook finds in the fact of the marriage corroboration of Cranmer's statement that he never expected or desired the primacy; and it seems probable enough that, if he had foreseen how soon the primacy was to be forced upon him, he would have avoided a disqualification which it was difficult to conceal and dangerous to disclose.

Expected or not, the primacy was forced upon him within a very few months of his marriage. In August 1532 Archbishop Warham died, and the king almost immediately afterwards intimated to Cranmer, who had accompanied the emperor in his campaign against the Turks, his nomination to the vacant see. Cranmer's conduct was certainly consistent with his profession that he did not desire, as he had not expected, the dangerous promotion. He sent his wife to England, but delayed his own return in the vain hope that another appointment might be made. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533, and the consecration took place on the 30th March. One peculiarity of the ceremony had occasioned considerable discussion. It was the custom for the archbishop elect to take two oaths, the first of episcopal allegiance to the pope, and the second in recognition of the royal supremacy. The latter was so wide in its scope that it might fairly be held to supersede the former in so far as the two were inconsistent. Cranmer, however, was not satisfied with this. He had a special protest recorded, in which he formally declared that he swore allegiance to the pope only in so far as that was consistent with his supreme duty to the king. The morality of this course has been much canvassed, though it seems really to involve nothing more than an express declaration of what the two oaths implied. It was the course that would readily suggest itself to a man of timid nature who wished to secure himself against such a fate as Wolsey's. It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.

In the last as in the first step of Cranmer's promotion Henry had been actuated by one and the same motive. The business of the divorce--or rather, of the legitimation of Anne Boleyn's expected issue--had now become very urgent, and in the new archbishop he had an agent who might be expected to forward it with the needful haste. The celerity and skill with which Cranmer did the work intrusted to him must have fully satisfied his master. During the first week of April Convocation sat almost from day to day to determine questions of fact and law in relation to Catherine's marriage with Henry as affected by her previous marriage with his brother Arthur. Decisions favourable to the object of the king were given on these questions, though even the despotism of the most despotic of the Tudors failed to secure absolute unanimity. The next step was taken by Cranmer, who wrote a letter to the king, praying to be allowed to remove the anxiety of loyal subjects as to a possible case of disputed succession, by finally determining the validity of the marriage in his archiepiscopal court. There is evidence that the request was prompted by the king, and his consent was given as a matter of course. Queen Catherine was residing at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, and to suit her convenience the court was held at the priory of Dunstable in the immediate neighbourhood. Declining to appear, she was declared contumacious, and on the 23rd of May the archbishop gave judgment declaring the marriage null and void from the first, and so leaving the king free to marry whom he pleased. The Act of Appeals had already prohibited any appeal from the archbishop's court. Five days later he pronounced the marriage between Henry and Anne--which had been secretly celebrated about the 25th of January 1533--to be valid. On the 1st of June he crowned Anne as queen, and on the 10th of September stood godfather to her child, the future Queen Elizabeth.

The breach with Rome and the subjection of the church in England to the royal supremacy had been practically achieved before Cranmer's appointment as archbishop: and he had little to do with the other constitutional changes of Henry's reign. But his position as chief minister of Henry's ecclesiastical jurisdiction forced him into unpleasant prominence in connexion with the king's matrimonial experiences. In 1536 he was required to revise his own sentence in favour of the validity of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn; and on the 17th of May the marriage was declared invalid. The ground on which this sentence is pronounced is fairly clear. Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn, had been Henry VIII.'s mistress; this by canon law was a bar to his marriage with Anne--a bar which had been removed by papal dispensation in 1527, but now the papal power to dispense in such cases had been repudiated, and the original objection revived. The sentence was grotesquely legal and unjust. With Anne's condemnation by the House of Lords Cranmer had nothing to do. He interceded for her in vain with the king, as he had done in the cases of Fisher, More and the monks of Christchurch. His share in the divorce of Anne of Cleves was less prominent than that of Gardiner, though he did preside over the Convocation in which nearly all the dignitaries of the church signified their approval of that measure. To his next and last interposition in the matrimonial affairs of the king no discredit attaches itself. When he was made cognizant of the charges against Catherine Howard, his duty to communicate them to the king was obvious, though painful.

Meanwhile Cranmer was actively carrying out the policy which has associated his name more closely, perhaps, than that of any other ecclesiastic with the Reformation in England. Its most important feature on the theological as distinct from the political side was the endeavour to promote the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, by encouraging translation and procuring an order in 1538 that a copy of the Bible in English should be set up in every church in a convenient place for reading. Only second in importance to this was the re-adjustment of the creed and liturgy of the church, which formed Cranmer's principal work during the latter half of his life. The progress of the archbishop's opinion towards that middle Protestantism, if it may be so called, which he did so much to impress on the formularies of the Church of England, was gradual, as a brief enumeration of the successive steps in that progress will show. In 1538 an embassy of German divines visited England with the design, among other things, of forming a common confession for the two countries. This proved impracticable, but the frequent conferences Cranmer had with the theologians composing the embassy had doubtless a great influence in modifying his views. Both in parliament and in Convocation he opposed the Six Articles of 1539, but he stood almost alone. During the period between 1540 and 1543 the archbishop was engaged at the head of a commission in the revision of the "Bishop's Book" (1537) or _Institutions of a Christian Man_, and the preparation of the _Necessary Erudition_ (1543) known as the "King's Book," which was a modification of the former work in the direction of Roman Catholic doctrine. In June 1545 was issued his Litany, which was substantially the same as that now in use, and shows his mastery of a rhythmical English style.

