The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  Thomas Cromwell, who succeeded Thomas More as chancellor, is best known in history for carrying out the king’s orders for the dismantling and pillaging of the monasteries in England. Within a year of Tyndale’s death, Cromwell had convinced the king to approve distribution of the English Bible. (It was Tyndale’s Bible, but it did not bear his name.) Cromwell was beheaded for treason in 1540. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and the author of the Book of Common Prayer, was burned at Smithfield as a heretic in 1556 under the rule of Queen Mary, Henry’s daughter by Katherine of Aragon, also known as Bloody Mary.

  In 1543 Catherine Massys (sometimes spelled Matsys), sister of the painter Quentin Massys, was burned at the stake in Leuven for reading the Bible.

  Martin Luther died of illness in 1546. His wife Katharina von Bora survived him by many years, living and raising her children in poverty.