ABSTRACT
When Thomas Cranmer was made archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, he became the beneficiary of an array of powers and privileges that had accrued to his office ever since the sixth century, when the mission Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) sent to the British Isles made Canterbury a metropolitan see. Cranmer was also the 'ordinary' bishop over his own diocese of Canterbury, which was located in eastern Kent, where no other bishop exercised any rule. In the protest Cranmer made before taking the oath at his consecration, he referred to his desire to reform those things in the Church that seemed to him in need of reformation. Immediately after Anne's coronation, the king instructed Cranmer to examine John Frith. In an atmosphere of rising urgency, threats had to be eliminated, and Cranmer had a central role in removing one of the king's most formidable opponents: Elizabeth Barton, the visionary known as the Nun of Kent.