The course taken by Cranmer in promoting the Reformation exposed him to the bitter hostility of the reactionary party or "men of the old learning," of whom Gardiner and Bonner were leaders, and on various occasions--notably in 1543 and 1545--conspiracies were formed in the council or elsewhere to effect his overthrow. The king, however, remained true to him, and all the conspiracies signally failed. It illustrates a favourable trait in the archbishop's character that he forgave all the conspirators. He was, as his secretary Morice testifies, "a man that delighted not in revenging."

Cranmer was present with Henry VIII. when he died (1547). By the will of the king he was nominated one of a council of regency composed of sixteen persons, but he acquiesced in the arrangement by which Somerset became lord protector. He officiated at the coronation of the boy king Edward VI., and is supposed to have instituted a sinister change in the order of the ceremony, by which the right of the monarch to reign was made to appear to depend upon inheritance alone, without the concurrent consent of the people. But Edward's title had been expressly sanctioned by act of parliament, so that there was no more room for election in his case than in that of George I., and the real motive of the changes was to shorten the weary ceremony for the frail child.

During this reign the work of the Reformation made rapid progress, the sympathies both of the Protector and of the young king being decidedly Protestant. Cranmer was therefore enabled without let or hindrance to complete the preparation of the church formularies, on which he had been for some time engaged. In 1547 appeared the _Homilies_ prepared under his direction. Four of them are attributed to the archbishop himself--those on Salvation, Faith, Good Works and the Reading of Scripture. His translation of the German Catechism of Justus Jonas, known as Cranmer's Catechism, appeared in the following year. Important, as showing his views on a cardinal doctrine, was the _Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament_, which he published in 1550. It was immediately answered from the side of the "old learning" by Gardiner. The first prayer-book of Edward VI. was finished in November 1548, and received legal sanction in March 1549; the second was completed and sanctioned in April 1552. The archbishop did much of the work of compilation personally. The forty-two articles of Edward VI. published in 1553 owe their form and style almost entirely to the hand of Cranmer. The last great undertaking in which he was employed was the revision of his codification of the canon law, which had been all but completed before the death of Henry. The task was one eminently well suited to his powers, and the execution of it was marked by great skill in definition and arrangement. It never received any authoritative sanction, Edward VI. dying before the proclamation establishing it could be made, and it remained unpublished until 1571, when a Latin translation by Dr Walter Haddon and Sir John Cheke appeared under the title _Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum_. It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames. But he naturally loathed persecution, and was as tolerant as any in that age.

Cranmer stood by the dying bed of Edward as he had stood by that of his father, and he there suffered himself to be persuaded to take a step against his own convictions. He had pledged himself to respect the testamentary disposition of Henry VIII. by which the succession devolved upon Mary, and now he violated his oath by signing Edward's "device" of the crown to Lady Jane Grey. On grounds of policy and morality alike the act was quite indefensible; but it is perhaps some palliation of his perjury that it was committed to satisfy the last urgent wish of a dying man, and that he alone remained true to the nine days' queen when the others who had with him signed Edward's device deserted her. On the accession of Mary he was summoned to the council--most of whom had signed the same device--reprimanded for his conduct, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth until the queen's pleasure was known. He refused to follow the advice of his friends and avoid the fate that was clearly impending over him by flight to the continent. Any chance of safety that lay in the friendliness of a strong party in the council was more than nullified by the bitter personal enmity of the queen, who could not forgive his share in her mother's divorce and her own disgrace. On the 14th of September 1553 he was sent to the Tower, where Ridley and Latimer were also confined. The immediate occasion of his imprisonment was a strongly worded declaration he had written a few days previously against the mass, the celebration of which, he heard, had been re-established at Canterbury. He had not taken steps to publish this, but by some unknown channel a copy reached the council, and it could not be ignored. In November, with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two other Dudleys, Cranmer was condemned for treason. Renard thought he would be executed, but so true a Romanist as Mary could scarcely have an ecclesiastic put to death in consequence of a sentence by a secular court, and Cranmer was reserved for treatment as a heretic by the highest of clerical tribunals, which could not act until parliament had restored the papal jurisdiction. Accordingly in March 1554 he and his two illustrious fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, where they were confined in the Bocardo or common prison. Ridley and Latimer were unflinching, and suffered bravely at the stake on the 16th of October 1555. Cranmer had been tried by a papal commission, over which Bishop Brooks of Gloucester presided, in September 1555. Brooks had no power to give sentence, but reported to Rome, where Cranmer was summoned, but not permitted, to attend. On the 25th of November he was pronounced contumacious by the pope and excommunicated, and a commission was sent to England to degrade him from his office of archbishop. This was done with the usual humiliating ceremonies in Christ Church, Oxford, on the 14th of February 1556, and he was then handed over to the secular power. About the same time Cranmer subscribed the first two of his "recantations." His difficulty consisted in the fact that, like all Anglicans of the 16th century, he recognized no right of private judgment, but believed that the state, as represented by monarchy, parliament and Convocation, had an absolute right to determine the national faith and to impose it on every Englishman. All these authorities had now legally established Roman Catholicism as the national faith, and Cranmer had no logical ground on which to resist. His early "recantations" are merely recognitions of his lifelong conviction of this right of the state. But his dilemma on this point led him into further doubts, and he was eventually induced to revile his whole career and the Reformation. This is what the government wanted. Northumberland's recantation had done much to discredit the Reformation, Cranmer's, it was hoped, would complete the work. Hence the enormous effect of Cranmer's recovery at the final scene. On the 21st of March he was taken to St Mary's church, and asked to repeat his recantation in the hearing of the people as he had promised. To the surprise of all he declared with dignity and emphasis that what he had recently done troubled him more than anything he ever did or said in his whole life; that he renounced and refused all his recantations as things written with his hand, contrary to the truth which he thought in his heart; and that as his hand had offended, his hand should be first burned when he came to the fire. As he had said, his right hand was steadfastly exposed to the flames. The calm cheerfulness and resolution with which he met his fate show that he felt that he had cleared his conscience, and that his recantation of his recantations was a repentance that needed not to be repented of.

