Arguably, Cranmer was the true "father" of the English Reformation. He was responsible for The Book of Common Prayer, shepherded the Coverdale or "Great" Bible through the press, the first officially sanctioned English translation, and was Archbishop of Canterbury for both Henry VIII and his son Edward VI.
He attended Jesus College, Cambridge and studied for the priesthood there, since he stood to gain nothing in inheritance from his father. He married the daughter of a tavern owner after impregnating her, and lost his scholarship.
When she died in childbirth, he reapplied for admission, was accepted, and graduated in 1523. This was probably not as heartless as it might sound. He obviously loved his wife, chose her over religious studies, and was willing to sacrifice his career for her and their child. Since this was pre-Reformation England, he obviously could not marry and be a priest, and he was not established enough to keep a mistress, a practice he despised.
Cranmer came to the king's attention as a scholar and advocate for the divorce from Catherine. He was part of the embassy to Rome to argue for the annulment in 1530. In 1532, he became Henry's ambassador to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, an extremely important and sensitive post in Germany. There he became conversant with Lutheranism, which the king desired to learn more about. In the process, Cranmer met and (secretly) married Margaret Osiander. The protestant movement to abolish clerical celibacy was already in process, but for decency's sake, he kept the relationship private.
Cranmer was the last Archbishop of Canterbury to be appointed by the Pope. One this occurred, he became the leading minister of what would become the newly-formed Church of England, whereupon he annulled the king's marriage to Catherine and presided over his union with Anne Boleyn. Cranmer teamed with Henry's trusted advisor Thomas Cromwell and became part of the seismic changes that the reformers brought about. He presided over the king's subsequent divorces and marriages.
Henry remained a conservative Catholic, regardless of his status and his excommunication, persecuting Lutherans and Catholics alike. When he died in 1547, Cranmer made the Church of England more protestant in its Thirty-Nine and Forty-Two Articles, which even contained some support for the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The first complete version of the Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549 as part of Edward's Act of Uniformity. A second version appeared in 1552, heavily revised, and more extremely protestant. Cranmer also composed the Litany for the new church in 1545.
When Edward died prematurely in 1553, Cranmer's position became untenable, since the king's oldest child, Mary, became queen. She was a counter-Reformation Catholic like her mother, and removed Cranmer from his position. He had been distrusted by the king's northern subjects, whose Act of Six Articles (1539) attacked positions that the Archbishop held, such as clerical marriage and a belief in the doctrine of the Real Presence or consubstantiation in preference to the ancient Catholic belief in transubstantiation, which held that the priest had the power to transform the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ.
Cranmer's enemies, especially the new Archbishop, Stephen Gardiner, made sure that the last three years of life were hell.
He was officially stripped of his priestly status in a public ceremony on Valentine's Day, 1556, and hounded into recantation of his beliefs, which he partially undertook. He was forced to watch the dreadful martyrdom of his colleagues Latimer and Ridley. However, when he came to his own death at the state on 21 March of the same year in Oxford, he recanted his recantation and even placed the hand he had used to sign it into the fire first.
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/thomas-cranmer.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Cranmer-archbishop-of-Canterbury (G. R. Elton)
image credits: http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/cranmerimages.htm
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