This book is not intended to be an exhaustive account of the great Archbishop's life, or to go minutely into every question that may be raised in connexion with it. It is rather an attempt to use in a fairly broad fashion the results of the researches of many students, with a View to setting Cranmer as a living and intelligible figure before the English reader of to-day. He is still, as the late Lord Houghton called him in the preface to his Reeautacyous, the most mysterious person age of the British Reformation but the history of the sixteenth century is gradually becoming known, and Archbishop Cranmer has received a large share of sympathetic study.