It was a noble end to what, in spite of its besetting sin of infirmity of moral purpose, was a not ignoble life. The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was "too fearful about what might happen to him." This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer's character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom. As a theologian it is difficult to class him. As early as 1538 he had repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation; by 1550 he had rejected also the Real Presence (Pref. to his _Answer to Dr Richard Smith_). But here he used the term "real" somewhat unguardedly, for in his _Defence_ he asserts a real presence, but defines it as exclusively a spiritual presence; and he repudiates the idea that the bread and wine were "bare tokens." His views on church polity were dominated by his implicit belief in the divine right of kings (not of course the divine _hereditary_ right of kings) which the Anglicans felt it necessary to set up against the divine right of popes. He set practically no limits to the ecclesiastical authority of kings; they were as fully the representatives of the church as the state, and Cranmer hardly distinguished between the two. Church and state to him were one.

AUTHORITIES.--_Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._ vols. iv.-xx.: _Acts
of the Privy Council, 1542-1556_; _Cal. of State Papers, Dom. and
Foreign_; Foxe's _Acts and Monuments_; Strype's _Memorials of Cranmer_
(1694); _Anecdotes and Character of Archbishop Cranmer_, by Ralph
Morice, and two contemporary biographies (Camden Society's
publications); _Remains of Thomas Cranmer_, by Jenkyns (1833); _Lives
of Cranmer_, by Gilpin (1784), Todd (1831), Le Bas, in Hook's _Lives
of the Archbishops of Canterbury_, vols. vi. and vii. (1868), by Canon
Mason (1897), A. D. Innes (1900) and A. F. Pollard (1904); Froude's
_History_; R. W. Dixon's _History_; J. Gairdner's _History of the
Church, 1485-1558_; Bishop Cranmer's _Recantacyons_, ed. Gairdner
(1885). R. E. Chester Waters's _Chesters of Chicheley_ (1877) contains
a vast amount of genealogical information about Cranmer which has only
been used by one of his biographers. (A. F. P.)

CRANNOG (Celt. _crann_, a tree), the term applied in Scotland and Ireland to the stockaded islands so numerous in ancient times in the lochs of both countries. The existence of these lake-dwellings in Scotland was first made known by John Mackinlay, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in a letter sent to George Chalmers, the author of _Caledonia_, in 1813, describing two crannogs, or fortified islands in Bute. The crannog of Lagore, the first discovered in Ireland, was examined and described by Sir William Wilde in 1840. But it was not until after the discovery of the pile-villages of the Swiss lakes, in 1853, had drawn public attention to the subject of lake-dwellings, that the crannogs of Scotland and Ireland were systematically investigated.

The results of these investigations show that they have little in common with the Swiss lake-dwellings, except that they are placed in lakes. Few examples are known in England, although over a hundred and fifty have been examined in Ireland, and more than half that number in Scotland. As a rule they have been constructed on islets or shallows in the lochs, which have been adapted for occupation, and fortified by single or double lines of stockaded defences drawn round the margin. To enlarge the area, or raise the surface-level where that was necessary, layers of logs, brushwood, heather and ferns were piled on the shallow, and consolidated with gravel and stones. Over all there was laid a layer of earth, a floor of logs or a pavement of flagstones. In rare instances the body of the work is entirely of stones, the stockaded defence and the huts within its enclosure being the only parts constructed of timber. Occasionally a bridge of logs, or a causeway of stones, formed a communication with the shore, but often the only means of getting to and from the island was by canoes hollowed out of a single tree. Remains of huts of logs, or of wattled work, are often found within the enclosure. Three crannogs in Dowalton Loch, Wigtownshire, examined by Lord Lovaine in 1863, were found to be constructed of layers of fern and birch and hazel branches, mixed with boulders and penetrated by oak piles, while above all there was a surface layer of stones and soil. The remains of the stockade round the margin were of vertical piles mortised into horizontal bars, and secured by pegs in the mortised holes. The crannog of Lochlee, near Tarbolton, Ayrshire, explored by Dr R. Munro in 1878, was 100 ft. in diameter, and had a double row of piles, bound by horizontal stretchers with square mortise-holes, enclosing an area 60 ft. in diameter. In the centre was a space 40 ft. square, bounded by the remains of a wooden wall and paved inside with split logs. A partition divided it into two equal parts, one of which had a doorway opening to the south, and close by it an extensive refuse-heap. In the middle of the other part was a stone-paved hearth, with remains of three former hearths underneath. The substructure was built up from the bottom of the loch, partly of brushwood but chiefly of logs and trunks of trees with the branches lopped off, placed in layers, each disposed transversely or obliquely across the one below it. A crannog in Loch-an-Dhugael, Balinakill, Argyllshire, described by the same explorer in 1893, revealed a substructure similar to that at Lochlee, with a double row of piles enclosing an area 45 to 50 ft. in diameter, within which was a circular construction 32 ft. in diameter, which had been supported by a large central post and about twenty uprights ranged round the circumference.

From their common feature of a substructure of brushwood and logs built up from the bottom, the crannogs have been classed as fascine-dwellings, to distinguish them from the typical pile-dwellings of the earlier periods in Switzerland, whose platforms are supported by piles driven into the bed of the lake. The crannog of Cloonfinlough in Connaught had a triple stockade of oak piles, connected by horizontal stretchers and enclosing an area 130 ft. in diameter, laid with trunks of oak trees. In the crannog of Lagore, county Meath, there were about 150 cartloads of bones, chiefly of oxen, deer, sheep and swine, the refuse of the food of the occupants. In the crannog of Lisnacroghera, county Antrim, iron swords, with sheaths of thin bronze ornamented with scrolls characteristic of the Late Celtic style, iron daggers, an iron spear-head 16-1/2 in. in length, and pieces of what are called large caldrons of iron, were found. Among the few remains of lacustrine settlements in England and Wales, some are suggestive of the typical crannog structure. The most important of these is the Glastonbury lake village, excavated by Mr A. Bulleid and Mr St George Gray. It consists of more than sixty separate dwellings, grouped within a triangular palisaded defence, formed in the midst of a marsh now partially reclaimed. The dwellings were circular, from 18 to 35 ft. in diameter, the substructure formed of logs and brushwood mingled with stones and clay, and outlined by piles driven into the bottom of the shallow lake. The walls of the houses seem to have been made of wattle-work, supported by posts sometimes not more than a single foot apart. The floors are of clay, with a hearth of stones in the centre, often showing several renewals over the original. The relics recovered show unmistakably that the occupation must be dated within the Iron Age, but probably pre-Roman, as no evidence of contact with Roman civilization has been discovered. The stage of civilization indicated is nevertheless not a low one. Besides the implements and weapons of iron there are fibulae and brooches of bronze, weaving combs and spindle-whorls, a bronze mirror and tweezers, wheel-made pottery as well as hand-made, ornamented with Late Celtic patterns, a bowl of thin bronze decorated with bosses, the nave of a wooden wheel with holes for twelve spokes, and a dug-out canoe. Another site in Holderness, Yorkshire, examined by Mr Boynton in 1881, yielded evidence of fascine construction, with suggestions of occupation in the latter part of the Bronze Age. Similar indications are adduced by Professor Boyd Dawkins from the site on Barton Mere. On the other hand, the implements and weapons found in the Scottish and Irish crannogs are usually of iron, or, if objects of bronze and stone are found, they are commonly such as were in use in the Iron Age. Crannogs are frequently referred to in the Irish annals. Under the year 848 the _Annals of the Four Masters_ record the burning of the island of Lough Gabhor (the crannog of Lagore), and the same stronghold is noticed as again destroyed by the Danes in 933. Under the year 1246 it is recorded that Turlough O'Connor made his escape from the crannog of Lough Leisi, and drowned his keepers. Many other entries occur in the succeeding centuries. In the register of the privy council of Scotland, April 14, 1608, it is ordered that "the haill houssis of defence, strongholds, and _crannokis_ in the Yllis (the western isles) pertaining to Angus M'Conneill of Dunnyvaig and Hector M'Cloyne of Dowart sal be delyverit to His Majestie." Judging from the historical evidence of their late continuance, and from the character of the relics found in them, the crannogs may be included among the latest prehistoric strongholds, reaching their greatest development in early historic times, and surviving through the middle ages. In Ireland, Sir William Wilde has assigned their range approximately to the period between the 9th and 16th centuries; while Dr Munro holds that the vast majority of them, both in Ireland and in Scotland, were not only inhabited, but constructed during the Iron Age, and that their period of greatest development was as far posterior to Roman civilization as that of the Swiss _Pfahlbauten_ was anterior to it. (See LAKE DWELLINGS.)

AUTHORITIES.--Dr R. Munro, _The Lake Dwellings of Europe: being the
Rhind Lectures in Archaeology for 1888_ (with a bibliography of the
subject) (London, 1890); _Ancient Scottish Lake-Dwellings or Crannogs_
(Edinburgh, 1882); Col. W. G. Wood-Martin, _The Lake-Dwellings of
Ireland, or Ancient Lacustrine Habitations of Erin, commonly called
Crannogs_ (Dublin, 1886); Sir W. Wilde, _Descriptive Catalogue of the
Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy_, article
"Crannogs," pp. 220-233 (Dublin, 1857); John Stuart, "Scottish
Artificial Islands or Crannogs," in the _Proceedings of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland_, vol. vi. (Edinburgh, 1865); A. Bulleid, "The
Lake Village near Glastonbury," in _Proceedings of the Somersetshire
Archaeological Society_, vol. xl. (1894). (J. AN.)

CRANSAC, a town of southern France, in the department of Aveyron, 28m. N.W. of Rodez by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 4988; commune, 6953. The town is a coal-mining centre and has cold mineral springs, known in the middle ages. There are iron-mines in the neighbourhood. Hills to the north of the town contain disused coal-mines which have been on fire for centuries. About 5 m. to the south is the fine Renaissance chateau of Bournazel, built for the most part by Jean de Buisson, baron of Bournazel, about 1545. The barony of Bournazel became a marquisate in 1624.

CRANSTON, a city of Providence county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., adjoining the city of Providence on the S. Pop. (1890) 8099; (1900) 13,343; (1910) 21,107; area, 30 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. The surface of the E. part is level, that of the W. part is somewhat rolling. Within the city are several villages, including Arlington, Auburn, Edgewood, Fiskeville and Oaklawn. The inhabitants of the country districts are engaged largely in the growing of hay, Indian corn, rye, oats and market-garden produce; in the several villages cotton and print goods, fuses for electrical machinery, and automatic fire-protection sprinklers are manufactured. The value of Cranston's factory product increased from $1,402,359 in 1900 to $2,130,969 in 1905, or 52%. The state has a farm of 667 acres in the S. part of the city; on this are the state prison, the Providence county jail, the state workhouse and the house of correction, the state almshouse, the state hospital for the insane, the Sockanosset school for boys, and the Oaklawn school for girls--the last two being departments of the state reform school. The post-office address of all these state institutions is Howard. Cranston was settled as a part of Providence about 1640 by associates of Roger Williams, and in 1754 was incorporated as a separate township, but in 1868, in 1873 and in 1892 portions of it were reannexed to Providence. The township is said to have been named in honour of Samuel Cranston (1659-1727), governor of Rhode Island from 1698 until his death. It was incorporated as a city in 1910.

CRANTOR, a Greek philosopher of the Old Academy, was born, probably about the middle of the 4th century B.C., at Soli in Cilicia. He was a fellow-pupil of Polemo in the school of Xenocrates at Athens, and was the first commentator on Plato. He is said to have written some poems which he sealed up and deposited in the temple of Athens at Soli (Diog. Laertius iv. 5. 25). Of his celebrated work _On Grief_ ([Greek: Peri penthous]), a letter of condolence to his friend Hippocles on the death of his children, numerous extracts have been preserved in Plutarch's _Consolatio ad Apollonium_ and in the _De consolatione_ of Cicero, who speaks of it (_Acad._ ii. 44. 135) in the highest terms (_aureolus et ad verbum ediscendus_). Crantor paid especial attention to ethics, and arranged "good" things in the following order--virtue, health, pleasure, riches.

See F. Kayser, _De Crantore Academico_ (1841); M. H. E. Meier,
_Opuscula academica_, ii. (1863); F. Susemihl, _Geschichte der
griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit_, i. (1891), p. 118.

CRANWORTH, ROBERT MONSEY ROLFE, BARON (1790-1868), lord chancellor of England, elder son of the Rev. E. Rolfe, was born at Cranworth, Norfolk, on the 18th of December 1790. Educated at Bury St Edmunds, Winchester, and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1816, and attached himself to the chancery courts. He represented Penryn and Falmouth in parliament from 1832 till his promotion to the bench as baron of the exchequer in 1839. In 1850 he was appointed a vice-chancellor and created Baron Cranworth, and in 1852 he became lord chancellor in Aberdeen's ministry. He continued to hold the chancellorship in the administration of Palmerston until the latter's resignation in 1857. He was not reappointed when Palmerston returned to office in 1859, but on the retirement of Lord Westbury in 1865 he accepted the great seal for a second time, and held it till the fall of the Russell administration in 1866. Cranworth died in London on the 26th of July 1868. Never a very zealous law reformer, Cranworth's name is associated in the statute book with only one small measure on conveyancing. But as a judge he will continue to hold first rank. His judgments were marked by sound common sense, while he himself was remarkably free from the prejudices of his profession. Few men of his day enjoyed greater personal popularity than Cranworth. He left no issue and the title became extinct on his death.

See _The Times_, 27th of July 1868; E. Manson, _The Builders of our
Law_ (1904); E. Foss, _The Judges of England_ (1848-1864); J. B.
Atlay, _Lives of the Chancellors_, vol. ii. (1908).

CRAPE (an anglicized version of the Fr. _crepe_), a silk fabric of a gauzy texture, having a peculiar crisp or crimpy appearance. It is woven of hard spun silk yarn "in the gum" or natural condition. There are two distinct varieties of the textile--soft, Canton or Oriental crape, and hard or crisped crape. The wavy appearance of Canton crape results from the peculiar manner in which the weft is prepared, the yarn from two bobbins being twisted together in the reverse way. The fabric when woven is smooth and even, having no _crepe_ appearance, but when the gum is subsequently extracted by boiling it at once becomes soft, and the weft, losing its twist, gives the fabric the waved structure which constitutes its distinguishing feature. Canton crapes are used, either white or coloured, for ladies' scarves and shawls, bonnet trimmings, &c. The Chinese and Japanese excel in the manufacture of soft crapes. The crisp and elastic structure of hard crape is not produced either in the spinning or in the weaving, but is due to processes through which the gauze passes after it is woven. What the details of these processes are is known to only a few manufacturers, who so jealously guard their secret that, in some cases, the different stages in the manufacture are conducted in towns far removed from each other. Commercially they are distinguished as single, double, three-ply and four-ply crapes, according to the nature of the yarn used in their manufacture. They are almost exclusively dyed black and used in mourning dress, and among Roman Catholic communities for nuns' veils, &c. In Great Britain hard crapes are made at Braintree in Essex, Norwich, Yarmouth, Manchester and Glasgow. The crape formerly made at Norwich was made with a silk warp and worsted weft, and is said to have afterwards degenerated into bombazine. A very successful imitation of real crape is made in Manchester of cotton yarn, and sold under the name of Victoria crape.

CRASH, a technical textile term applied to a species of narrow towels, from 14 to 20 in. wide. The name is probably of Russian origin, the simplest and coarsest type of the cloth being known as "Russia crash." The latter is made from grey flax or tow yarns, and sometimes from boiled yarns. The simple term "crash" is given to all these narrow cloths, but the above distinction is very convenient, as also are the following: grey, boiled, bleached, plain, twilled and fancy crash. A large variety obtains with and without fancy borders, while of late years cotton has been introduced as warp, as well as mixed and jute yarns for weft. After the cloth has passed through all the finishing operations, it is cut up into lengths of about 3 yds., the two ends sewn together and it is then ready to be placed over a suspended roller; for this reason it is often termed "roller towelling."

CRASHAW, RICHARD (1613-1650), English poet, styled "the divine," was born in London about 1613. He was the son of a strongly anti-papistical divine, Dr William Crashaw (1572-1626), who distinguished himself, even in those times, by the excessive acerbity of his writings against the Catholics. In spite of these opinions, however, he was attracted by Catholic devotion, for he translated several Latin hymns of the Jesuits. Richard Crashaw was originally put to school at Charterhouse, but in July 1631 he was admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1634. The publication of Herbert's _Temple_ in 1633 seems to have finally determined the bias of his genius in favour of religious poetry, and next year he published his first book, _Epigrammatum sacrorum liber_, a volume of Latin verses. In March 1636 he removed to Peterhouse, was made a fellow of that college in 1637, and proceeded M.A. in 1638. It was about this time that he made the acquaintance and secured the lasting friendship of Abraham Cowley. He was also on terms of intimacy with the Anglican monk Nicholas Ferrar, and frequently visited him at his religious house at Little Gidding. In 1641 he is said to have gone to Oxford, but only for a short time; for when in 1643 Cowley left Cambridge to seek a refuge at Oxford, Crashaw remained behind, and was forcibly ejected from his fellowship in 1644. In the confusion of the civil wars he escaped to France, where he finally embraced the Catholic religion, towards which he had long been tending.

During his exile his religious and secular poems were collected by an anonymous friend, and published under the title of _Steps to the Temple_ and _The Delights of the Muses_, in one volume, in 1646. The first part includes the hymn to St Teresa and the version of Marini's _Sospetto d' Herode_. This same year Cowley found him in great destitution at Paris, and induced Queen Henrietta Maria to extend towards him what influence she still possessed. At her introduction he proceeded to Italy, where he became attendant to Cardinal Palotta at Rome. In 1648 he published two Latin hymns at Paris. He remained until 1649 in the service of the cardinal, to whom he had a great personal attachment; but his retinue contained persons whose violent and licentious behaviour was a source of ceaseless vexation to the sensitive English mystic. At last his denunciation of their excesses became so public that the animosity of those persons was excited against him, and in order to shield him from their revenge he was sent by the cardinal in 1650 to Loretto, where he was made a canon of the Holy House. In less than three weeks, however, he sickened of fever, and died on the 25th of August, not without grave suspicion of having been poisoned. He was buried in the Lady chapel at Loretto. A collection of his religious poems, entitled _Carmen Deo nostro_, was brought out in Paris in 1652, dedicated at the dead poet's desire to the faithful friend of his sufferings, the countess of Denbigh. The book is illustrated by thirteen engravings after Crashaw's own designs.

Crashaw excelled in all manner of graceful accomplishments; besides being an excellent Latinist and Hellenist, he had an intimate knowledge of Italian and Spanish; and his skill in music, painting and engraving was no less admired in his lifetime than his skill in poetry. Cowley embalmed his memory in an elegy that ranks among the very finest in our language, in which he, a Protestant, well expressed the feeling left on the minds of contemporaries by the character of the young Catholic poet:--

"His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right:
And I, myself, a Catholic will be,
So far at least, dear saint, to pray to thee!"

The poetry of Crashaw will be best appreciated by those who can with most success free themselves from the bondage of a traditional sense of the dignity of language. The custom of his age permitted the use of images and phrases which we now justly condemn as incongruous and unseemly, and the fervent fancy of Crashaw carried this licence to excess. At the same time his verse is studded with fiery beauties and sudden felicities of language, unsurpassed by any lyrist between his own time and Shelley's. There is no religious poetry in English so full at once of gross and awkward images and imaginative touches of the most ethereal beauty. The temper of his intellect seems to have been delicate and weak, fiery and uncertain; he has a morbid, almost hysterical, passion about him, even when his ardour is most exquisitely expressed, and his adoring addresses to the saints have an effeminate falsetto that makes their ecstasy almost repulsive. The faults and beauties of his very peculiar style can be studied nowhere to more advantage than in the _Hymn to Saint Teresa_. Among the secular poems of Crashaw the best are _Music's Duel_, which deals with that strife between the musician and the nightingale which has inspired so many poets, and _Wishes to his supposed Mistress_. In his latest sacred poems, included in the _Carmen Deo nostro_, sudden and eminent beauties are not wanting, but the mysticism has become more pronounced, and the ecclesiastical mannerism more harsh and repellent. The themes of Crashaw's verses are as distinct as possible from those of Shelley's, but it may, on the whole, be said that at his best moments he reminds the reader more closely of the author of _Epipsychidion_ than of any earlier or later poet.

Crashaw's works were first collected, in one volume, in 1858 by W. B.
Turnbull. In 1872 an edition, in 2 volumes, was printed for private
subscription by the Rev. A. B. Grosart. A complete edition was edited
(1904) for the Cambridge University Press by Mr A. R. Waller.
(E. G.)

CRASSULACEAE, in botany, a natural order of dicotyledons, containing 13 genera and nearly 500 species; of cosmopolitan distribution, but most strongly developed in South Africa. The plants are herbs or small shrubs, generally with thick fleshy stems and leaves, adapted for life in dry, especially rocky places. The fleshy leaves are often reduced to a more or less cylindrical structure, as in the stonecrops (_Sedum_), or form closely crowded rosettes as in the house-leek (_Sempervivum_). Correlated with their life in dry situations, the bulk of the tissue is succulent, forming a water-store, which is protected from loss by evaporation by a thickly cuticularized epidermis covered with a waxy secretion which gives a glaucous appearance to the plant. The flowers are generally arranged in terminal or axillary clusters, and are markedly regular with the same number of parts in each series. This number is, however, very variable, and often not constant in one and the same species. The sepals and petals are free or more or less united, the stamens as many or twice as many as the petals; the carpels, usually free, are equal to the petals in number, and form in the fruit follicles with two or more seeds. Opposite each carpel is a small scale which functions as a nectary. Means of vegetative propagation are general. Many species spread by means of a creeping much-branched rootstock, or as in house-leek, by runners which perish after producing a terminal leaf-rosette. In other cases small portions of the stem or leaves give rise to new plants by budding, as in _Bryophyllum_, where buds develop at the edges of the leaf and form new plants.

The order is almost absent from Australia and Polynesia, and has but few representatives in South America; it is otherwise very generally distributed. The largest genus, _Sedum_, contains about 140 species in the temperate and colder parts of the northern hemisphere; eight occur wild in Britain, including _S. Telephium_ (orpine) and _S. acre_ (common stonecrop) (see fig.). The species are easily cultivated and will thrive in almost any soil. They are readily propagated by seeds, cuttings or divisions. _Crassula_ has about 100 species, chiefly at the Cape. _Cotyledon_, a widely distributed genus with about 90 species, is represented in the British Isles by _C. Umbilicus_, pennywort, or navelwort, which takes its name from the succulent peltate leaves. It grows profusely on dry rocks and walls, especially on the western coasts, and bears a spike of drooping greenish cup-shaped flowers. The _Echeveria_ of gardens is now included in this genus. _Sempervivum_ has about 50 species in the mountains of central and southern Europe, in the Himalayas, Abyssinia, and the Canaries and Madeira; _S. tectorum_, common house-leek, is seen often growing on tops of walls and house-roofs. The hardy species will grow well in dry sandy soil, and are suitable for rockeries, old walls or edgings. They are readily propagated by offsets or by seed.

The order is closely allied to Saxifragaceae, from which it is distinguished by its fleshy habit and the larger number of carpels.

CRASSUS (literally "dense," "thick," "fat"), a family name in the Roman gens Licinia (plebeian). The most important of the name are the following:

1. PUBLIUS LICINIUS CRASSUS, surnamed _Dives Mucianus_, Roman statesman, orator and jurist, consul, 131 B.C. He was the son of P. Mucius Scaevola (consul 175) and was adopted by a P. Licinius Crassus Dives. An intimate friend of Tiberius Gracchus, he was chosen after his death to take his place on the agrarian commission (see GRACCHUS). In 131 when Crassus was consul with L. Valerius Flaccus, Aristonicus, an illegitimate son of Eumenes II. of Pergamum, laid claim to the kingdom, which had been bequeathed by Attalus III. to Rome. Both consuls were anxious to obtain the command against him; Crassus was pontifex maximus, and Flaccus a flamen of Mars. Crassus declared that Flaccus could not neglect his sacred office, and imposed a conditional fine on him in the event of his leaving Rome. The popular assembly remitted the fine, but Flaccus was ordered to obey the pontifex maximus. Crassus accordingly proceeded to Asia, although in doing so he violated the rule which forbade the pontifex maximus to leave Italy. Nothing is known of his military operations. But in the following year, when he was making preparations to return, he was surprised near Leucae. He was himself taken prisoner by a Thracian band, and provoked his captors, who were ignorant of his identity, to put him to death. Crassus does not seem to have possessed much military ability, but he was greatly distinguished for his knowledge of law and his accomplished oratory. He had acquired such a mastery of the Greek language that, when he presided over the courts in Asia, he was able to answer each suitor in ordinary Greek or any of the dialects in use.

Cicero, _De oratore_, i. 50; _Philippics_, xi. 8; Plutarch, _Tib.
Gracchus_, 21; Livy, _Epit._ 59; Val. Max. iii. 2. 12, viii. 7. 6;
Vell. Pat. ii. 4; Justin xxxvi. 4; Orosius v. 10.

2. LUCIUS LICINIUS CRASSUS (140-91 B.C.), the orator, of unknown parentage. At the age of nineteen (or twenty-one) he made his reputation by a speech against C. Papirius Carbo, the friend of the Gracchi. The law passed by him and his colleague Q. Mucius Scaevola during their consulship (95), to prevent those passing as Roman citizens who had no right to the title, was one of the prime causes of the Social War (Cicero, _Pro Balbo_, xxi., _De officiis_, iii. 11). During his censorship Crassus suppressed the newly founded schools of Latin rhetoricians (Aulus Gellius xv. 11). He died from excitement caused by his passionate speech against the consul L. Marcius Philippus, who had insulted the Senate. Crassus is one of the chief speakers in the _De oratore_ of Cicero, who has also preserved a few fragments of his speeches.

3. PUBLIUS LICINIUS CRASSUS, called _Dives_, father of the triumvir. Little is known of him before he became consul in 97, except that he proposed a law regulating the expenses of the table, which met with general approval. During his consulship the practice of magic arts was condemned by a decree of the senate, and human sacrifice was abolished. He was subsequently governor of Spain for some years, during which he gained several successes over the Lusitanians, and on his return in 93 was honoured with a triumph. After the Social War, as censor with L. Julius Caesar, he had the task of enrolling in new tribes certain of the Latins and Italians as a reward for their loyalty to the Romans, but the proceedings seem to have been interrupted by certain irregularities. They also forbade the introduction of foreign wines and unguents. Crassus committed suicide in 87, to avoid falling into the hands of the Marian party.

Plutarch, Crassus, 4; Aulus Gellius ii. 24; Macrobius, _Saturnalia_,
ii. 13; Livy, _Epit._ 80; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxx. 3; Appian, _Bell.
Civ._ i. 72; Festus, under _Referri_.

4. MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS (c. 115-53 B.C.), the Triumvir, surnamed _Dives_ (rich) on account of his great wealth. His wealth was acquired by traffic in slaves, the working of silver mines, and judicious purchases of lands and houses, especially those of proscribed citizens. The proscription of Cinna obliged him to flee to Spain; but after Cinna's death he passed into Africa, and thence to Italy, where he ingratiated himself with Sulla. Having been sent against Spartacus, he gained a decisive victory, and was honoured with a minor triumph. Soon afterwards he was elected consul with Pompey, and (70) displayed his wealth by entertaining the populace at 10,000 tables, and distributing sufficient corn to last each family three months. In 65 he was censor, and in 60 he joined Pompey and Caesar in the coalition known as the first triumvirate. In 55 he was again consul with Pompey, and a law was passed, assigning the provinces of the two Spains and Syria to the two consuls for five years. Crassus was satisfied with Syria, which promised to be an inexhaustible source of wealth. Having crossed the Euphrates he hastened to make himself master of Parthia; but he was defeated at Carrhae (53 B.C.) and taken prisoner by Surenas, the Parthian general, who put him to death by pouring molten gold down his throat. His head was cut off and sent to Orodes, the Parthian king. Crassus was a man of only moderate abilities, and owed his importance to his great wealth.

See Plutarch's _Life_; also CAESAR, GAIUS JULIUS; POMPEY; ROME:
_History_, II. "The Republic."